Front-Mounted Spare Tire Carrier?

fwcer

New member
With regard to a one-ton truck, I am considering placement of the spare tire on a front-mounted spare tire carrier.

1. Would this placement interfere with the radiator's cooling capacity?

2. What brand of carrier is best in terms of being wobble-free and other features?

3. Are there any legal issues with front mounted spare tires?

Thanks for your advice.
 

WVI

Adventurer
Many moons ago, I had a 79 Ford 3/4 T, Crew Cab, shortbed.
It had a 460 CI Big block in it.
I had made a front s
Are tire carrier with3" channel and the spare wheel was aftermarket with no slots in it to a,ow air flow thru it.

We mad a PCS move from Washington to Alabama.
I put 12" camper on it and made a hitch to tow out Dodge colt wagon with.
Loaded up the wife, 4 kids and dog and hit the road.
No problem s with the air flow at all.

Down in Alabma, during the summer, the wires would get so soft fro. The heat under the hood that the insu,ation would stretch if pulled on.
I had a 4 core radio in the engine bay that I could dump a 5ga, Jerry can of water into and it and still added more to top it off.
I ran only water and water pump lubes in it during the summer mer. The. Would swap that for anti-freeze mix in the winter.

This was also. ack before they discovered that anti-freeze and water running in an engine was causing probs with. ew auto electronics.

Cars are. ade to run hotter now days, so maybe it wou,d work out fine.
 

chet6.7

Explorer
I had a custom carrier built to handle a spare,no pronlems with cooling.If I were to do it today I would add a fan in front of the AC condenser to help the AC at slow speeds.
It looked sort of like this but it had a place to mount the wheel.
 

Attachments

  • s-l1000.jpg
    s-l1000.jpg
    88.3 KB · Views: 11

6gun

Active member
I would have no issues giving it a try. If you have a grille guard already you could always try ratchet strapping a tire in place for an experiment. Maybe even a round piece of plywood or something.
 
  • Like
Reactions: WVI

Kmrtnsn

Explorer
Back in the day a radiator and fan pulled air from all over. They probably weren't very efficient then but they didn't need to be. Now everything is closed off, ducted, limited and all that empty space around a radiator contains something. I'd be wary of limiting the airflow with something as large as a spare tire to a modern radiator.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
185,527
Messages
2,875,534
Members
224,922
Latest member
Randy Towles
Top