Spare Me

So when we first got the camper I was happy it came with a spare tire. After looking at the tire in more detail, I realized it was an original Uhaul tire. Well I'm not one to trust a 20+ yr old tire that's been hanging off the back of a camper parked in the woods for who knows how long. So I figured I'd get a new one. In going to take the tire off. I discovered that someone had just drilled a couple holes in the bumper and put two bolts through it. And they were not even the same size. So that left me with wanting to put an actual tire mount on the back end.

Well I decided to patch the holes in the bumper (Turned out there were two more further down; I guess they drilled too low to start with). So I patched the bumper with some bondo and smoothed it out. I grabbed some cans of high heat enamel spray paint (the kind you can use on grills) and went to work coating the bumper and then the whole frame because I didn't like the way it looked. I also ended up using it on all the rims to make them look a bit nicer. I then found a mount made for a trailer tongue but it would work. I got one similar to this one at Lowes. Notice that there are two similar models out there one that comes with 2 separate steel bars on the back side and one like this where the back is a solid piece. I preferred the solid piece; it just felt sturdier. Here's how I installed it on the rear bumper. (You'll noticed I turned the back plate around so that it fit better in the curve of the bumper.)

(Update: See my post on adding a second spare tire mount for the long trips on the tongue: The Second Spare.)