This Rough Country Spare Tire Relocation Bracket is for anyone with a 2018 and up JL, that's
looking for a way to provide a little bit more space to mount a larger than factory
spare tire on the factory spare tire carrier.
This is gonna be a one out of three wrenches for the installation and we'll show you how
to get it done in just a second.
So, for a few generations now if you want to mount a larger than factory spare tire
in the factory spare tire location, you're gonna run into a couple of different issues.
The first one is going to be space, your spare tire can hit on your bumper when you're opening
and closing the tailgate, and that's what a bracket like this is designed to help fix.
This is going to move your factory spare tire mount up about four and three-quarter inches
allowing you to fit a 35-inch spare tire on that factory spare tire mount without having
any sort of space issues.
Now, there are also going to be some additional issues that you can have when mounting a larger
than factory spare tire on this factory spare tire mount.
And this bracket is not going to help to remedy those, and most of those are around the weight.
This spare tire carrier itself is only designed to carry this factory spare tire weight, so
when you put a much larger and heavier spare tire on there, you can have issues with this
actually flexing, breaking down and it could crack and come apart on you.
You can also have issues with the tailgate itself being that all of this is still bolted
to those factory spare tire mounts.
Especially something like this that puts the spare tire away from the Jeep a little bit
more, you're actually creating a little bit more torque on those factory spare tire mounts.
And you can end up with the tailgate starting to come apart and creaking, making noises,
all of those types of issues.
And finally, you can have issues with the hinges themselves because again, all of this
weight is still supported by the factory hinges.
So, you can end up in a situation where you have to lift up on the end of the tailgate
a little bit when you're opening it and closing it because those hinges have started to sag.
So again, a bunch of different issues you can run into, this bracket is going to solve
the space issue but isn't much going to help with the others.
So, if you're looking for something that's going to create a solution for all of those
problems, weight and size, you're gonna be wanting to take a look at a bumper mounted
spare tire carrier or a tub mounted spare tire carrier that is going to replace the
hinges and also beef up the tailgate mounting points.
But this is going to be a nice solution if maybe you're just mounting a slightly larger
than spare tire, maybe you want a stop gap to have your slightly larger than spare in
the factory location until you're able to save up or find the exact other tire carrier
that you want for the long term.
Whatever your situation is, this is gonna be much less expensive than some of those
other choices.
So again, it's a pretty good stop gap.
This is coming in right around $80 which I think is a pretty good deal for the quality
of build that you're getting.
And like we said this is gonna install very easily onto your Jeep at a one out of three
wrenches for the install.
So, let me show you how to get it done.
For this install, you'll need a 13-millimeter socket as well as a T25 Torx socket and we
also used the T40 Torx that came out of the Jeep toolkit.
You'll also need a socket for your lug nuts, we needed 13/16 because we have aftermarket
lug nuts on our Jeep, and we also use our trim removal tool.
We drove all of those sockets with a small extension and our 3/8 electric impact.
So, this is going to be a very easy one out of three wrenches for the installation.
Of course, the first step is going to be taking our spare tire off the Jeep then getting that
factory spare tire mount out of the way to get our adapter in place.
Now, to get the spare tire off, first, you're gonna be using a T40 Torx, we're going to
be using the one that comes in the Jeep tool kit that comes with your JL.
We're gonna use that in order to unlock and then remove the camera cover, then we'll buzz
the three lug nuts off to get our spare out of the way.
Our next step is removing the factory tire carrier.
Now, you can just unbolt this and support it somewhere here or have a friend hang on
to it for you.
And that would mean you wouldn't have to disconnect your wiring harness but we're gonna show you
how to disconnect the wiring harness, get used to doing this by yourself, you wanna
be able to completely remove this and set it aside while you're bolting your adapter
in place.
So what we're gonna do is pop the tailgate open, there's a little piece of plastic trim
on the inside that we'll have to remove and that will let us unplug both our third brake
light as well as our camera here.
And then we can come back to the outside of the tailgate, unbolt the carrier and set it
aside.
So, we'll get the tailgate popped open and get that all unplugged.
I'll just use my trim removal tool here to pop the plastic trim off the inside of the
tailgate.
I'll set this aside and then right here you'll see the plugs that we need to unplug.
There are actually three plugs here, we don't have to do anything with the larger plug this
one is for the locking mechanism for the tailgate, that one can stay intact.
But this single one here, the white plug that's gonna be our camera, we'll get that unplugged
and the smaller two wire here this is going to be for our third brake light.
So we'll just pull the red safety clip there, press and pull and get that unplugged as well.
So that's really all we're gonna have to do to the inside of the tailgate at this point,
we're gonna leave the plastic off because we'll come back to replug these in in just
a second.
Now that we have the tailgate closed again, we'll grab a 13-millimeter socket and will
remove all of the bolts that hold the factory tire carrier in place.
That way we can get it set aside.
As we're removing the carrier from the Jeep we'll also just pull the wiring harness right
through the hole here by removing the grommet.
As you can see our plugs come right through and we can set this aside.
At this point, we're ready to install our relocation bracket onto the tailgate using
all the factory hardware.
Once everything's started by hand, you can tighten it down.
There's just one last step before we can get our factory tire carrier bolted up to our
relocation bracket and that has to do with the wiring.
We're gonna do one more step a little bit later to extend the wiring even further, but
right now what we need to do is just pull the cables out of this little cable keeper
that's in the back of the factory tire carrier.
So, this is just a press fit, just give them a little bit of pull, of course, you wanna
be gentle because they are cables after all, but just pull them out of this little notch.
Again, that's all you need to do at this point.
Now we can get our tire carrier bolted up to the relocation bracket before moving on
to the next step.
So, as we're getting our tire carrier bolted up to our adapter, you can see that there's
a slot right here for the cable to go in.
And just make sure that lays nicely so that the carrier isn't pinching the cable between
the relocation bracket and itself.
And we have that in there, plenty of play, not pinching anything.
We'll get the hardware that comes with the kit and get this bolted up.
Now that all eight of the bolts are started by hand we can go back through and tighten
them down.
So, the last step before reinstalling our spare tire is just a little bit of additional
wire rerouting to give us just a tiny bit of additional length.
Now, we tried putting our rubber grommet back into the tailgate hole here just like from
factory and we were able to make it but the wires were pulled a little bit taut, so we're
gonna go ahead and do the next step.
If by some chance your wiring is just a little bit more slack, you might be able to get away
with skipping this step, but we're gonna show you how to get it done anyway.
So, what we're gonna do is remove these Torx bolts that are right around here and separate
the front half in the back half of the third brake light.
And right now there's a wire that runs around the outside of this plastic bracket here.
And all we're gonna do is move this section from the outside of these bolt holes to the
inside of these bolt holes and it's just a very small amount, but it's just enough to
give us a little bit of slack so these wires aren't taut.
So, as you can see right here, this is how the wiring was from the factory it was tucked
on the far side of these two bolt holes just like this.
And all we're gonna do is pull it out from there and tuck it to the inside of these bolt
holes and then put our third brake light back together.
As you can see, this is that little bit of slack that we created by rerouting this wiring.
We're just gonna pull that down to give us a little bit of additional length down here
where we need it so we can very easily reach right inside here.
This is the same wire as this, pull straight down, that'll take the slack out and then
we'll make sure that all of our bolts are tight.
Pass our connectors back through the tailgate again, as you can see we have plenty of slack
here for the grommet to go in there, nothing's pulled taut, plenty of length.
All we need to do now is get back inside the tailgate and plug everything back in.
Two factory plugs, the two wire plug for the third brake light, plug that one in and then
the single wire which is our camera, plug that in as well.
Now, we can replace the plastic cover on the inside of the tailgate.
Just get the tailgate closed and get our spare tire put back in place.
Now, we just put our camera cover back in place and again using our T40 Torx, turn it
into the lock position and that's it for the install.
So, if you are looking for a spare tire relocation bracket, that's going to give you a little
bit of additional clearance between the tire and the bumper I would recommend taking a
look at this option from Rough Country and you can find it right here at extremeterrain.com