hey what's up guys so in today's video i'm actually going to show you guys how to make this
full-size spare tire carrier for your car um it's going to be universal if you have a hitch so keep
that in mind and also i'm going to show you guys how i can do it for under 200 bucks in materials
at least and i'm going to try to do it in a two or three part series so in this particular
part i'm actually going to show you guys how i did the prototype and show you guys how i
tackle the hardest part which is the anti-wobble system and for those who don't know me my name
is ronta sotenda i'm a designer and maker and i actually like to solve a problem using cad
and metal fabrication and i'll show you guys how i create this from start to finish so after i
got my 35s mounted the fifth wheel uh no longer fit the stock location that's underneath the car
so for me at least it really wasn't a big deal not having a full-size spare tire with me at all times
i mean it's nice to have but you know if i have a flat let's say within a five mile radius
of my house i can always call my wife or a friend to just load up the fish spare tire for me
but because camping season is coming up these trips are normally three to five hour drives
so you know if i get a flat it'd be probably a good idea to have a full-size spirit in that
scenario so the issue i was facing was you know where would i put this full-size 35-inch tire
i thought about putting it in the trunk space of the 4runner but you know when we go camping i got
my kids stuff i got my wife's stuff and all the camping gear and the trunk space is usually packed
so that wasn't going to work and i thought about actually throwing this guy on top of the roof rack
but lifting a 35 inch tire onto the roof rack it was a painted butt it's this thing's super heavy
and having to bring it back down that's a back breaker so i was like yeah that's not going to
work i then searched a few options on how others were storing theirs and i really started like
the hitch tire swing out option one because it was simple to install and when you're done with it you
can actually put it back like a bike rack you can unhitch it from your hitch and store it away so
it's not permanently mounted on and second i think it's a good alternative to a full rear bumper if
you don't want anything permanent and third it's universal as long as you have a hitch receiver to
mount it up to and lastly i think it looks pretty cool i think it gives you that over landing look
or that off-road look i guess and i guess for me at least that was kind of look i was aiming for
because i like to design and make things i set out to build my own the goal set for this project
was that it had to be universal or be slightly modified to fit any car with a hitch receiver
because this was going into the hitch i wanted no play or wobble and i budget the materials to be
all under 200 to start off the design i first had to figure out how to solve the hardest component
of the build which was the anti-wobble system this isn't a really new concept there's just not
enough information out there on it so my goal was to figure that portion out i was a little
surprised because i had learned about this concept firsthand when i assembled my daughter's bike
it was how the handlebars attach to the head tube of the bike
here is a simulation of how this anti-wobble system will work inside of your hitch receiver
the wedge slides up to create tension as you tighten the bolt now that we
have that out of the way next was to get three important measurements off the car
one how far the hinge will be from the hitch two height of the swing arm from the hitch and three
how tall the tire would need to be from the swing arm to dial it in i inserted an image of the rear
and scaled it then overlaid the model with two by fours as i would be using wood first
to make a rough mock-up this will help me address any clearance issues i may run into
and adjust any parameters in the cad model before i build it out of metal
all right so before we put this wood swing out prototype all together i kind of wanted to give
you guys a quick overview on exactly what i did to each piece so we'll start out with the two main
pieces which is the swing out arms you can see i actually did a notch cut out and the
reason why i did that was i wanted to did this piece here which is i guess you could say this
is my three by five uh flange um and the raise portion is supposed to kind of represent the
hinge bolt and that's my reason for that so pretty much you'll have your um
flange piece that goes just like that and you'll have another one that goes on the bottom
and then next you'll have your tire post and that's pretty much going to go something like that
it goes up like that and then you have the actual arm i guess you can call the post arm
that actually holds the actual tire and you can see there's a slight angle so that the
tire falls parallel to that lift gate and i think it looks better that way versus just
the tire being perpendicular so that's my reason for that angle there and then
let's put those away and then next you have the uh i guess you can call this my anti-wobble
part this is the piece that actually goes inside the hitch of your car i actually cut this out
perfect to match the inside i guess he called it the inside dimension of the hitch itself
and that's pretty much going to go somewhere on the bottom and this will
all make sense once i put it all together and i'll explain it further once it's on the car
so pretty much the goal of making a wood swing out is pretty much to check for clearance obviously
and it's just cheaper to do um with wood versus steel so for the three main dimensions that are
crucial for clearance is the the distance from the hitch the far left of the hitch
to the hinge and the distance from the bottom of the hitch to the top of the swing out
and then the top of the swing out to the actual top where the tire mount is going to go those
three main dimensions are super critical let's start out with one the hinge location so where the
swing out is going to pivot and the reason why that is important
is let's say i have it installed on the car now and i open my lift gate
clears the swing out here and it clears you know my giant 35 which is great now imagine if i took
that hinge and i moved it too far to the left once i moved to here this whole piece is here
and when i open it let's say in the 90 position and i open up my lift gate i might there's a
chance it might or there's a high chance it might hit my my tire um so i pick this area here based
off the far right line that you see off the lift gate so that when i lift when the lift gate opens
up the hinge is i guess right at it right in the center of it or to the right of it to clear it
and this will make more sense once it's on the car and so the reason why this second critical
dimension is important the height of the um where the swing out is in relation to the tire mount
is that i want to make sure that it's high enough so that um when i grab my latch which will be here
um the tire doesn't get in my way it's easily accessible i don't have to like reach under or
it's blocking it that's one reason why and the second reason is i'm going to try to make it as
i don't want to make it super tall because i don't want this tire hanging out really high in the air
if i can have it closer to the fixed point you know that's just reduces the amount of flex
that this piece will will flex in in this direction this direction
and the third dimension that is important is kind of like the first one is um this height here um
you know if i can get this this height closer down to fixed point less flex makes sense right and
then the and the reason why and the other reason why that's important is you don't want it too low
because you want um you want some clearance underneath you know if you overland i guess
i'm gonna draw a giant i'm gonna use a 35 inch template which will represent the the wheel itself
i hope that all makes sense and um if it doesn't you know let me know what doesn't make sense in
the comments and i'll try to answer to the best of my abilities but other than
that let's uh let's go install it on the car right now and kind of see how that all works
next as you can see the hinge is all the way out here looks like we could bring it in just
a little bit more i'm going to trim this a little bit further because i think it sticks too far out
i want it pretty much the hinge to be like kind of right there
right there would probably be ideal and i'll give that a shot real quick
um
hmm
do
foreign
do
yes
uh
so
all right so the secret sauce to this anti-wobble system is pretty much this is the piece that's
going to go inside the receiver piece uh it's cut out of an angle here this is about
a little over 45 and it has a fixed thread it's welded on there and then you have your wobble
part which slides over you can see because it's cut at an angle as you tighten this it'll actually
slide up like this and that would actually create tension inside the receiver car to complete
the setup you'll have your washer and you'll have your boat and as that gets tightened up
it'll rise up and i'll quickly show you how i do that real quick with this impact
you can see it there actually went about up a quarter of an inch and as far as the the wiggle
room when you put this piece in you'll have about maybe maybe a 16th or maybe an eighth at most of a
wiggle room so going knowing that this system can travel up a quarter of an inch it's gonna be more
than plenty as far as keeping tension on this this portion that goes inside the receiver of the car
but yeah that's pretty much the waffle system it's not really that complicated there's just not a lot
of information out there on it and hopefully this clears it up for you guys so that this
makes a little bit more sense uh imagine uh this is the receiver that's in the back of your car
right um i'm gonna have it installed up this way um because gravity you want this down so right now
goes in you can see it's a lot of wiggle room right now and i want to at least have a little
bit of overhang so i'll go past the receiver just a tad bit and then hold it down real quick
and as i uh and then i'll tighten it up next and you'll
see you'll see that i'll keep tension on this receiver
pretty much check it out right now there's no wiggle room it won't shake
or have any slack that's pretty much how it works it's pretty cool i'm glad i got this
this portion knocked out to begin the rest of the build
so
all right so i know that was a lot to digest we talked about the wood prototyping
and we talked about the anti-wobble system and we still have a lot more to cover
but i'm going to end it right here i think i'm going to make this a
this whole tire carrier build a two or three part series i'm not sure yet just because we have a lot
to cover such as the hinge the swinger arms the the wiring for the uh license plate and possibly
the uh the rear back up camera if you found this video helpful make sure to smash that like button
and subscribe for stuff like this other than that i'll see you guys in the next episode later