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For us folks who live in the Rust Belt, the factory issued spare tire carrier can be a problem. I went through two of them in 10 years on my 1984 Xtra Cab. And of the three or four Toyotas I've purchased while living in the Midwest, all of them had nonfunctioning units when they got to me. In the mid 90s I ordered one from Rancho Toyota Salvage in California and it was pretty reasonable. Recently I looked on eBay and saw that the prices ranged from about $60 to $160. I started looking around to see if something else would work. I didn't see anything that would make for an easy fix. And what I did see was still too expensive for my tastes. I was searching around on eBay when somehow I put in search terms that also showed me Nissan carriers. At the time I saw about three or four of them for sale for much less than the Toyota parts. I spotted a pretty good looking one off of an Xterra for $17 coming from Florida, so I hit the Buy it Now button and a few days later I had my carrier.
Now I also happened to have a very nice clean Toyota spare tire carrier, I have two Toyotas that each need carriers, so I was able to do a comparison. The Nissan unit looks to be a little less heavily built, but not by too much. It also hangs from the crossmember of the frame by two bolts instead of three like the Toyota, However, it uses 8mm bolts while the Toyota uses 6 mm bolts, so maybe the strength is still there. I was also worried that the chain might not be long enough to let the tire fully down to the ground, but that fear was unfounded. It was easily long enough for me to hook my 31 x 10.50 tire and wheel without any difficulty. It wasn't hard to install either. I was able to use one of the Toyota holes. I had to drill a new hole for the other. It wasn't until I had it installed that I discovered that the Toyota shepherds hook jack handle would not engage with the drive socket on the carrier. The Nissan has a narrower slot. So I ended up fitting a different bar with a cross pin to raise and lower the tire. In retrospect, I should've just opened up the slot in the Nissan carrier so I could use the Toyota shepherds hook. I'll probably take it down and do that at some point.
As far as taking the old rusted tire carrier off. It can be difficult because the bolts are very hard-to-reach in that tight space over the top of the crossmember. They're also likely to be extremely rusty, placed as they are, behind the rear axle, which is one of the most rust-prone places on the whole vehicle. The last one I took off, some years ago, I cut off with an oxy-acetylene torch. This time I took a different approach. The the carrier is made of something like 12 gauge steel that is folded into a kind of a U or channel shape with a bottom plate that is only held on by some tabs along the edges that engage slots in the sides of the body of the carrier. The chain mechanism inside is on an axle suspended through holes in the sides of the box. Using a big hammer and a prybar I was able to break the bottom plate loose pretty easily and bend the sides out so that the chain mechanism just dropped out. That done, I was able to get at the bottom of the bolts that pass through the crossmember, which thread into welded nuts on the carrier. Using a 4-1/2 inch grinder I was able to grind away the welded nuts which allowed the body of the carrier to drop free. Then I was able to pull the remnants of the bolts out from the top with my fingers.
The only extra work I had to do to adapt the Nissan carrier to my ’89 4runner was drill one hole. I made a new handle to operate it as well, but that was simply a matter of taking a steel rod of one half inch or larger and drilling a hole in the end of it for a quarter inch diameter pin. And I know now that it was unnecessary. If I did it again I would just open up the slot in the drive socket with a grinder to allow the Toyota shepherds took to engage it properly. And besides, who wants to carry around an extra piece of hardware. All in all, it seemed well worth it to achieve a savings of $35-$50.
In the picture below the Nissan part is the one on the left.
Last edited by wrenchtech; 09-28-2017 at 01:36 AM.
09-27-2017, 10:40 PM
