Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 11:56:14 EST
Reply-To: KENWILFY@AOL.COM
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: KENWILFY@AOL.COM
Subject: Re: Spare Tire Carrier of Interest To Me
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
I am not an engineer, nor do I play one on TV :)
However I have thought of using the many, many other Spare Tire Carriers
available to us here in the US, on the Vanagon. There are tons of them for
Fords, Nissans, Toyotas, etc. that could be made to work. However there is
one drawback that stops me (or anyone else I have ever heard of) from doing
this. That is that these carriers are very heavy. As Derek mentioned the
one that he likes is very heavy duty in construction. That translates into
"heavy" also weight-wise. Now think about the rear of a Vanagon. What are
you going to be mounting this already pretty heavy piece of steel to? In the
back there is nothing to mount it to but the skin of the rear corner and the
skin of the rear hatch. Very thin steel. Perhaps you could put a plate on
the inside of your mounting point on the rear hatch to beef it up, but what
about in that rear corner? No real way to get in there and install any kind
of plate behind the skin.
So we are going to mount a rather heavy carrier on a flimsy piece of steel.
OK, but wait this is just the carrier. Now factor in the weight of the rim
with tire on it. Are you getting the picture? Now we have more than 50 lbs
being supported by the skin of the van. I don't see how it could handle the
weight. What is more I have sources in Germany that say that folks over
there have tried it and what you wind up with is buckled or ripped body
panels.
We have a rear spare tire carrier made specifically for the Vanagon by Ortec
(a German company). Is it the most beefy one out there? No. Does it look
kind of wimpy? Yup. But it is this way on purpose. It has to be as light
as possible to keep from buckling or ripping the van skin when it is
installed with a tire and rim. Do I sell these every day or even once a
month? Nope. However I would suggest that either this is the only option
out there, or the only option that would work would be a carrier that is
similarly wimpy looking. Just FYI.
Thanks,
Ken Wilford
John 3:16
http://www.vanagain.com
Phone: (856)-327-4936
Fax: (856)-327-2242
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