I know this is similair to a previous post, but here it goes. After needing access to my spare tire, the secondary latch wouldn't release. I ended up unbolting the winch to get the spare tire. The secondary latch was so rusted, I had to do some prying to get it to release. I have tried to lube it to loosen it up but it isn't where it should be. Finally, my question is are there any issues with the winch system. Meaning, if I remove the secondary latch, do I have to worry about the spare tire lowering itself? Any thoughts?

 

in an engineer's world road grime, salt, rust, dirt, gravel, mud, water, bird poo, and the occasional angry hammer to things that shouldn't be hammered don't exist, you may do as you please but i would take everything apart, lube it up really good, put anti-sieze on everything that could get gummed up. the time it takes to do this will save alot more in the time it takes to unbolt the spare tire winch

 

I had thought of doing that, but it is all riveted together, so I would have to try and rebolt everything.

 

Sounds like you need to just retrofit a better system from the junkyard.

I haven't quite gotten to that point yet, but I have no illusions. When it happens that the OEM crap falls apart on my truck, I'm bolting up a simple system which will hold my spare steady, and my pre-requisites for ease of release will be:

Can I access my spare easily:

1. In the dark,
2.On a highway either in the middle of nowhere or with vehicles whooshing by at 80 MPH,
3. In cold driving rain,sleet or snow??

Because bitter experience has shown me two things:

1. The a$$hole$ who write the owners manuals, for all their joe college experience, have never had to try to find the directions for emergency equipment in the dark.

2. You ALWAYS have your worst flats in merciless precipitation, on a highway at 3AM in the middle of nowhere.

 

amen to that, add a rain slicker to the recipe and it sounds like a winner to me