Before I had even purchased the Jeep and was looking it over with the current owner I had noticed that the free end of the tire carrier was not latched to the bumper.  When I tried to latch it to the bumper it did not move, at all.  At the time, the current owner told me “I’ve tried everything I can think of to make it move…;” while shaking his head back and forth.

Loosening up the Tire Carrier

 As you can tell, that issue didn’t deter me and I still bought it.  I messed with trying to loosen it up a few weeks after getting the Jeep home.  I soaked it with PB Blaster, heated it with a plumbing style propane torch (insufficient heat source) and yanked and kicked the thing but wasn’t able to move it more than 15-20 degrees from the “closed” position.  Since I couldn’t get it fully loosened up I figured it should at least be latched so that the weight of the tire would be carried across the bumper rather than at the hinge.  With a big hammer and some motivation I got it latched.

A couple weekends ago my folks came to town to visit so My Dad and I tackled the stuck tire carrier in earnest.  I had been spraying the pivot post with PB Blaster, periodically days before my folks arrived, in an effort to allow the oil to fully penetrate the joint.

Saturday morning I had a few tasks to finish on my Victory motorcycle so my Dad began working on the tire carrier by himself for a while.  Once I finished the tasks on the motorcycle I jumped in to help him with the tire carrier.  Even with the both of us yanking on the tire carrier we couldn’t get it to swing very far. We needed a big lever so I went and grabbed a 6’ long 2”x6” from the garage.  We wedged it between the bars of the carrier and leeeaaned into it.  Slowly and forcefully we were able to leverage it through its full travel.

My oldest son came out and jumped in on the project too.  We eventually figured out a system.  The two of them would use the 2“x6” and force the carrier through its range and I would tap the hinge with a hammer and spray the joint with PB Blaster.  After quite a few cycles of this the carrier became easier to swing; but still not easy like it should have been.  We modified the system to where I would use a crow bar to pry up on the carrier while they used the 2”x6” to rotate the carrier on the hinge.  Effectively it sort of became a process of screwing the carrier off the hinge post.  Eventually we were able to work it all the way up and off the hinge post.  Whew! Finally!

Post and Carrier Cleanup

For the next step we needed to clean up the post, which was affixed to the bumper, and the socket of the carrier, that was supposed to pivot on the post.  We picked up a 1.5” wire brush wheel that made short work of the carrier socket.  We used some XXX cloth on the post in order clean up the corrosion.  Since we had the whole tire carrier off of the back bumper and the spare tire removed I figure this was a good time to clean up the rust and corrosion on the tubing and repaint it all.  My son again jumped in and used a wire wheel on a drill to clean off the rust and strip the tubing down to clean metal.  Once complete, we sprayed the rusted tubing with Extend, a light rust converter made by Lock Tight.  We let the Extend cure and convert the rust overnight per the product use specifications. 

Come the next morning we began spraying the tire carrier with a fresh coat of black paint.  I had previously cleaned up the bumper itself a little bit, but with the whole tire carrier apart we redid the bumper and got all the nooks and crannies I’d skipped/missed before.  After numerous coats of paint the carrier and bumper were dramatically transformed.

We installed a clean new grease zerk onto the tire carrier where the original one had been rusted in place.  We spread some PTFE lube onto the post and hinge and slid it right into place.  Bolted it down, and it swung nice and easy.

A New Problem

With the nicely painted tire carrier all back together the tail light brush cages now looked like junk.  We quickly remedied that by sanding down the tubing, shooting it with some Extend and then spraying them black.  We spent much more time just trying to mask off the back of the Jeep around the tail lights then we did actually painting the tail light cages, but the final product was worth the work.

Throughout this vehicle project, I have found that each time I clean up something on the Jeep and dramatically improve the look that it also simultaneously brings to light the next worse issue. I think I’ve now reached the end of the little cosmetic projects worth doing on the Jeep and the remainder of the cosmetic issues are going to be up to the next owner to fix, or not.