spare tire position .

I have a  rear tank , so where did ford originally put the spare ? just on the deck ? Cheers Vaughn.

Spare tire carriers are shown here: Documentation/Exterior/Spare Tire Carriers.  And there you'll find part numbers and illustrations, including the one below.

But, there were three carriers:

1. Under-bed swing out

2. Under-bed slide out

3. In-bed

I was trying to find some good pictures of mine, I have the aft axle tank and a V5 receiver hitch and deep step bumper. It is also compounded by being a DRW truck which means a deep dish to the rim. Wheel and tire sit dish down on the support and the retainer I bought from Ford is a big plastic cone with the base of the cone having a short section that fits into the large center hole on the rim. The apex of the cone has a hex nut probably the 1 1/16" as the lugs are, turning it upside down it has stepped sections for the F150 and larger non-DRW rims.

I have added two short bolts that match the bolt circle as guide pins to hold the spare in place on the support bar (1443) as juggling a dually rim and 215/85R-16 tire onto the carrier is a royal PITA in the shop and even worse on the road due to the bumper/V5 receiver hitch. Fortunately I have only had to do it once back in Dec 2014 when the left outer dual self destructed at 70 mph on US13 bypass around Salisbury/Fruitland MD.

I can see how the bolts would help get the tire positioned properly.  But w/o a jack I don't think I could get Big Blue's tire up there.

I know I've told the story, but when my brother and I were loading Big Blue on the trailer in FL he came rolling the spare out.  I reached down to pick it up and put it on the trailer and he said "No way."  Now, he is my "little" brother as he is 3 years younger.  So I have a tendency to try to prove him wrong if I can.  In this case I might have been able to but it wasn't worth it so he and I put it on.

So I'm happy having the spare in the bed or, hopefully, on a rear bumper/carrier.

My '85 F-250, '95 F-150 and '97 F-250 all had/have dual tanks and the spare mounted under the aft tank.  The tank is entirely abpove the bottom of the frame, the tire entirely below.  So there's no interference (although you can add a 33 gal rear tank that will get in the way).

As Bill and Gary note, putting a tire into that carrier is a pain.  In fact, even getting it out is a pain.  I use the jack I carry in the truck to lift the end so I can loosen the bolt.  After I get the head of the bolt into the larger hole I lower the jack and as the carrier drops it invariably tips and the carrier falls of the jack and the tire falls off the carrier (I don't use the retainer, I find it offers too little value for how hard it is to use).

In 380K miles between those three trucks I think I've only had to change a tire on the road twice.  Both times I put the flat loose in the bed and didn't put the tire back in the carrier until it was repaired and I was putting the spare away until the next time it was needed (no sense fighting with that carrier any more often than necessary!).

To put the tire in (in the driveway, not on the road) I lay the back end of the carrier on the floor jack and wrestle the tire up onto it.  That ends up being an iterative process as getting the tire on the carrier knocks the carrier off the jack, and getting the carrier on the jack makes the tire fall off the carrier.  Since I don't use the retainer I don't have any bolts sticking up on the carrier (I find the bolts marginally helpful in locating the tire, but a major hindrance in getting the tire on and off the carrier, and on balance, not worth it).  Once the tire is on the carrier and the carrier on the jack I jack it up and tighten the bolt.

Oh, and this is another place where anti-seize is your friend!  Use it liberally on the carrier bolts, and on the interface between the aluminum rims and steel brake drum / rotor!

At one point I was toying with installing one of the winch-style carriers on Dad's truck, until I wrote this here:

Well, I may have been a bit premature with planning to use a winch-style spare tire carrier. After a bit of research I've found that those things are frequently more trouble than they are worth. For example, my brother had a flat in his fairly late model Nissan Titan and the winch was jammed. He was working on it on the side of the road when a patrolman pulled up to help. And he said that almost everyone he finds by the side of the road with a flat tire has a jammed winch. But, those with old-style carriers don't seem to have any problems. So, I think I'll stay old-style.

But if a winch-style carrier would work it would solve the problem of the heavy spare.  My intent was to use a fold-down license tag holder like the one Chris/ctubutis sent me, below, to cover a hole in the bumper to access the winch's drive mechanism.

I cleaned, lubed and operated the one I had in the 4Runner once a year for that reason. Got lucky, was able to get it to work when I first tried it. It was stiff.

I have thought about the system Chrysler used on their minivans, a winch system that pulls the tire up against the frame in the back, some later pickups use a similar system.

As far as getting the tire off and on the carrier, that is what the two bolts help with. When I am travelling I usually throw a Chinese (Harbor Freight) copy of a Nascar jack in. It says "3 tons" but it will not lift Darth's front end other than a wheel. It is great for screwing with the spare carrier along with the proper incantations (not suitable for this forum) to get the spare off. I also just threw the blown tire in the bed as it wasn't worth putting it on the carrier.

I was lucky that day, as it was the outside dual and my remodeled D Zee running board rear mount saved the dually fender. No loss of control as I still had a good inside dual.

Thanks for all that , i will have to go down to the bullnose wreckers ! .