It didn’t take long to start leaving my spare on the trail as I came down on it pretty hard a few times. After trying unsuccessfully to trade/seek out interest for someone to trade their non-jerry can Or-Fab carrier for my jerry can version, I decided to remove it all together.
I have a patch kit and an air compressor on board, as well as a full set of tools I keep in the rear cubby. On long trips, I started placing the spare in the rear. I no longer run it around town. I have about 50,000 on the Toyos and have never had an issue with punctures.
I loved the simple look, but I didn’t like how much the bumper stood out. After selling the tire carrier, I parted with the Evo fascia plate as well.
I was looking hard at the Poison Spyder BFH rear bumper, but ended up going with a Crawler Conceptz skinny rear. They have an integrated hitch receiver built in which is perfect for me to use my bike carrier. This required me to do more cutting (remove the rear frame rail connection) and also weld some bolts to my Or-Fab plate to secure my license plate. I retained and rewired the Liteplate LED license plate light that I was using with the tire carrier.