Transit campervan conversion - Spare wheel carrier

Ford Transit Mk7 Spare Wheel Carrier

One aspect of the campervan build that confused me was finding and installing a spare wheel carrier. I couldn’t afford to lose the space in the ‘boot’ to the wheel, and Ford were asking for £200+, so I got to googling for some answers.

I bought the spare wheel carrier off ebay for £68.95, from Transit Parts UK. The listing has the title “FORD TRANSIT 2.0 2.2 FWD SPARE WHEEL CARRIER 2000 ON MK6 & MK7”

Be careful because the carrier is different between front and rear wheel drive models. Mine is the FWD version.

It came in good time, and I then started figuring out how to install it. Half of it was common sense, simply bolt the main winch section into the three holes in the chassis. It was the cable attached to the wheel mount that confused me. There was no explanation of what it was, or how it attached to anything.

After much googling and searching the forums, I couldn’t find anything solid, but there were a few clues which led me to believe its just a cable to secure the tyre if the winch mechanism were to fail, or you don’t wind it up enough. I think it is attached using the right hand bolt as seen in the picture below.

The other end of the spare wheel carrier simply slots into a metal bracket on th chassis.

The next confusing bit was figuring out how the wheel attaches to the carrier. I had to buy a large bolt (couldn’t find any wingnuts) because the carrier didn’t come with one. Basically, with the wheel facing down, slot the carrier into the centre hole and jiggle it about a bit until the bolt comes through one of the wheel bolt holes.

I also had to buy what is basically a big flat screwdriver. However when it came, it was too wide and i had to file down the edges to the blade fit into the slot.