Topic

In the never ending search for squeaks, rattles etc. I decided that it would be a good idea to have the spare wheel fixed down rather than flopping about in the front wheel well.

Why is it Floppy, you may ask?

Well, the problem is that my car came with a space-saver spare wheel and if you swap to a full size spare wheel, the retaining bolt is about 10mm too short to engage.



Now the obvious answer is to buy retaining bolt for a Trophy spare wheel. Until you realise they are no longer available and people on ebay want silly money for one. The cheapest is a tenner, but you have no way of knowing if the one you buy will be the right one. The shorter one has a total 95mm long thread that protrudes past the plastic by 85mm. You need 105mm thread that protrudes 95mm past the plastic.

So with the aid of an M8 stud connector (about 60p from Wickes.) I set about gaining the extra 10mm required. Ooh err!



Using my trusty angle grinder I cut the threaded bolt into two.



Now I trialled the engineering bodge brilliance by screwing the two parts into opposite ends of the stud connector and trying the complete article in situ. WORKED!

Now obviously, this lash up solution is likely to come unscrewed unless both parts of the bolt are somehow fixed into the connector. I considered epoxy but seeing as I didn't have any I decided to drill and tap the connector at each end. Also Drilling partly into the threaded bolt inside.
I tapped an m4 thread and using m4 bolts, I secured the connector to the threaded M8 bolt.



Once I had the M4 bolts tight as f... could be, I ground the protruding heads off.
Voila!



And it works! I no longer have that particular awful rubber squeaking as the spare tyre moved about in the well!

Oh, very important! DON'T FORGET to grease the thread of the retaining bolt before you put it back!

We know somebody who got a flat tyre in Scotland and when he came to get the spare wheel out, the retaining bolt appeared to be welded into the wheel well!. In the end he had to use someone else's spare wheel and then spend several happy hours in Aviemore trying to get the bolt out. Oh the joy and the swearing. Eh, Philip?.

It's this kind of engineering brilliance that makes me proud to be british.

I am sure that the bolt on my 1996 F is much longer than that, it has an orange head too, i will take it out tomorrow and measure.

Strange that yours is short, not heard of this problem before and loads of people have substituted their steel spare for a normal wheel.

Are you trying to tell me mine is smaller than everybody else's?



There are definitely two different length bolts.
The standard is KTC10006.
The longer one is KTC000040

And if you change to a big brake kit you MUST change to an alloy wheel as the bloody spacesaver will not fit. With a big brake fit all round I have been tempting fate for a few years and only found out about the problem when Andrew fell off the hill climb track in his MGF with big brakes and collected a lot of grass in the tyre bead and then could not get the space saver on to take the grass infected wheel to get it cleaned.

An alternative to fitting screws in the stud connector you could get a couple of smaller M8 bolts and lock them against each end of the stud connector.