Brophy Rigid Mount Spare Tire Carrier for 4" or 4-1/2" RV or Motorhome Bumpers

Video Transcript for Brophy Rigid Mount Spare Tire Carrier Review

Hey everybody, how's it going Today we're going to be going over and showing you how to install the Brophy Rigid Rear Spare Tire Carrier for 4" RV bumpers. So, this is what our spare tire carrier looks like installed. And of the whole kit, its composed of just a few components, so it's super easy to put together. We have our U-bolts down here, which is what attach the main tube to the actual RV bumper. Then we have the main tube, and then we have this little C-clamp here, which attaches the spare wheel and tire to the actual main tube. Now everything is going to be zinc-plated as far as the hardware goes.

Then all the actual metal brackets are powder-coated black; therefore, everything is going to do a great job of holding up to rust and corrosion over time, especially since it's on outside of our trailer here. So, if you're new to towing, unfortunately blow outs in regards to our trailers here, they're not as uncommon as we'd like. A lot of the factory trailers don't actually come with the rear spare tire; therefore it's really going to be a must when we're out on the highway to have an extra wheel and tire assembly we could slap on if anything we're to go wrong with the ones currently on our trailer. So, in regards to compatibility, most newer travel trailers and other trailers on the market today, they come with these standardized 4" x 4" steel bumpers, which is what we have here. And if this is what you have, the spare tire carrier is going to work great for you.

However, there's also some older styles that are a little bit larger. And if you have one of those 4 1/2" x 4 1/2 " RV bumpers, this is going to work for that as well. So pretty much, no matter what you have, you're going to be covered and this spare tire carrier is going to work great for you. So, we talked a little bit about compatibility with your trailer, now let's talk a little bit more about compatibility with the wheel and tire. Now fortunately, because of how this mounts, we're not really limited by the bolt pattern.

We are, however, limited by the size of the wheel. And for this particular carry, we're going to be able to accommodate any wheel and tire combination up to 17 1/2". So, most trailers on the market today aren't going to use anything that size, therefore, more than likely, you're going to be covered with this carrier here. So, just to give you guys a point of reference, we have a pretty standard size wheel and tire on here now. This particular one is a 175 80 13, with a five on 4 1/2" bolt pattern.

As you can see, there's no issues whatsoever. So, security is obviously a big thing nowadays. And with this spare tire carrier here, although it doesn't actually come with security, it does allow you to easily purchase a padlock, which we'll install on our lower carriage bolt here. And that'll stop any would-be thief from actually being able to remove the spare wheel and tire from the carrier. So, one other thing I will recommend to you guys when you're using the spare tire carrier, for pretty much any bumper spare tire carrier, you're going to want to invest in a tire cover. And the reason for this, UV rays are usually the #1 cause of trailer tires wearing down over time and eventually blowing out. So, what we need to do is simply measure the overall diameter of our tire, and then we can choose the correct tire cover. We have a great selection here at etrailer, that'll match up with pretty much anything you have. So, I'm sure you'll also be happy to know, our carrier here and all of its components, are made right here in the USA, so you know you're getting a quality product. So, the first step of our installation, we need to determine where we're going to be mounting the spare tire holder. So, there's really going to be one of two locations. We can either offset it to either side, or we can install it in the center of our bumper. So, if we foresee ourselves in the future possibly attaching a bumper mounted hitch so we can carry a bike rack, then I would recommend offsetting the spare tire. But if not, we can just attach in the center. For this one, I think we are going to set it offset over here to the right side a little bit. So, I'm going to take one of our U-bolts here, and I'm going to take the main body. So, the U-bolt is going to come around the backside of our bumper, just like so, and then we'll simply align it with the two holes here on our main body. Once we have our U-bolt and our main assembly in place, we're going to take a 3/8" flat washer, a 3/8" split lock washer, and then our 3/8th jam nut. We're going to go ahead and just loosely thread that on. And once I have two holding it in place, stopping it from coming out, we're going to go ahead and install our other U-bolt. So, once we have our hardware in place, I'm going to take a 13mm socket, I'm going to go ahead and snug up all of our nuts here. Keep in mind, for U-bolts, you want to alternate tightening. So, we'll tighten the bottom one a little bit, we'll come up here to the top, and then we'll repeat. Now that we have one side tight, we'll jump onto the other side and do the exact same thing. And now we'll come back with our torque wrench here and torque our fasteners to the specifications in our instructions. Now we're going to take our C-frame here. This is what it looks like. We're going to make sure that these two holes are going to be facing up, and the two holes on the back here are going to be lining up with the 1st and 3rd hole here on our main assembly. So once we line that up, we'll take one of our 1/2" x 1/2" carriage bolts, we'll insert it through that hole. And on the backside, we're going to be securing it with a 1/2" split lock washer and then one of our 1/2" nuts. So now, we'll just repeat that same process but for the bottom, we actually have a flat washer that goes in between our split lock washer and our nut. Now, we'll take a 19mm socket and we'll tighten and torque our hardware. Now finally, we should have two carriage bolts left. We have the slugger one here with a hole drilled through it, that's going to go in the bottom hole. The smaller one here is going to go in the top hole. So, we're going to push that through to the backside of it, line up the square, then we have our push nut and we'll push that all the way onto the bolt to hold it in place. So, the best way to get that push nut on, if you just take a deep well socket, we can just use that to push it through. So, now we can take our spare wheel and tire assembly, and go ahead and set it on our mount. So, the longer bolt there is actually going to line up with the pilot hole of the wheel. The smaller bolt will just line up with one of our lug nut holes. So, just like that. Then we're going to take one of our 1/2" nuts. The top one is just going to thread right on. And then for the bottom one we're going to need our little plate here. This is what it looks like. You want to make sure the flanges are facing us. Once we slide that on, thread on our nut here, then we'll just tighten it down. And now finally, we'll take our torque wrench here and we'll torque our nuts to spec. And that's going to do it today for our look and installation of the Brophy Rigid Rear Spare Tire Carrier for 4" RV mounted bumpers..