resharp001

Y, around town or even a close wheelin' trip...I go spareless; however, if I'm going further away or on a longer trip, I'll throw my spare in the back. Wheelin' trip that is 2-3+ hours away, or a longer overland type trip is usually my tolerance threshold of lugging the spare along. I'd never suggest not having a spare, but as long as you have something available at home, there's no reason you have to carry it full time around town. For that matter, it doesn't need to be a brand new tire on a matching fancy wheel either. Just my 2c.

Spank

The stock carrier isn't quite as weak as you think. It's the combination of the carrier and the flimsy metal of the gate itself. Most aftermarket wheels won't touch the factory bumpstops and the wheel shaking around causing the carrier to work the gate is what starts wearing things out. Slap on the Daystar bumpstops that you can cut down to fit nice and snug against your tire, don't "land" the Jeep when you're going wheeling, and you'll be okay for a while.

I've got the Teraflex hinged carrier on my gate, but I'm still using the factory carrier with 35s attached to it and I've wheeled like crazy without any issues.

chiggerdude

My wife's 2010 Jk tailgate started making popping and "loose sounding" noises a few months ago. I checked the strike plate and everything looks fine. She runs a 35" spare and it seems to be the issue. I just ordered a Rock Crawler full width bumper, hitch and spare carrier all in one. I'll post back with the results next week.

karls10jk

While I don't know what size tires were on these, I've seen the same failure on a brand new Rubicon with stock tires. Broken jk tire carrier pulls up interesting results on Google.

Arson

I'm all for the tramp stamp. The spare tire hanging off the back just gets in the way blocking visibility and causing clearance issues. I have my spare in the rear storage area tied down with some ratchet straps.

Smudgeontheglass

The stock carrier was good for about 75 lbs as they matched well with a bike carrier. The spot welds on the top of the door are the weakest point. They'll pop out and make lots of lovely noises. The aftermarket replaces the relatively weak hinges and reinforces up to the tire carrier to remove the weight from the door and place it on the hinges (other than the frame/bumper mounted options).

I can agree with leaving the spare off for around town work, but of the 4 case I've had to help change a tire off-road, only one of them was repairable. 2 torn sidewalls, one cracked wheel (mine), then one torn valve stem. The valve stem still sucked to change in the tight bush and a spare could have got us back to camp faster.

karls10jk

So Colby Valves could get you fixed up in this situation in no time flat. I had a stem issue on a friend's tire and we dropped the Colby valve in and we were back to driving in 3 minutes. No jack needed, just air.

Colby Valves on Amazon

resharp001

Those are really interesting....hadn't run across em before. When you guys dealt with the torn valve stem......sounds like you were just able to yank that out easily....then colby goes in, tighten, back on your way.

karls10jk

The brass sleeve was separating from the rubber lining so my guess is that the stem was old. But yes, we pulled out what we could, popped it in, tightened, and we were off. Once we got back to a tire machine then we pulled the remainder of the old stem out but we got home without a significant delay in the trip.

I keep a couple in the jeep even though I do routine inspections of the valve stems. It's cheap enough to justify the time saved when you're trying to get back on the road.

Smudgeontheglass

The biggest problem with that valve stem repair was that it was a stock wheel with the TPMS sensor on the other side of the valve stem. That sensor ended up trapped in the tire once the rest of the stem was off. The only replacements we had were the classic rubber pull through ones that cost at most a dollar or two each. The ones you linked are very neat and would be handy to add to a trail kit, but over 25 canadian pesos each makes that a bit steep for the part (though easily made up in trail time).

I'm going to link that on my local forum too to see what they think.