My son and I installed a
Roadmaster Spare Tire Carrier on our GTS this morning.
I went with this modification as I've never thought much of where, and how, FR mounts the spare tire. Removing the spare from its factory installed position was not fun, even in a nice controlled environment at the storage yard. I don't even want to imaging trying to get the spare out on a dark, wet, muddy, roadside from underneath the GTS.
If you don't know
how your spare is secured I suggest you take a look...and carry the necessary tools to remove it.
The Roadmaster unit is a very well built unit that moves the spare tire to a much more accessible position on the rear hitch. The units workmanship is very high quality and it was fairly easy to assemble. Everything works like shown in the videos on their website at the page I linked above. I'm very happy with the unit...
There are some concerns with the unit. The first thing that comes to mind is it is
very heavy, the shipping weight was 75 pounds! You have two heavy pieces of iron you'll need to bolt together. That is definitely a three handed job at some points. And if you're loading to near CCC capacity this iron beast won't help your rigs weight a bit...
The second issue is per Roadmaster you must reduce your hitch capacity by 1/3. Since the GTS hitch is rated at 7,500 pounds that isn't a problem for me. The recommended reduced hitch rating of 5,000 pounds is still well over the weight of our TOAD.
The third issue is the units cost. At around $600 these are not inexpensive...
Mine was a present from the DW
so I'm not going to complain.
The last issue is GTS specific. With the hitch / carrier installed you
cannot extend the rear slide without moving the carrier to the down position. It will not clear the spare tire mounted on the carrier. I
may be able to resolve this by rethinking how I mounted the spare tire on the carrier. I followed the instructions and used one of the mounting holes and one slit. If I were to use both slits, instead of just one, that may drop the tire down a few inches and allow the slide out to clear it. I'll follow up on that here after I've had a chance to play with it some more. The weather, as in +90˚F heat and high humidity, wasn't cooperating very well today...
Overall I'm happy with the unit. Even if I need to continue to "drop" it to extend the rear slide out. I now know that if
I needed to change a tire I'd be able to do so without a lot of drama. And it give me a nice rear bumper protector....