Spare tire for a Fiberfab II TDR

[HappyJack]

Good morning all — Gee, once I found out how to post pictures I guess I got a little carried away…but since I’m on a roll, here’s how I solved my spare tire issue on Abby:

I did not want to swap out the “fake” spare tire cover for a real spare, since I’d either have to come up with a novel way of mounting the rear hatch (swing down instead of up or sideways) or live with the extra weight of the spare every time I went to open the engine cover.  

So, instead, I found a tire that would fit under the hood and still allow the hood to close.  I found a 165/45 R15 tire (FED 165/45-15 FORMOZA FD1 68V) from online tire.com.  Got the tire and found that it was too wide to fit on the stock VW wheel.  Undaunted by this unexpected “surprise”, I ordered a wheel  from CIP1 on sale :  VWC-135-601-025-P – STOCK STEEL WHEEL 15 X 5-1/2 4-BOLT (4-5/16 INCH BACK SPACING / +25 ET).  

I got the tire mounted and finally got around to getting it under the hood when I finished up with the disk brake conversion.  I used some bungee cords on some standard screw eyes to hold the tire, scissors jack and jack handle in place.

It’s supposed to be nice here this weekend (high 60’s and sun I hope) so I’ll go out and see how the additional weight of the spare tire, jack and tool pouch will affect the car’s handling.

Now I just need to get the broken “hold the hood open” strap replaced and get the hood back on the car.  Then I noticed that the inner tie rods have some play in them…I guess I’ll never be quite done with finding things to fix on Abby.  Jack

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