BroncoII4x4.com

ok well I have a stupid question :) as far as I know there are two different rear tire carriers for the BII

Wich One Is Better? The One with the Cnter Mount and Lock? or the one with the Lug Nuts?

By better I mean stronger etc. not security wise the reason i ask is im about to sell a tire carrier just dont know wich one to sell :)

care to post pics of what you have I thought there was only one style?

unfortunatly no camera :(

I didn't know there were diferant one either. Mine has a "J" bolt that just runs through one of the lug holes in the rim. It holds a 33" tire on a 15x8 rim with no problems.

yea my '86 has the J-Bolt stlye and my '90 has 3 lugs bolts.

I would keep the 3 lug bolts, I have seen it and it looks stronger, and like a better way to mount the rim rather than have the center hole of the rim resting on something (mostly for aluminum full size spares). On my spare it had a J bolt, but the part the rim sits on didn't even reach my rim, so I made a new mounting surface and bracket to support the 39.5x15, and it mounts using a set of 4 locking lug nuts (they are 8 lug rims).
Before someone tries to give me advice about the hatch or body not supporting it, I already reinforced both and am no longer worried about it as I can jump on the tire while it's mounted with no problems, and during any really hard wheeling I will probably put the tire in the rear of the truck.

I have both styles. I think the kind with the studs probably has less rattles, but you are limited to one bolt pattern. Nice to have a few spare lug nuts available too.

How many bolt patterns do you have on your truck, on mine my rims and axles limit my bolt pattern to 8 x 6.5. Sorry I'm a smart ass much of the time, but since you are probably talking about axles swaps - a 1/2" drill bit and a couple of 1/2" fine thread bolts will change the bolt pattern for you. Just cut 2 of the old bolts off and drill for 2 more , put the bolts through and tack weld them on the back where you need them for the new bolt pattern. The thing I don't like about either one is that you are limited on the width and offsets, cause they didn't reach the mounting surface of my rim, but I fixed that too.

I actually ran with 2 different bolt patterns for awhile, not that I recommend it or anything though.

Here's a pic of the 2 different styles. The tan one is from a full size bronco though. My original Bronco II carrier was that style though.

The one I built uses a plate that drilled for all the popular patterns.