That's not right. And it's also not good!
TL;DR - The welds on the CBI tire carrier failed on the trail. Once I realized that my welds on it hadn't failed, but those from CBI had, I laughed at the entire situation.
I was driving along the bumpy roads of the Whipple Mountains when I noticed that the Trasharoo was hanging at an odd angle off of my spare tire. This isn't unusual - all the jostling tends to move it around a bit - so after snapping a quick photo of some fantastic landscape, I set the camera down to adjust it.
The entire tire moved with the Trasharoo.
Assuming it was that the lug nuts holding the tire to the tire carrier had come loose, I removed the Trasharoo and discovered that the lug nuts were tight, but that the welds on the tire carrier itself had sheared.
I'd done some welding on the tire carrier when I shed weight from the Tacoma, so initially I figured that it was my crappy welding that'd failed. After a bit more inspection however, I realized that it was CBI's welds that had failed. In fact, it seemed to me - a completely uneducated welder - like they'd probably gotten the whole thing too hot, as the sheering - along more than 15 inches of weld - followed a scalloped pattern, right along the edge of the weld itself.
With no way to permanently fix the issue on the trail, I considered my options:
- Stand the tire up along in the back of the bed - I didn't like this option because it would roll back and forth - smashing into the bed sides - as I turned left and right.
- Rearrange all my boxes in the bed in order to lay the tire down - this just seemed like a lot of work.
- Whip out the ratchet straps, which seem to be able to fix just about anything.
Ratchet straps for the win!
Looks like there's some welding in my future!
Update: A few days later in January 2024
After ferrying the tire carrier home in my backpack via airplane, I was able to get it cut apart, cleaned up, and re-welded back together. It's been in service since and is doing great for the time being.
In this Series
