TL;DR - I had to weld the CBI spare tire carrier back together again. It is clear to me that CBI did not design this carrier for prolonged real-world use.
This time, I caught the failure of the CBI tire carrier before it failed.
It was just dumb luck that I noticed the cracks in the 3/16" steel mounting plate as I installed it for our recent trip to the North Cascades. Knowing that we wouldn't be doing too much bumpy-road travel - the thing that'd ultimately caused it to fail the first time - I decided to just run it, and deal with it when we got home.
Today.
Since the entire carrier hadn't torn itself apart, the fix this time was significantly easier - strip off the paint, grind out the cracks a bit with my die grinder, weld up the plate, and then paint. Easy peasy.
Which brings me to the real problem here: the metal that CBI used for this tire carrier is not strong enough to support the weight of a wheel+tire over the long run. At least, not when the truck is used in off-road situations. Which is sort of their target user.
As much as I complain about the weight of my wheel+tire combo, the fact of the matter is that my 33" setup is light compared to folks running 35s or 37s.
CBI should have used 1/4" plate, so I didn't have to keep fixing their $3000 bumper.
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