Between Stinky's legs, there's a...
 

...spare tire that's old, crusty, and doesn't match the size of my new tires. Yeah... I have a spare tire and old crusty parts that are mismatched, but this isn't about me.

So... I need a rim and a 33" tire that will be a full-sized spare, but it's not going to be in the rotation. I currently have a steel rim, but the crap they put on the roads puts me in a position to drop it and maintain it if I go steel again. Do they make powder coat or galv rims like they do for trailers? Should I go aluminum? What do you guys in the salt belt do? Do you recommend an inexpensive 33" tire that's good enough to get me to the tire store or home while towing?

Here's a good site to browse. There aren't too many 33" tall tires for 16" rims, so your stock spare wheel will most likely have to go. I've had steel spares under the beds on all my trucks, and they've all been badly rusted when I got them. Not sure I'd put aluminum under there though, as every aluminum wheel I ever had has gone flat just sitting unused in the garage. I don't rotate my spare, the best old tire becomes the spare when I get new tires. I've wire wheeled and primed and painted the steel, and put many coats on it before mounting the spare. The tire itself is cleaned with armor-all, and sprayed again before going under the truck. All that said, I hadn't used a spare in decades, until last month when the 17k mile Kuhmo tires on my car started slipping belts.

Rich, I just threw my best 265/75-16 on the OEM aluminum rim up there.

You can get it powder coated but having one wheel done won't be cheap. Not that getting 10 done would be cheap either but the cost per wheel...well you know how it goes.

Could you Plasti-Dip the steel enough to protect it from the elements?

I would spray it with bed liner before that. Hmmm... now that I'm typing that..... Nice trigger there.

You can easily fit a 285-75-16 but it will be really close to the exhaust, you could probably wrap the exhaust. As for the wheel sand blast it and repaint it, Harbor freight has a very compact sand blaster that works great.

I'm looking at a LT255/85R16

I have never once used a spare tire on any of my trucks, because I keep the tires in top condition. This spare is there for just in case... so the smaller and cheaper, the better. If my tires were 32", I found some that would fit a 16" rim for $100... but 33" tires double in price, even on the bigger rims.

I will review the steel rim, and see if I can prep it for bed liner. Then I think I'll go into the wayback machine and buy some balloon tires for the rim. This is not a firm decision - it is my initial thought after the bed liner trigger. Thanks ZachinCO.

Didn't even dawn on me to go the bed liner route!

I try to match the tire and wheel size (don't care about wheel style just size). I bought 5 new tires at my last purchase, and plan to replace with the same, and maybe even put the spare into the rotation and remount a new one in it's place. I run KO2s which wear out fast, however. It's not like the spare will be under the truck for 10 years or even 5. More like 1-2.

Check used vehicle lots that specialize in trucks. The ones where every truck has a 6" lift, 37" tires, and is in dire need of an alignment. They should have stackes of OEM wheels/tires in the back that they might be happy to sell you one for a small fee.


I bought my truck from a truck and SUV "superstore" in my area (no dealership was going to put a 4 year old truck on their lot with 146K miles on the odometer). When checking out the truck I kicked the bald spare tire and there was a dull thud...it was flat. One of the contingency items for the purchase was a name-brand spare with at least 1/2 tread on it. Since it was a "superstore" they installed a lot of lifts in-house to pull the kids in off the street and overcharge them for all the goodies (the one I bought hadn't been done yet and was bone stock...one of the reasons I was interested). To keep things easy for them they took one of the Lariat wheels they already had sitting in the back (with a tire on it) and gave it to me as my spare.

I tried that with my last two sets of tires. Both ended poorly for me (both were tread separations...only one of them was caught before the tire came apart). Whether it was me rotating all 5 tires or not I will never know but it is a strange coincidence that the only two times I've had this problem is the only two times I've ever done this. Personally, I will never do it again. I have a brand new tire under my truck's butt only to be used when needed...then it goes back. Every time I buy new tires I will buy a 5th for the spare if the spare is over 6 years old.

Just my .02

I know this is wrong, but I'm of the opinion that rotating tires cross axle - and thus changing the direction of rotation - can't be good for the tire. The first generation of radial construction tires did have this problem. I think modern tire construction is so much better than all the stuff I ran on many cars back in the 80's. I drove old boats designed for bias ply tires, lots of mid 60's American tanks, and I always had trouble keeping radials together. I don't rotate the tires on the truck, and they seem to wear pretty evenly. The '05 FWD suv I have is another story, with the fronts doing all the work; accelerating, braking, steering; the fronts wear twice as fast as the back tires. When I did rotate them front to back this past summer, the previously rear tires didn't last two months up front before I started having belt problems, both tires went badly out of round within a few hundred miles.

For piece of mind for family safety and if I were planning on lots of long trips with a trailer or such, I might consider getting a new spare tire as you guys mention. But that's expensive, and since I've never had to use a truck spare, I'm happy putting the best looking "old" tire there when getting new tires. I'm "out east" and never farther than 50 miles from someplace where getting a flat fixed or replaced, or just driving it home wouldn't bother me at all.

Did Ford ever put 18" steel spares under the leaf sprung Lariats / Excursions that came with 18" aluminum wheels? If you had such a wheel you could rotate in your old tires as time went by. Even if you went new, not sure that replacing every 6 years is needed as they would never see sunlight (UV) and if you took them out every now and then and cleaned them with a good tire preservative they shouldn't rot. If you're so worried about wheel rust / tire rot; then you should be pulling the spare out from under the truck once a year anyway - probably in spring - and repairing any rust and inspecting the rubber, and just making sure the spare hanger mechanism is working. The only problem with "smaller and cheaper" is that should you need it with a heavy load it could be greatly overloaded, or if it's a different wheel diameter, it might behave differently at higher speeds and greatly affect your travel time back to home or repair.