How to Choose a Spare Tire Rack for a Jeep Wrangler

Hi everyone, I’m Andy Shane, today we’re going to talk about the different types of Spare Tire Racks out there, no matter how you’ve set up your specific Jeep. We’re also going to talk about some of the things that another bike carrier can improve your lifestyle and how often you might want to take your bike on your Jeep.

You’re someone who likes to take their bike with you, maybe a day in, day out, or several times a week, but you don’t want the barriers of adding extra steps to gain access to the cargo hold. Well, that brings us to our third and final category of bike racks, and that uses a spare wheel-mounted bike rack as you can see. There are many similarities to a bike rack with spare tires.

As we have seen with a hitch-mounted bike rack, it brings the bike support arms to a very comfortable height so that you can easily load and unload your bike. One of the things to keep in mind when using a fitted spare tire versus a tow bar fitted is that there are some restrictions on carrying spare wheels, so most spare wheel carriers are limited to carrying two bikes as compared to a tow bar carrier. You can carry it on four bikes.

Pros and cons

We have great folding arms, this is the Yakima replacement bike rack. And one of the things to do with this style rack. It is actually mounted through the center of our spare tire. If you have a Jeep Wrangler JK or a TJ, that’s not a problem. If you have a 2010 or newer Jeep Wrangler Jl with this center-mounted rearview camera, that’s going to be an issue. But that’s fine, there are solutions on the market.

Switching from our hitch rack to our bike rack with a spare wheel rack is pretty easy and this spare wheel rack was specially designed for the Jeep Wrangler Jl developed in 2018 or newer. With the reversing cameras mounted on the spare wheel, you can see that the camera is not affected in any way here. You will get a clear view from this camera when you are backing up.

Now one of the other nice things about using a bike rack with spare tires versus a bike rack with a trailer hitch. If you have a newer Wrangler with these backup sensors, of course, after you get those straps out of the way, nothing down here will get in the way of triggering your backup sensors on an object in its path. That is of course if your bike rack is unloaded once you have your bikes here, if the bikes are hanging down they can still trigger that reversing sensor, just what you need to be aware of.

Comparison of two options

So we have two different spare wheel holders, one of them is an over-the-tire style spare wheel holder, the other from Yakima is a tire-mounted spare wheel holder. There are some differences between them.

With the Yakima, you get a very finished, almost permanent-looking accessory for your Wrangler. With the Allen, you get something that looks like it’s a bit more of temporary use.

Of course, you can leave this installed on your Wrangler, it will stick out of the Jeep. There is no folding feature built-in like the Yakima, so the Allen uses nylon webbing to hold your bike in the cradle. Yakima uses a slightly different solution here. They actually give you these little plastic barriers. Just snap it in there to keep your buddy secure.

One of the other nice features in the Yakima not only do we have two brackets on top, but we also have a third one that is supposed to lock your bike in here, and once you have that installed it will stop the bike from having it too much rocking motion when walking down the street. Of course, you can get these nice and cozy and really tighten that up.

And one of the biggest advantages of using a spare tire-mounted bike carrier, whether over the tire or through the tire carrier, is that we are not limited to our charging access when using a spare tire-mounted carrier with or without a bike on this carrier is installed.

We have easy and quick access to the rear of our Wrangler without having to take the bike off, without having to go through a folding process, and I think that is a great advantage. If you’re someone looking to install the bike rack on your Jeep, leave it installed so it’s there and ready whenever you want to take your bike with you on your next adventure.

I think that now covers all three main categories of bikes from the luggage rack for every Wrangler available in the market, from roof mount to trailer hitch to our final category, bike racks with spare tires. As you can see, there is sure to be a bike carry solution that will fit your Wrangler perfectly.