Under Cover.

Back when I upgraded my wheels and tires, I noticed my OEM spare tire had weird indents/gouges on the tire sidewalls that were caused by being pressed up under two frame cross member bars under the truck bed. I didn’t want the same thing to happen to a brand new spare KO2, so I started window shopping for some sort of hard shell tire cover (a soft cover wouldn’t help at all). Then I realized that my cousin wasn’t using the OEM spare tire cover from his Toyota FJ Cruiser. I asked him what the OEM tire size was, and for his FJ it was 265/70-17… which coincidentally has the same dimensions as my 265/75-16 KO2s. Since he had no use for the cover anymore (he went up in tire size also) he gave me the cover.

Fitting it was relatively easy, the diameter was spot on. However, I had two small issues to deal with. First, the bottom half of the cover was some sort of vinyl with an elastic edge, and it wouldn’t fit completely onto the KO2 tire. Since I only needed the hard top for protection, I trimmed the vinyl lower half off. Second – the cover had no opening in the center; I needed an opening for the chain to go through, so I brought out my trusty Dremel tool and used some existing lines in the cover to cut out a large window out of the center.

If you look at the photo below you can see where the cross member bars are hitting the cover (but not the actual tire sidewall):

The air pressure was a few psi below, so I aired it up and put the cover back on:

The following photo is with the spare tire back up in stored position. I couldn’t get a better photo because it was a rainy afternoon and I wasn’t working with much light, but you can see both cross member bars in the photo and how the cover protects my spare tire from contact: