Spare to the Front!

While many people identify the VW bus with the spare tire on the front, I'm not convinced this was stock VW engineering, because for the transporter model (van only) the spare went behind or near the last row of seats and you can see the wheel well on any T2 there.  For the Westfalia (CampMobile) edition, they didn't get too creative, only turning that tire area into a closet to hang clothes with a mirror and put the spare, get this, up front essentially behind the driver seat in the cooking stove cabinet.  I don't know about you, but I don't like to have my food and spare tire hanging out together.

So we always knew that putting the tire on the front would be the only option to reclaiming some of our food storage space (we now use it for all canned goods), and of course attempting to show off the classic look that many expect from the VW bus (even if VW never intended the tire to be on the front).

How we did it:  Yeah it's crude, but we did it from 4-6PM on a Sunday - who's got time to do it any other way?

So Joe and I discussed that the best way to make a mounting point would be to get some thick plywood.  Trick would be to get three mounting bolts in the right orientation for the tire lug nut holes, but then mount that to the body.  If I were to do this part over again, I would have put washers behind the heads of the carriage bolts shown here, I think they are pulling through the wood after some removal and mounting of the spare, but they do prove not to spin because of the square portion under the head which grips into the wood nicely.  If we were better craftsmen we might have used a compass to cut the wood in a perfect circle with a jigsaw instead of eyeballing it with a skill saw.

Tire and mounting board ready to find a spot on the front body...

OK so here we drilled some holes through the wood and into the front body and put the toggle bolts in there to maintain the position as we drilled more holes.  We had the tire mounted to the board temporarily when we did this so that we could position the mount so that the tire would rest primarily on the front bumper.  See the last pic in this series to see how the tire rests...

Three bolts in the center and one at each corner.  The toggle bolts are just in temporarily to keep the position while drilling the other holes.

Here's the crude but had-to-be-done part (I).  We removed the wood to see the holes drilled, and then made them much bigger with bigger drill bits so that the anchors could fit through.  Many of the holes went into the vents, and into the cabin, but we wanted a strong anchor over aesthetics at this point.  Notice also the wood shims to compensate for the curved front body.

Before tightening the mounting board down, I sprayed some expanding foam in and around all the anchor holes in an effort to seal any wind that would enter through the vent or cabin holes.  Crude yes, but some peace of mind.

Mounting board fulling pulled in and rock solid.

Spare now securely mounted to the front.  Much of the weigh rests on the front bumper.  Notice how the first three aligning holes match the available space on the tire (to find proper position for mounting board).

Check the awesome VW tire cover Ariana made by cutting vinyl to make the VW symbol in later posts!