Refurb spare wheel

[Chunk11]

Right guys just had a little thought. Owned the car almost 4 years and luckily not had to use the spare wheel yet! It is looking quite rusty so I was thinking a bit of a wire brushing followed by some black hammerite can’t do any harm.
Also it means I can check the winch to make sure it works and in turn lubricate it for the future.

I am a little bit worried as a quick search reveals that others have had issues with the winch getting jammed so any tips or advice is appreciated.

Thanks,

Chunk

[Chunk11]

Would you use copper grease or some wd40 to lubricate the winch? Or something else?
Any tips to make sure the winch doesn’t jam?

The other reason I wanted to do this was to make sure it works as if it doesn’t or there is an issue I would rather find out now so I can sort it rather than at the roadside when I have a puncture.

[john langrick]

Hi, mine is a tad older my03, but I was pleasantly surprised when I had to use it earlier this year on mine.

My tyre was flat in the drive due to a hunk of flint that had ruptured it. I dropped the wheel with the flimsy brace attachment that I am sue had never been used.i also had the plastic bag to put the wheel in to keep road dust from the trunk

Tha cable looks in good condition and am sure the space saver had never been used it was a bit grubby but the tyre was inflated to about 30psi. I got the tyre place to check again after the old road wheel was sorted.

I was pleasantly surprised ho good condition it was and how the mechanism works fine.

Hopefully yours will be the same but if so, I would refrain from adding grease as it will certainly attract grit. It will have lasted so far without it.

Just my experience and view and hope it helps

John l

[S60D5-185]

I've just done this on my XC90.

I dropped the spare wheel, and removed any rust with a wire brush on a drill and a powerfile ( brilliant tool ).

Once done, I treated it with Kurust and then used Black Hammerite.

It also gives you an opportunity to do any suspect areas on the boot floor/subframe whilst the wheel is out of the way.

As for the winch, I'm convinced that any jamming issues have probably been caused by retracting the cable with nothing attached to it so as to keep it under tension. I have not added any grease to mine for the same reasons as John.

[Chunk11]

Thanks for the advice both of you I’ll let you know how I get on in the next few days :-)

[4x4]

Refurbished my wheel which was an utter mess
Wire brushed, Kurust, primer and top coat then covered it in Waxoyl

To prevent the cable snarling up you need to ensure it is kept taught and under tension when the wheel is lowered

[Chunk11]

4x4 great effort! I should really remove the tyre aswell but don’t have the tools to do it myself.
I got the spare off the car today to start the refurb. The wire looks brand new but this is probably because it looks like it’s stored out of the elements underneath the car. The plate at the end was very rusty as was the wheel much worse than yours 4x4 (I will try and upload a photo) to the point whereby I thought for a minute I might have to scrap it as it looked that bad!
Either way I have persevered and had a good go with wire brush drill bits and it’s going to take a good couple of hours to get it to a point where I am happy to use the kurust on it.

If mine looks half as good as yours 4x4 I will be happy :-)

[Chunk11]

5FDEB1F4-15FA-48B2-A1AE-03DF77FF100D.jpg

DC805A4A-E37E-48A5-A02D-CD178C22B60F.jpg

[Chunk11]

This is what it looks like after an hour of wire brushing/wire brush drill bits! Long way to go including the other side yet...

072BB84F-1178-4447-A724-0624B372A88F.jpg

[Chunk11]

Not sure why the spare wheel is so badly corroded as the rest of the car is nowhere near that bad with only very light surface rust. Behind where the spare wheel sits it looks like brand new.