[Pahaska]

One of the trailers in our unit had the welds on the spare tire carrier fail. The tire dropped out and the trailer duals ran over it. Apparently, it was pretty traumatic!

Looking at my spare, I found about 1 1/2" of space above the tire, allowing it to bounce around in the carrier. This would certainly cause a lot of impact stress on the carrier and might ultimately cause a weld failure.

I happened to have a nice piece of packing foam in the shop. It was the perfect size to wedge between the rim and the trailer floor. It is tight and I had to grunt a bit to get the carrier relatched. The tire is now very well restrained from bouncing around in the carrier.

You can see the corner of the foam above the tire in the photo.