Rear Licence Plate mod

[Fishframe]

I’ve always hated the spare wheel on my tailgate and contemplated HD hinges, swing away bumpers or deleting the spare altogether.

Recently I purchased a Mirek fold down hitch/mount spare tyre carrier. I love it.

I needed to move my number plate because it will now be obscured. I didn’t like the ideas of the small accessory plates, I have one, because of limited mounting options and to keep it properly legal fitting number plate lights ect...

Looking at the OEM licence plate holder it is a ‘monster’ but solidly built.

I got the idea of doing a ‘cut and shut’ and moving to one side of the bumper. I took 200mm out of the middle - drew a line down the middle and marked off two more either side at 100mm each. At this size it will still fit standard full sized number plates.

Getting the old one off was a typical Jeep PITA - you need little hands to get back behind the bumper and put a 10mm socket on the nuts behind the four bolts on the front. They will be on solid from dirt, debris rust ect... There are an additional two hidden bolts you need to access inside the bumper on either end of the plate holder, also 10mm and also PITA. Once off very easy.

The pics are the initial mock up, and two of the finished project after giving everything a clean up and a fresh coat of the good black stuff.

Just need to wait for my two ‘OEM look alike” number plate lights to arrive and I’ll wire them up splicing into the old ones which worked but fell apart in the process of removal.

[Fishframe]

On the tailgate where the wheel mount was, you can see four shiny high tensile bolts. I’m going to mount an Army surplus mortar ammo can right there. It is thin enough it won’t interfere with the spare wheel.

The plan is I’m going to keep my HD scissor jack, jack riser, extendable wheel brace and tie down straps in it. I’ll lock it as well. The scissor jack fits with barely a mm to spare.

The wiring from the old wheel carrier for the third brake light will go into the ammo can and power an LED red brake strip light which I’ll mount on the outside of course.

I’m not sure whether I’ll paint the ammo can or leave it Army surplus cammo.

I’ll post pics when I’ve done it.

[Fishframe]

Mortar can looks similar to this one I pulled from the internet of all things ...

[wes]

Love the spare tyre delete and nice work with the number plate mount. I made a few mods to the stock mount some time ago and remember how hard it was to move - drilling the stock rear bumper was surprisingly difficult!
Now I'm using a stock USA TJ number plate mount.
Our stock W.A. plates are too wide for the USA mount but if we order 5 or less characters, we can get a 3/4 length plate which is the same length as USA plates and fits perfectly.

[Fishframe]

Nice looking job Wes.
I also thought about the US plate brackets but I really like trying to recycle the old stuff and see how it ends up. Not always great, some ends up in the bin!, but sometimes the result is excellent.
It might be in the eye of the beholder, but I’m happy with the look I ended up with.
I had to keep the rear bar because I have a custom steel roof rack and the rear OEM bar has been professionally modified to accept the high tensile bolts threaded into the bar.

[RPG]

Great ideas guys, I need to come up with a solution too as I am making a custom tube rear bar with wrap around corners to blend in with my rock sliders. I am thinking of a quick release bracket mounting through the center of the spare. I have already made an off set spare wheel bracket to accommodate the 31/10.5 15s so welding something to that is not an issue.

[Fishframe]

My first thought is to drill and tap two holes on the tube bar, off centre to the spare wheel, and fix a simple diy licence plate bracket (I’m thinking aluminium plate) straight to the bumper.

Would be simple to make the bracket a little larger and bend the top over slightly so you can drill and attach a small led licence plate light - really cheap on eBay. You could run the light off the existing wiring and maybe even feed through the tube bar. If you want to get even more trick, do what I did (see my pics above) and remove the factory rear fog and replace with a small spotlight over the left hand side. Really good for reversing, and I angled it down a little so I never accidentally blind anyone.

Once fitted up you never have to worry about it again, and no need to remove replace every time you do something with your spare wheel.