During the 1970's AMC offered a rear swing-out spare tire mount, as seen in this detail from a CJ-5 ad, found in Zeichner's Jeep 1942-86. From the looks of it, the attachment to the body wouldn't survive a lot of rough use.
If a rack is going to be attached to the body, it will require some substantial reinforcement, as seen in this installation by Jesse Barta on his CJ-3A, posted on the CJ-3A Page Forum.
Chuck Frerichs and his son took the route of attaching their swing-away carrier to the bumper, on his 1953 CJ-3B. This photo of the almost-complete project shows the weight it is designed to carry.
Chuck says, "Nothing fancy, just good looking functionality. As with most of these builds, the question is what to use for the pivot hinge. We decided to use a stub trailer axle, and cut off the wheel flange. then we drilled two holes thru the bumper, and welded in the spindle. On the driver's side, we made a foot for the tubing to sit in so it won't bounce up and down. I use a piece of plastic jug around the tubing to stop the rattle."
"The second photo is the swing-away with the spindle hub on the left, and the spare tire carrier in the center. It's just a short spindle with tapered bearings for a trailer. We just cut the wheel bolt flange off, then welded it to the frame. Because it is cast, my son put a strap around just to make sure the hub would not crack at the weld. He welded a piece of flat bar onto the square tubing and around the hub and onto the square tubing on the other side."
"The replacement bumper is rectangular 1/4"-wall, 2"x4" tubing. After we removed the triangle hitch from the drawbar, we welded four bolts to the bottom to fit the drawbar holes and then added two pieces of angle iron to the top to fasten to the crossmember. You'll notice the spindle sticking up on the right.
Here's Chuck making good use of the carrier in the summer of 2016, scouting out locations for the British Columbia Trail Ride.
He notes, "The whole thing can be easily removed to back to original."
Dave Lindgren built a similar swing-away rack (120K JPEG), for his 1962 CJ-3B. He says, "The trick was to find a bearing strong enough to support it, but it had to be cheap. I ended up using a stub axle and spindle off a trailer. Just cut off the bolt flange -- worked perfect for like 20 bucks."
Thanks to Chuck, Dave and Jesse. -- Derek Redmond
More rear-mount spares on CJ3B.info:
Cross Enterprises offers a swing-away carrier which apparently is suitable for early Jeeps, but does require replacing the bumper.
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