The day I received Gunship, I ordered a trailer hitch receiver-mounted swing-out spare tire carrier from Detours of Maine. This device will attach a swing-out arm that holds a spare tire into the trailer hitch receiver. I’ve read reviews about it, and the unanimous consensus is that these are pretty solid and don’t make noise or wobble when mounted. The reason I ordered this is to get the spare tire out from under the vehicle to make changing a tire on the trail easier. I will have to have it powder coated when it arrives, but I plan on having it on Gunship shortly afterward. My wait is going to be about another 3-4 weeks, unfortunately, but well worth it.
To that end, I also ordered an extra TRD Pro wheel. It will arrive tomorrow, and I’ll go to Discount Tire and have a Nitto Grappler tire mounted to it (to match the 4 factory tires). That way, I can rotate the fifth tire among the other 4 to lengthen the duration I can run these tires by 1/5th.
Additionally, I ordered a new roof rack from Sherpa Equipment Co. in Ft. Collins, CO. Among all the roof racks, I recently learned about Sherpa, but I like their design the best. It is adjustable, and appears to be solid and well-made. All the reviews I’ve read were very positive, whereas reviews of my previous choice in roof racks has taken a hit due to quality of late. The last thing I need is to fight quality on an item I want to mount once and use often. The Sherpa is poised to fit that bill nicely, and I’m looking forward to receiving it in 3-6 weeks.
I will end this post with a funny. I decided to mount a shovel to my current factory roof rack, but I forgot that the right side of Gunship is reserved for the awning. I spent 30 minutes attaching the grips before I realized I just mounted them where the awning mounts. So I had to spend another 10 minutes removing them.
Sigh.
At least it looked good for a few minutes while it was on there.
Overlanding with PaleoMarine 