LexRex

I recently bought an '09 GX470 and have been slowly going over the entire truck. I dropped the spare and noticed that the cable on the spare tire carrier was very frayed. There are about 7 large strands of cable, and 5 of those seven were completely broken on my truck. There was no rust - the cable was just broken.

I couldn't find anything on this forum about this kind of thing, but there are lots of threads mentioning this problem on the 4Runner forums. The 4Runner used the same spare tire carrier part as the GX. Apparently Toyota has upgraded the replacement part with a chain instead of a cable. I ordered the upgraded part and will install when it arrives in a week or so. In the meantime, I took the spare out, because I didn't trust the old, broken carrier to hold the tire. Dropping the spare on the interstate could make for a very bad day.

If you haven't looked at your spare carrier in a while, you might put that on your to-do list.

mrblister

Great Info do you have the part numbers?

NTH

Thank you for the heads up. I'll take a look one day this week. My old 04 Sienna had this recall done several years ago.

LexRex

51900-60280 is supposedly the upgraded part #. That's what I ordered. Will confirm once it arrives.

LexRex

I broke the housing apart to get this photo because the cable strands were all bunched up inside the housing, but you get the idea.

Getting the old carrier out was a royal pain. The carrier is held in by 4 bolts, but to get those bolts off you have to remove a little shroud that covers the carrier. The two shroud bolts attach to the carrier so they must be removed.

The two shroud bolts are really difficult to access, since they come in from the top and screw down into threaded holes in the carrier. It's darn near impossible to get tools on the shroud bolts. Take a lesson from me here - don't try to turn them out from the bottom using vice-grips. You'll mess up the threads and then they will really be stuck. I had to drill out the one I messed up. I would recommend being persistent in trying to fit a socket wrench on them until you get them loose. Then you can easily turn them out from the bottom. When I re-install the carrier shroud, I plan to just drill out the threaded holes in the carrier and use new bolts from the bottom into nuts JB-Welded onto the shroud.

YoshiMan

Good to know, i'll have to check mine out.

At some point i'de like to get a steel rear bumper with the integrated tire carrier. I hate having to weasel it out from under the truck in the very rare instance that i need to.

LexRex

Yeah, no kidding. My theory is that the PO did not have the tire snugged all the way up, and the constant tire movement caused the cable to fray as it rubbed on the carrier. I can see the spare tire has worn a spot of paint off the rear track bar from swinging around under there.

LexRex

The new spare carrier arrived today. I had ordered it off eBay from seller OEParts for $94 shipped, which is a pretty darn good deal. It is indeed a chain instead of a cable.

Re-install went quickly and smoothly, and my idea to re-install the shroud bolts from the bottom worked even better than expected.