BYD Atto3 -Spare tire in the trunk

Above the original filling of the space at the bottom of the trunk of the Atto3 is shown, with a.o. the tire ‘repair kit’.

I like to drive around with a spare tire because I drive on construction sites quite often, and so far I have had 2x tire damage because of that.  And such a damage is not always fixable with a fluid repair kit.

My new spare is a home-bringer also used on a Toyota RAV4 : R17 165/80/17 tire and a 5X114.3X60.1 rim with the same circumference, pitch and center hole as the BYD Atto3.  The RAV4 weighs a bit more than the Atto3, so it should be fine.

At the bottom of the trunk the available space for a home-bringer is only 57 centimeters in diameter for a spare tire.

This means that the spare tire will be slightly higher mounted, on a mounting bracket.  Under the spare tire there is then room for the jack and the likes.

The trunk cover had 2 positions, and this shelf at the bottom of the trunk therefore only comes to one possible mounting depth, i.e. in the highest position.

So- that’s how I positioned the spare tyre (from a Toyota RAV4, 17 inch) in the boot of the car.  Not the nicest way but it works OK. The shelf that comes with the car can be positioned in the upper position no problem.  I added a hydraulic mini jack and a wheel bolt wrench, since this was not part of the car’s accessories.

To hold the tire down, I made a mounting bracket from square iron tubing 20-20-2mm with 3 holes: 2 to tie it with M6 nuts to 2 of the 4 already available threaded M6 bolts and 1 hole in the center of the square stock to carry an M10 bolt going UP with a washer and a wing nut. The M10 bolt goes through 1 of the boltholes of the rim.   I welded the M10 bolt in the center of the square steel and made the rear part almost flush with the square steel.  Then, I mounted the bracket down on the floor of the boot with 6mm tubed M6 IKEA nuts that I had lying around from an old double children’s bed.   These nuts are about 15mm in length with a large flathead on top and an Inbus insert in the top.  This is ideal, because the M6 steel bolt-ends that stick up from the boot are only around 18mm in length and don’t stick through the 20mm square stock.

BTW: I shortened the 2 not-used standing M6 bolts to the height that they just carry one M6 nut each, might be useful in the future.

After the spare tire was mounted and secured with the washer and M10 wing nut on the bracket I used the bag that came with the removable part of the pulling rod to store all loose components like the puller for the plastic boltcovers that are mounte in the wheels and o on.  This is placed in the inner part of the spare tire.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take some pictures of the setup of the spare tire mounting bracket, will do that when I can and present this here, later!

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