EURIKA! Mystery solved (M37 spare/door mount)

From: Enterprise B&B (enterprise@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Sep 13 2000 - 18:29:58 PDT


First, I want to thank all the listers who took their time to respond to my
posts, send me pictures and share their experiences w/me. Having a common
denominator of interest does breed good feelings of cooperation. Now on to
what I found.

Several listers had told me they had not seen an M37 w/the spare tire
mounted on the rear of the unit. No surprise because after a little
digging (literally taking off a few pieces, I found that what someone had
done is take the door mount unit off and had it welded to the back of the
M37 allowing it to swing open from there. rear. So at this point what I
am going to do, with the help of my little handy-dandy sawzall (and
probably 10 metal blades), is remove the unit from the back and simply bolt
it back where it was originally.

The one problem I will still face is that in order for the unit to function
on the rear, the standard lock unit which held the arm from swinging but
could be opened from the inside, was modified so that it has to be opened
from either outside the vehicle or from inside by a gorilla w/7 foot arms.
I'm sure I can come up w/some creative whatever to operate the release from
the inside.

As to changing the rims from 20" back to 16", I'm going to ponder that one
for a while. I would need 5 rims and so far, the least expensive I have
found is $50 each however w/shipping, etc. the tab came over $500, and that
is not counting tires which will run me about $100 each for new ones. So I
have to think about that one for a while unless someone here has an "in"
for rims at a better price. Of course I was also told that I could
probably trade my 20" rims straight across and maybe even make some $$
since the 20" rims give much better mileage. My concern is not mileage
(even w/gasoline pushing $2.00 p/g here) since I only intend to use the
unit in parades and for an occasional "Geeee, look at that thing with the
machine gun" trips around town.

I guess that's about it for now since I'm leaving tomorrow for a week or so
around Catalina (Island off So. Calif. coast).

Again, thanks to all.

David



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