How snug should the spare tire be when its stowed away under the vehicle? Long story short, I just replaced the lift device, and winched the spare into place and find the spare wiggles around pretty freely. It looks like I need another half inch of vertical travel to get the tire tight up against the floor.

So, anyway, is this normal or do I need this to be snug?

 

Yes, you want it tight. You don't want it moving around at all.

 

Resolved.

Had to overcome two issues to get the spare in place. First, the new spare tire carrier seems to have some kind of torque limiter in the wind up device. As the tire is raised and makes first contact with the floor, the carrier device starts clicking as you wind. As an experiment, I put a jack under the spare, taking the tension off the lift cable, and then I could wind the cable again.

Using the jack got me closer to desired tightness, but not tight enough. Eventually the tire was up against the floor, but still had some wiggle. The new carrier has a bee hive spring on the tire mount, and it looked like the wiggle was from the spring not being adequately compressed. Once more with the floor jack, except this time I put the jack on the beehive and compressed it. A wind or two on the lift cable, removed the jack, spare tire snug.

 

Thanks for reporting back.