I was thinking about making a rack for above my rear tire, like the jeeps but I think the roof rack will be more than enough storage for me.

 

The one I made was for a jeep that goes over spare tire

 

I was talking about more of the rear swing away type tire carriers, with the rack above the tire. If you blew a tire would you have to pull your rear rack out of your hitch to remove the tire?

 

No there is just enough clearance to remove tire without taking rack out

 

Its done!!! for now anyway. doing a highway test tomorrow to work and back.

we put 430 pounds of weight (a buddy and i) and it had no issues holding us up while it was on the ground- i climbed on top once it was mounted and its sold as a rock.

pics

 

how is the side to side strength? putting a large amount of weight on there and going around a turn just might be strong enough to break those welds.

 

One thing you might want to consider is adding some slats of wood over the tubing that makes the bed of the rack. My rack had square tubing 4-5 inches apart and I found it most difficult and uncomfortable to get up on the rack to secure things. I got some 1x3s in treated lumber and ran a 1/3 round router bit over the edges to round them a bit and used hot dipped galvanized carriage bolts to bolt them to the tubing and left 3 inches between each board.

It created a more stable rack and helped distribute any load better as the boards spread the load to adjoining tube supports and it gave me more places to secure my load to.

 

any pictures for reference?