Picture it: New Jersey, 2021. An attractive gentleman is preparing his LR3 for a month-long cross-country adventure. He has a new set of tires put on, including a new tire on his full-size spare. He attaches the spare tire winch to his new spare tire, puts the wrench on the winder in the cargo area, and cranks it...only to instantly hear a crack, as the line goes slack. Only by the grace of his favorite Land Rover parts supply company (ahem) and overnight shipping is he able to procure a replacement in time and head on his grand adventure west. It was there that I learned the hard way that spare tire winches are not lifetime items when you use your Land Rover to do Land Rover things, and they require as much maintenance to retain reliability as any other part of the vehicle.
The early spare tire winch design, launched with the first winched-spare Land Rover when the LR3 came out in 2005, had a faulty design in the internal gearbox which can cause it to snap the gears, thus leaving you with an unwinchable spare tire when it goes bust. This is not a fun experience when you're on the side of the road, trying to wrap up a tire change and get going again, especially if you have a trunk full of cargo or all three rows of seats utilized, and nowhere to put the flat tire that now cannot go underneath the vehicle where it belongs.
A successful maintenance routine involves lowering the spare tire winch, greasing the cable, and winding it back up. It's in a position at the back of the vehicle where it's assaulted by every bit of road debris and salt, and with the winch assembly tucked into the spare wheel cavity when stowed, it might not get touched much by your average undercarriage car wash spray. You should raise and lower the assembly regularly, and grease it once a year. (Lightly grease the length of the wire and it will grease the internals as you wind it up.) If you have a heavy off-road tire on your vehicle, it helps to support the wheel on the way up with a helper or a jack, to reduce the forces on the winch when pulling it off the ground. NOTE: These winch mechanisms can and do fail when not maintained, especially in winter climates with road salt or seaside with salt air. Many car makers have similar winch mechanisms on SUVs and trucks and they ALL need similar routine maintenance.
While you're at it, make sure that your spare tire pressure is up to spec. This is something you should check every time you check your regular tire pressures. If you have to install the spare one day, it's much easier to know that it's more or less at the same pressure as the other tires, instead of sitting for five years unchecked and deflating to sand dune-bashing grade pressures when you need to blaze at interstate speeds to make up time after a time-consuming change. If you're not piloting an off-road rig with a built-in high-volume air compressor, inevitably you will either a) not have a compressor at all, b) have a low-volume plug-in compressor that doubles as a flashlight that will take an hour to inflate the tire to the correct pressure, or c) will inevitably get a flat at some point that's far from any public compressor. Checking this ahead of time will make your life much easier when one day, like it does to us all, the need for a spare tire calls on you.
While I certainly cannot say that I always practice what I preach with these maintenance routines, it's almost January of a new year, and if you're looking for an easy-to-cross-off task that gives you "I succeeded at my resolutions" bragging rights at your next dinner party, doing some spare tire checks is a good one. And if your winch goes bust in the middle of this endeavor, our parts specialists are at-the-ready to send you an easy-to-install replacement!
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