Land Rover 109 rear door strap mod

 29 Oct 2022

   I've lived with the fact that raising the spare tire mount on the rear door made the outside handle hard to access. Mostly impossible with the right hand, making it difficult when the hands are full. Generally I just use my left hand, it has to do with leverage. Here is a look at the problem;

 

   On YT I espied a fix on a video of some folks in their 110 travelling, I didn't get the channel name to link it. If I find it again I will post it up. I didn't see how they did theirs, so this is my version.

    Here is a look at my spare mounted on the door.

In this pic you can see how much I raised the mount and for access to the handle the spare had to come off.

I found a strip of nylon strap 3/4" wide, figured out I needed a 6" loop and cut it too length.

Holding it with my needle nose I melted the 2 ends together.

Next I dragged out my grommet kit and selected one with a 1/4" ID.

Punching out the hole on a piece of wood and getting out the anvil, placing the bottom of the grommet, strap, top of the grommet and then hammering on the mandrel.

Viola!

    After some searching I found a 10-32 machine screw long enough to do what I wanted. It needed to be long enough to go through the strap and 2 washers, have a nut and then another washer, go through the handle and have another washer and lock nut.

   Using a SS finish washer under the head, I tightened the nut down until the strap would not turn and then backed off a 1/2 turn so the strap was free to rotate on the screw. A 13/64" hole was drilled in the handle.

The SS screw emplaced and it all worked out OK except I couldn't fit 1 washer between the handle and the first nut. Testing had the handle working as advertised!

Soooo, the tire was remounted and the strap testing worked out again.

Last image is of the tire cover on and the strap at the ready! I'll see how it goes, eh?