"What sort of mod did you do to fit your larger spare?"

"I ground off the hinges from the van frame side, welded on 1" square
tubing and welded the hinges on it."

I got 4 gate hinges at Lowe's and cut them up so I wound up with the hinge
loop where a bolt goes through, on each end of the modified hinge extender.
One end of that attaches to the frame cross-member hinging point; the other
end of that attaches to the clamshell. It effectively drops the clamshell 2"
at the hinged end. One feature I like about this is that the clamshell now
"swings" slightly forward/rearward to accommodate the tire. I have a
215/65-16 Nokian Hakkapeliitta C2 in there, deflated.

It sounds like Jeff's mod did about the same thing. I also had to carve some
of the rear end of the clamshell off but did not mess with the hinges on it.
It would fit back on in stock fashion, missing about 2" of the metal around
the back/hinged side.

I bolt the two hinge pieces together to form the new hinge extension piece.
If this description does not give you sufficient mental picture, let me know
and I'll try and take some pix and post them at my MSN site. There are some
pix there already, where I used the VanCafe spare bracket and the same
identical hinge pieces I made. check that out. Anyway, let me know.

Bob Stevens
'87 Westy Syncro
"Passion Fruit"