# Ducato Spare Wheel Winch Winder



## p_dodd (Sep 5, 2012)

Has anyone ever tried to use the Ducato wheel changing tools to drop their underslung spare wheel on a 2011 Swift Motorhome?

It consists of an adaptor rod shaped at one end like an allen key but only 5 sided not 6, and the other end is shaped like a wheel nut. The allen key end is inserted into the Spare Wheel Winch which is on the Chassis under the motorhome just behind the rear right wheel. You then connect the wheel brace to the nut end of the adaptor rod. The wheel brace is a tube, shaped like a socket at one end to fit over the wheel nuts or the spare wheel adaptor rod, and the other end is round with a hole through it that you put another metal bar through to form a T-Bar that you can turn. Trouble is, when it is all assembled, the end of the T-Bar is inside the wheel arch and you do not have room to turn it.

Does anyone know of a tool that is available to replace this contraption?

I have found that the emergency tool kit that I carry has a 14mm Spark Plug Spanner that fits the Adaptor Rod, and a 15cm extension socket bar and ratchet socket handle. If I buy another long socket extension bar, that should extend it out of the wheel arch, but what a palaver. :? 

I won't be doing this at the side of a motorway however as I would have to lie on the 1st lane to do it.


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## Wizzo (Dec 3, 2007)

p_dodd said:


> ........ but what a palaver. :?
> I won't be doing this at the side of a motorway however as I would have to lie on the 1st lane to do it.


Probably the reason many of us take out Breakdown policies of one form or another.

I am as capable as anyone of changing a wheel and indeed did so once on the old van in France, but this was in the quiet of a campsite not on a main road. It made me realise then that to get at the spare if you had a flat rear tyre would be extremely difficult to say the least, and in the wet or dark could be very dangerous.

JohnW


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## trevd01 (Oct 26, 2007)

I think it is likely that anyone with a flat tyre on a UK motorway with the new spare wheel fitting might have to be recovered off the motorway to replace the wheel.

I doubt breakdown/recovery service staff would be allowed (H&S and all that) to stand/crouch/lay in lane 1 to do a wheel change.

See this post:

http://www.motorhomefacts.com/ftopicp-1154753.html#1154753


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