I have bought a couple of soft covers for my 4.3 RAV. In the summer I run a bike rack that mounts to the spare tire. I use to run sans cover as you need a cut an access hole through the cover to access the bolts. Not willing to do this to the shell cover. Eventually I wanted to keep a cover on to protect the tire. I bought a generic one on ebay. I bought a cheap nylon one and it worked ok. But my next cover will be a heavier vinyl one.

 

Thanks! I'll look into the heavier ones and see what kind of designs are available. With the old, shell type for my 4.1, I had a padlock on the bottom clasp. However, I doubt I'll find that those are still available as an OEM part

 

I went the other way on one of my RAV4.1s, soft to hard cover. Other one came with the optional hard shelled cover, the more desirable of the two.

 

Not having much luck finding suitable covers for wheel size 215 /70 R16

 

RV sales places have spare tire covers that fit nicely and very inexpensive, however you'll be driving around advertising their business for them.

My Rav4 still had the original Toyota vinyl soft cover when I bought it, but it was rotting and disintegrating. I ended up with the OEM Toyota cloth soft tire cover for the 3rd gen Rav4. These might still be available new, but are rather expensive to buy at the dealer. I found this one on Craigslist for a reasonable price. It is nice because it fully encloses the tire, front and back, and uses a zipper so it is very easy to get the tire out when you need it. I sprayed the outside of it heavily with ScotchGuard to give it some protection from the elements. It fits the 215/70R16 tire just right.

Otherwise have a look at autowreckers for another hard cover to get parts if you can't fix yours. Many autowreckers around here still have first gen Rav4's coming in. The original hard covers looked really cool and suited these car's fun personality.

 

Is that the larger of the two OEM sizes? If so, I have to run my spare at ~10 psi low to get the hardcover to fit.

 

That I don't know. The folks at the tire place had put too much air in, but when I pointed it out to them, they went with 26psi as recommended. The shell still wouldn't fit and eventually broke at the hinges. For me, a soft cover might just be the easiest option. Maybe folks on here might have some recommendations.

 

Ok, So, I can't bring myself to throw out my original hard shell tire cover. It will fit around the new spare (i now realize that the original spare some years ago was a smaller tire) but leaves a gap of about 3 inches at the top. If I can find an easy way to bridge that gap, the shell could still be used. I thought a strip of leather or heavy duty velcro but not sure if that makes sense or if anyone out there has better solutions. The plastic is so thin that trying to drill it for screw insertion to put in some kind of hinge would probably not work.

 

Wider flange hinge and use rivets?

 

I'll look to see what kind of wide flange hinge I can find. Don't know how to use rivets so might see if there's a glue that could fix metal to the plastic halves. I like the idea of the soft cover for 3rd Gen Rav4. If you have an idea of the part number, cRAVe, it might help. Otherwise I'll just look. Many of the parts for 2006 and 2009 are starting to show up on Toyota sites as "discontinued". Great ideas! Thanks.

 

After the suggestions given here, I've been thinking about fixes I could try. This is what I plan to do. Use the 4" wide copper sheet in the photo to bridge the gap between the two halves of the outer rim, then cover that with 6" wide gray Flex Tape to fix it into position. The sheet is thin and flexible so it could act like a big hinge. What I'm not sure about is whether to also use some kind of glue to fix the copper sheet to the plastic shell.

I saw a junkyard replacement on eBay for $300....and it's no longer available anyway. So, doing everything I can think of to keep mine going.

The two black squares are from trying the flex tape by itself but that was a disaster as it folded on itself and stuck together.

 

Now that you've shown the issue with a picture, here is another suggestion. If the hinge area is flat enough, consider putting in a piece of piano hinge, (stainless, if you can find it), and attach it with POP® Rivets (or an alternate brand pull-rivet) using washers or a thin backing plate. If you don't have the rivet tool, there are kits that are fairly cheap available. Basically match drill and put in the rivets. If you are uncomfortable using rivets, you could probably put it in with machine screws, lock washers, and nuts. Ideally paint all of the parts to help prevent corrosion, and then, after assembly consider putting a little Fluid Film or similar on all the metal parts to help prevent corrosion in the future.

 

Thanks, but I have no tools available. The piano hinge seems to be long and would need to be cut. Where the original hinge broke is not that flat. In addition, becasue the tire is not a 15" tire, there will be a gap that needs to be bridged. This is why I am hoping that the copper or aluminum sheet will act as a flexible bridge, strong enough once it's covered with flex tape. I think it might be the best option for me, given my limited DIY skills. I have to wait until Monday to see just what the sheet looks like, and if it will behave how I am hoping it will.