Spare Tire Mounting

[darraughbj]

A while ago I built a tire gate for my Dakota. It works great and is now supporting a 33" tire just fine.
The thing is, I am now working on a rear bumper and I am contemplating putting the stock tailgate back on and building a swing arm into the bumper.
There are a ton of ideas running through my head right now, so I was looking for some opinions. Real ones, not the old 'do what you want, it's your truck' type.

This is an older picture (November 2014), but it shows the gate well:

 

[rayra]

That's really quite the open question. You've said nothing about what your goals and desires are, or any other design criteria, so you're basically soliciting a bunch of random opinions rather than constructive advice.

What exactly are your goals, what are you trying to achieve with the design change? Realting that, you might generate some useful suggestions from your audience.

But if you just want random opinion, I sort of like it how it is. Mythbusters' nonsense aside, I've found it slightly easier and better fuel economy to drive my longbed pickup with the tailgate down, rather than acting as a parachute. 300k+ mi. So I like the free-flowing mesh design of your existing tailgate.

 

[darraughbj]

I see your point, I don't know if I really have any exact goals. Guess I'm more curious about the pros and cons of each.

That is a really good point about the whole parachute thing, pretty sure I had that in mind when I first built the gate.

Perhaps I'm just looking for excuses to fabricate more things, because a plus of the gate I have is that I also gain a few inches in bed length.

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