How to use a Ford Donut Spare Tire on a Mach E.

[21st Century Pony]

Folks,

Having come lately from a Ford Fusion Energi and before, a Plug-in Prius, with flat tires on both these cars while I owned them, I figured out how to use and carry a spare donut tire in both the Prius and then the Fusion Energi. When I traded the Fusion Energi for the current AWD Premium Extended Range Mach E, I transferred the Ford donut spare tire and the Ford Fusion jack to the Mach E, and I now finally figured out and road-tested how to make that combination work on my Mach E.

What you'll need:

1. Ford OEM Fusion (likely other sedans) spare donut wheel + tire. Available, often brand new, via all the wrecker yards and on Ebay, where I got mine several years ago for $68. Advantages: the lug spacing and arrangement and the center hubs are the same between the Fusion and the Mach E, EXCEPT for the lug thread size - more on that later.

2. A good portable car jack. My 1st Lesson Learned: although the OEM Ford Fusion car jack worked well enough on the Fusion Energi, the 3d time I used it on the Mach E it stripped the female housing of its work shaft, er... while it was under the car. Cheap Chinese steel and all that... but the lesson is just how HEAVY the AWD Extended Battery Mach E really is. I borrowed a close neighbor's much heavier 1992 Ford Crown Victoria jack to finish the job, and that jack folded itself right in half sideways. No one and nothing got hurt, but... I have a solid 5-ton scissor jack on order from Amazon. I attached the picture, just to show how impressive a folded steel jack looks like haha.

So, the Ford OEM sedan donut wheel does work. I took a drive around the block to test and nothing rubbed. See attached picture. However, to make it work you have to add clearance between the donut wheel and the hub, because the rear brake caliper has two high spots which rub right on the circumferential weld inside the donut wheel. Two of the attached pictures show where the caliper high spot is (black paint mark on silver metal at the tip of my finger) and the circumferential gray rub mark right on the inside of the circumferential weld inside the donut wheel. NOTE: because I did this testing for the Ford Fusion Energi as well as for the Mach E on this one Ford donut wheel, some of the rub marks inside the donut wheel are from years ago.

NOTE #2: the front brake calipers on the Mach E, just like on the Fusion Energi, are so huge that the OEM donut will not fit there, no matter what. Therefore, in case the flat is on the front wheel, the procedure is to first mount the donut on the back wheel, then transfer the good back wheel to the front wheel, then pitch the bad front wheel into the trunk, or into the woods if you're hot and sweaty and pissed by then (just kidding). Sounds like extra work but not really if you're stuck on a side of the road past midnight on a cold January night. I've been there on that cold dark road - that's why I now insist on carrying a donut.

The key adaptation is to safely add enough spacer clearance between the wheel hub and the inside of the donut wheel to clear that pesky rear brake caliper. Here's my method: since I already had a 3/4 inch wide hub-centric wheel spacer with the same bolt pattern and the same hub center hole bore (that center flange is VERY important for safety) I added one 5mm spacer on the wheel hub side, and one 3mm spacer on the donut wheel side of the thick spacer. One of the pictures shows this arrangement. I played around with adding thin shim spacers because I already had the 3/4 inch spacer and the 3mm spacer from the Fusion Energi setup. Another 5 more mm turned out to do the trick.

A Better, Cheaper Way: just buy a 1 inch hub-centric spacer with mounted lugs and bored holes with a 5 x 108 mm bolt pattern, and a hub center bore diameter of 63.4 mm. The Mach E wheel lug thread pitch is 14.5 mm x 1.5 mm. These hub-centric spacers run in pairs on Ebay for about 50 - 60 bucks. Since I already had my 3/4 inch spacer I just played with the small thickness shim spacers to make my setup work

SAFETY POINT: no matter what, please examine my attached pix to understand the importance of the hub center bore flanges, on the car hub and also on the thick spacer you'll need to add. These hub flanges have to match in order to safely transfer the energy between heavy rotating wheels and the car's axle hub. Any thick spacer you buy has to have this hub flange that'll engage the donut wheel center bore. Additionally, whatever shim spacer you might use CANNOT be thicker than the hub flange it'll fit over, for the same energy-transfer reason. Also, any hub-centric spacer you buy has to have a bolt pattern of 5 (bolts) x 108 mm, bolt thread pitch of 14.5 x 1.5, and a center hub bore of 63.4 mm with a flange machined just around the bore pointing to the outside - yes, this is a repeat of critical information from above. BTW, these thick hub-centric spacers come with their own half-thick nuts that'll bolt onto the wheel lugs and hide inside the spacer's machined recesses - so you can use that wheel's standard OEM nuts to secure the donut wheel.

Donut wheel storage: for now, I keep the donut spare wheel behind the passenger seat, secured with the rear right passenger seat folded flat, without its headrest. Once I figure out where I can buy the two missing trunk cargo hooks, I'll buy a good 4-point cargo net and keep the donut under the net in the trunk.

Storage for all the spacer(s): I bolt them to the inside of the donut wheel with their spacer half-nuts and that keeps everything tidy & together until I ever need it.

Last item I strongly recommend: I bought a PowerBuilt Billy Club lug wrench hand tool about 20 years ago and have been transferring it from car to car. This Billy Club has four sizes of lug nut sockets, with in-handle storage, and a sliding detent mounting point for leverage to break loose any stubborn rusted wheel nut. Whatever jack you buy, I suggest also buying this indestructible Billy Club.

I hope this long write-up and the attached pix make sense.

 

[Mach-Lee]

I would not recommend doing this, you could easily blow the differential in the rear drive unit. That donut spare is almost 5" shorter than the regular wheel, and is going to spin 20% faster than the other side. That is an extreme split for a differential to handle, it will likely overheat and fail in a very short time. For comparison, the differential split is 8% on the Fusion with the spare on, so this is about 2.5x as much split as typically allowed for spare use. If the differential fails and you need a new rear motor, Ford probably won't cover it under warranty since you abused it like that.

I would really just use the inflator kit on a flat, or call a tow truck. If you insist on running that doughnut, I wouldn't drive more than 20 MPH to limit differential heating. 50 MPH will likely cause damage.

 

[P. T. Magoo]

I went with a ModernSpare kit.

https://modernspare.com/product/2020-2022-ford-mach-e-spare-tire-kit-options/

Pros:
Fits front or rear (and they finally have a version that will fit GT brakes on the front -- just specify GT when you're navigating to the kit), very heavy-duty scissors jack with a ratcheting handle.

Cons:
Expensive. Close to $500 for the full kit with carrying bag.

Heavy and takes up a lot of space in the cargo area. It will fit under the trunk floor but that raises the floor such that the back of the floor sits on top of the sill back there.

I plan to maybe take the whole kit along on road trips, leave it in the shed when I'm commuting and close to home.

Thanks for the info and it's good to know a donut will work!

 

[RickMachE]

I also echo not doing this. Either buy the kit (not me) or travel with a plug kit and use your 5 years of free towing. This is the kind of potentially dangerous stuff no one should try.

 

[21st Century Pony]

I would not recommend doing this, you could easily blow the differential in the rear drive unit. That donut spare is almost 5" shorter than the regular wheel, and is going to spin 20% faster than the other side. That is an extreme split for a differential to handle, it will likely overheat and fail in a very short time. For comparison, the differential split is 8% on the Fusion with the spare on, so this is about 2.5x as much split as typically allowed for spare use. If the differential fails and you need a new rear motor, Ford probably won't cover it under warranty since you abused it like that.

I would really just use the inflator kit on a flat, or call a tow truck. If you insist on running that doughnut, I wouldn't drive more than 20 MPH to limit differential heating. 50 MPH will likely cause damage.

OK, thank you. I did not consider the load on the differential with this car. That is very useful.

 

[21st Century Pony]

I went with a ModernSpare kit.

https://modernspare.com/product/2020-2022-ford-mach-e-spare-tire-kit-options/

Pros:
Fits front or rear (and they finally have a version that will fit GT brakes on the front -- just specify GT when you're navigating to the kit), very heavy-duty scissors jack with a ratcheting handle.

Cons:
Expensive. Close to $500 for the full kit with carrying bag.

Heavy and takes up a lot of space in the cargo area. It will fit under the trunk floor but that raises the floor such that the back of the floor sits on top of the sill back there.

I plan to maybe take the whole kit along on road trips, leave it in the shed when I'm commuting and close to home.

Thanks for the info and it's good to know a donut will work!

Much appreciate this link. Thinking things thru, I changed my approach and also ordered (well, got in line to order) this Modern Spare tire... hopefully they'll be in stock soon.

I'll sell my Ford Fusion Energi donut wheel setup on the Ford blog. With about a million Fusions out there, I'm sure there will be a buyer.

Much appreciate your info!

 

[Sillybibbles]

I'm also thinking to get a spare from a junk yard. In this case it's really convenient to have 18" wheels. Elsewhere someone wrote that the circumference should be no more than 10% difference. My read is that the stock 18" wheels are Diameter of 28.6, or a 89.85" circumference and a simple spare I looked up has a Diameter of 25.5, or C=80.12. So if I'm correct, that is close enough to 10% that it seems safe for slow driving.

 

[21st Century Pony]

I'm also thinking to get a spare from a junk yard. In this case it's really convenient to have 18" wheels. Elsewhere someone wrote that the circumference should be no more than 10% difference. My read is that the stock 18" wheels are Diameter of 28.6, or a 89.85" circumference and a simple spare I looked up has a Diameter of 25.5, or C=80.12. So if I'm correct, that is close enough to 10% that it seems safe for slow driving.

I got the Modern Spare.

 

[Scarpia]

EVs are so heavy that they generally require "Extra Load" tires - the Mach E definitely does. I doubt if that donut is rated to handle the weight required for our cars.

Sponsored