AudiWorld Forums - Mk2 spare tire?

The following has been posted many times but not recently.

No spare tire a real problem, particularly for anyone in the rural west where it is not unusual to be an hour away from a garage that could tow you and then you would have to wait for a replacement tire to be delivered from a major city.

Run-flats are not a good solution for the west because they are typically only good for about 50 miles and few rural garages have the special equipment required to remove them from a rim, assuming they have a replacement tire which is a bad assumption. Also, run flats are no help if a tire is sliced or a rim is bent.

There are several spare options that have been proven to work on the Mk II. Your present rim size does not matter because all Mk 3 TT rim/tire combinations have the same diameter.

The first is a compact spare. The Mk 3 TT compact spare works. Also, The spare from a recent model A4 works, even the rear wheels of a TTRS. (So for the TTRS with a front flat you would have to move the rear tire to the front and then put the compact spare on the rear).

There is also a VW compact spare solution that uses a VW 18" compact rim, part number 1k0 601 027 b0 3c which VW dealers have readily in stock for about $165 and can be bought online for about $115. The tire for that rim is a Bridgestone T145/70R18 that Tire Rack sells for about $325 with tax and shipping.

The second solution is an “almost full size” spare. For the base TT, buy a cheap 16x7 wheel and the cheapest 205/60/R16 tire for about $200 installed for the rim and tire. The advantage of this solution is that you can run this tire forever at normal freeway speeds (I wouldn't exceed the speed limit however) whereas the compact spare is only rated for about 50 mph for several hundred miles. The disadvantage is that the almost full spare weighs more and is about 2.36" wider than the compact spare which uses up a little more trunk space. However the almost full size spare's rim provides a nice space for storing smaller items if you are packing your car for a trip. The almost full size also works on all TTRS wheel positions, however you may have to go to a larger rim to clear the front brakes.

There is a European blow-up compressed compact spare that works. It was made for an older Mercedes SL. Unfortunately it is very expensive (around $600) and used items are usually older than the manufacturer’s 6 years of shelf life. You also have the uncertainty that your air compressor has enough power to decompress the tire when needed. Also, it is a single use solution, that is, once it is blown up you can't compress it again. Therefore it is not recommended.

So where do you put the spare? Unfortunately the only solution is in the trunk and not underneath the trunk floor. You might think at first inspection that with some re-arranging a compact spare might fit under the trunk floor. In fact, there is a "how to" for installing the compact spare into the TT well on a UK site that requires some serious sawing. However, it is believed that the European model that was modified does not have the metal “hump” underneath the floor that North American models have. You might also think that the hump looks like it is designed to hold a compact spare, but even the smallest blow-up spare mentioned previously has a diameter too large to fit in that area. Cutting out the metal hump has body integrity issues. However, you can keep your jack, etc underneath the trunk cover.