Long story short mine is frozen and I called about 18-20 junk yards looking to find one and can not find one. So 202.00 from the stealer for a new updated one. I used to grease mine twice a year on my old van and never had any problems, well got lazy on this one and 5 years of road crap and water is teaching me a expensive lesson. No... I can not just leave it in the back of the van, I haul food stuffs sometimes:D

What an awful design, huh? My yuk had the same problem. I ended up plugging the tire on the truck and adding air to get me by until I could make a proper repair. Spent 4 hours in the driveway trying to get the thing freed up (could drop it about 2 inches but not past the drop safety thing), finally smashed the centerpiece in with a sledgehammer to get the spare out. Now the spare is in my shed...

I removed mine and put the spare inside.

I had to replace the hoist assembly on mine already. The worst fin design out there. The one on my 98 still works and I never even grease it.

The folks who do my rust spraying (http://www.krown.com (http://www.krown.com/)) always spray an extra shot at the hoist on my trucks, never have an issue.

With all the stuff they have figured out how to make out of plastic and other not steel parts....you think this would be a good candidate for something new.

Yea I can drop mine just enough to cut the cable. Dealer says the one I ordered is a updated part. Maybe they went with plastic, will know Monday when I put it on.

i had a flat a few years ago and tried lowering the hoist. only went down a couple inches. ended up using my cordless sawzall, and cut the tire bracket in half. the dealer did replace it under warranty.

It usually is a corroded safety hook,there is a procedure to unhook it.I don't remember specifics.I'm sure if you google it you can save yourself from a sawzall session.

Ok just replaced the hoist, looks just like the org. still steel. I sprayed it with white lithium grease. I will be doing this every other oil change from now on.

Got to looking at what went wrong with it and it appears the pivot pins have rusted to the body on the unit. Even after getting it on the bench I could still not get the hook/pivot assy. to move. It also appeared that the hook/pivot assy was frozen to the body itself, so in the dumpster it went. On a positive note my factory spare tire (6 years old) is still in good shape, but the rim is rusted badly.