The spare on my F250 is held in place only by the cable winch. It's been up there for nearly 25 years without a problem. So the threaded rod you're talking about would just be another thing to fiddle with if you need to take the spare out. I think that the winch would work just fine without the extra threaded rod. You'd just need to mount the winch so that you could raise the wheel enough to tuck it into the pocket and then crank it up to land behind the side rail of the bed.
