Makin tracks

August 11, 2020 / Rex / 1 Comment

8/8/2020

We pulled out of Raban tires in Clarksville IN this morning about 8:15. He (the nice young man working in the shop on a Saturday morning) had to take off one front hubcap and add an extension to the valve stem. That’s the one I was having trouble with, I didn’t know how to get the hubcap off, I think I do now, I almost bent it trying to get it off before giving up last night. Also I had trouble with the inside dually, I don’t know why with so many duals on the road that they don’t put on the correct kind of valve stems. At least this guy had the correct kind of valve stems he could have put on but I didn’t want to hang around that long……. I was wanting to get out of hades. When we get back I may get them changed out. At least now I know we’re stating the epic voyage with the correct tire pressure. It took him about 1/2 hour, we expected to pay but he said he wasn’t going to charge us for just checking tire pressure.

The destination is classified, TOP SECRET even! I will tell you we were going to go to Colorado but I discovered that they are working on the top of Pikes Peak and the only way to get all the way to the top is tram or shuttle bus. Going to pass on both options so we picked out a different destination.

Mary is behind the wheel for a while, today wil

l be a long drive day while we attempt to escape the hades heat.

Fleeing hades, only I don’t think we made it YET!!

PM – what went wrong? It sure feels like we’re still in the land of hades!!!!! So we’re in a rest area just outside of Davenport Iowa. You know the tires I had checked out this morning? Well, I got out to take a look around and one of the outside dually’s is flat……… UGH it’s hotter than blazes out. Anyway, I break out my RV, supposed to be good, air compressor. It runs a while, the directions say it will shut off when it gets hot, well I got some air in the tire and low and behold it shuts off. The directions say to wait about 1/2 hour and try it again, at this point we’re running the generator and A/C. Driving was not to terrible bad but stopped was sure another story………… Finally gave up on it and drove about 9 miles to a casino parking lot. Right now, 6:00, we’re in the shade of a semi trailer. I’m going to give the air compressor until about 7:00 and try it again, it it wont come on there is a Walmart just down the road, I’m going to buy another compressor. The goal is to air the tire up tonight and see it looses air by morning. I’m hoping it was the valve stem cover that caused the problem and I can’t tell that unless I can get some air in the tire. Haven’t had trouble in the past and I couldn’t find anything in the tire.

Tomorrow is Sunday, I’m not sure where I’m going to be able to get it looked at if it’s a problem. Walmart?

This is NOT how I envisioned my day going we had planned to drive at least a couple of more hours.

Dang I almost forgot to mention the wind, there I mentioned it. Kinda blowing from the side, because it was hades hot I wanted to drive with the window down, this caused my seatbelt to noisily flat around but it was toooo hades hot to roll the window up. Not only was it kinda windy but most of the drive was kinda north, I may have sunburnt/wind burnt my left arm.

As mentioned earlier, Mary drove for about an hour this morning, we were going to swap out some more but I didn’t get to tired…… I think I was to excited about getting out of hades. Anyway, Mary learned one lesson the hard way, when she was getting out of the cab, she hit her forehead on the mirror, knocked her glasses off, small scrape that will probably turn black and blue.

8:00 went down to Walmart and bought a small compressor, the thing is battery powered. Of course the (insert bad words of choice) battery in dead and needs charging. Bad words bad words.

The new game plan is to air up the tire in the morning and head down the road stopping often to see if it’s still holding air.

8/9/2020

Well, the day is off to a terrible day!!! To start with that POS compressor was returned this morning, it ran for like 2 min then shut off.

So anyway we’re now setting in a parking lot between 2 places that sell tires and are open on Sunday, should be able to get the tire fixed and on the road. We’ve also had another problem crop up, has nothing to do with traveling. It seems that something between the generator and the A/C and plugins has stopped working. So since we’re still in the hated hades heat once we stop moving today, provided that we get the tire issues worked out, it might be warm.

So happy to finally put Davenport, which must have the absolute roughest roads in the nation behind us, again. Found a tire, opened at 10:00, guy to air up the tire and pour the soppy water over the tire not an air bubble to be found. Just a few miles down the road we stop for some propane, and I do my own soppy water test, great no bubbles again. Both tire shops were booked solid never really had the option to help us out, bout would have if they had any time.

About 20-30 miles down the road We pull into a rest area and the tire is flat as in came loose from the rim flat. We wanted to avoid a service call if we could so Mary called around and found a tire shop open at the I-80 truck stop, the worlds largest truck shop.

Turns out it was the rubber bushing where the valve stem comes out of the rim, it’s located on the back and impossible to see………..UGH It took the guy about 20-30 minutes to fix the tire, it took longer than that to pay the bill, the worlds slowest billing shop.

The tire was flat so I was able to get it off pretty easily once I got the dang hub cap off.

It’s held on by these 2 fake chrome looking lug nuts, turn them 2-3 turns and they are off. Well Hercules must have put one of them on. I bent the little aluminum thingy supplied to get them off. IT’s a dully so the nuts are recesses pretty far. I ended up getting creative with what tools I had on hand. I took a big adjustable wrench and at the end of the handle I fastened 2 vice grips making a T handled wrench, for a little while I was beginning to think that was not going to work.

Tossed the tire in the back of the Jeep, go up to the next exit turn around drive several miles to the I-80 truck stop, get the tire fixed, then I needed a jack so 11 more miles in the wrong direction to find a jack.

Scoot back to the rest stop and while I’m butting the tire on we get a weather alert for a heat advisory. Yup, it was a might warm. Fortunately the bad tire was on the shaded side

Our time here in Iowa has been scary, with the exception of Walmart, very few people were wearing mask. As you know I’m not a fan of Wally World but with the company wide mask required, I felt less vulnerable in Walmart that any other store. Looks like most of our shopping will be at Walmart for a while,

Because of the flat tire, all we drove was 235 miles.