Living in a rural area comes with it's share of challenges. One of those challenges is crappy roads. Another challenge is crap left IN THE MIDDLE of the crappy roads.
The Queen left home at 5:50AM early last week to head to her newish part time job. She was not gone five minutes before the phone rang, and she indicated she had a flat tire. I asked where she was; and, before I could get her location out of her, she indicated that all 4 tires were still inflated after all but that something was making a racket. I told her to come back home, and I'd meet her outside to see what's what.
The road we live on is straight as an arrow, and I can see almost all the way down to the intersection with the main drag about a half mile away. I stood at the end of the driveway; and, from the time I could see her headlights, I could hear something smacking the asphalt rythymically all the way back to me.
And what did I find my curious eyes behold when The Queen came to a stop?
Knowing how things operate around here, someone left a box of junk in the bed of their truck or sitting in their bumper when it bounced out at just the right moment to land in the path of The Queen's Chariot.
It wasn't even a few days later when I got another call from The Queen. It seems that The Queen had found herself another object in the middle of the road. This time it happened on her way to the store. Fortunately for me, it was after work and daylight still. Even more fortunately, the temperatures had dropped down into the high 90s instead of the mid 110s they were the previous week. So, I grab my floor jack, mechanic gloves and a few other odds and ends that I knew might be helpful before heading off to town to change a tire. I arrived to find this.
Bugger. Fortunately for me (again) it was approaching sundown, and the truck was parked in the shade cast by a building to the west. There was a faint breeze that helped the temps just a little. It took a little bit of doing to find all the fiddly bits to get get the truck jacked up (the flat had dropped the front end so much that my floor jack would not clear the bumper), the spare dropped, etc. Another small blessing was that the spare still had plenty of air (70 PSI out of a max of 80 PSI) despite being the original spare (with a 2012 date code). I keep an air pump in the truck just in case.
Now I just need to find my plug kit and remove whatever the Hell that is so I can put my good Michelin back where it belongs. I'm going to have to mount magnets in front of my tires if this keeps up.
I really think people are born to have flat tires. I have had only one in my life and like your first tire, still held air, but looking at the tread line on the sidewall on a set of Michelins a bolt was sticking in... I got the tire replaced, and opted to have the other rear tire replaced so I would have equal amount of tread on my tires as the tires had about 100,000 miles on them. I like Michelin for that reason. The tires did not have a lot of tread gone, good tires.
ReplyDeleteCederq, I've bought Michelin's a couple of times over the years. Great tires, but they are as expensive as sin unless you catch a rare sale where you buy 3 and get the 4TH one "free".
DeleteI'm confused. Why did it go flat? That hole was clearly plugged.
ReplyDeleteJustin, touche'. Surprisingly, it didn't go flat.
DeleteHere in Central Texas, it's all those Mexican handyman with open trailers. I've been here for 10 years and I can count on a flat due to a nail or screw once a year.
ReplyDeleteSteve, we're about an hour south of Fort Worth, and we have a delightful mix of redneck engineering, hoarders, immigrants, slobs, idjits and just about every other flavor of stupid known to man.
Delete