So….first off Friday in Coulee City. A little drive, some fuel and groceries and that was it.
Saturday morning we were up early as we had a long drive ahead of us. 340 miles so we were on the road just after 8am.
>
Coming down from Dry Falls and you can’t see much for the smoke.
A little better here but not much.
We had no wind, no rain, and an uneventfull drive until….
this! We’d pulled off the highway just short of our destination after following the GPS’s instructions and had ended up in Huntington,Oregon instead of Catfish Junction. After some directions from a local we started to backtrack to the freeway and continue on to Catfish Junction and you guessed it…..pop and we’d blown another tire. Luckily this one was at slow speed and we managed to limp down a very long hill and into a State Park where it was flat and on pavement. Out with the jack, the spare and the duct tape for the piece that had blown off the side of the 5th wheel. Eric had spent a lot of time repairing this side after our last blown tire last spring on our way home. Why this continues to happen is a complete mystery and why is it always on the passenger side which is the light side of the 5th wheel. The Harley is loaded on the driver’s side. We changed from trailor tires to light truck tires…hasn’t helped. Lots of tread left, no visible separation, not hot, properly inflated????? Since owning this from brand new 10 of the 12 special trailer tires have separated, one was blown and now two of four light truck tires have blown. Through all our driving life we have never blown a tire on a vehicle. What the hell. So we’ll stay here for a few days and …..buy more tires. There doesn’t seem to be a solution to our misery other than getting rid of the 5th wheel. We’ve looked at motorhomes and have found a few we liked but they had issues with leaking roofs. Eric has spent countless hours upgrading everything in the RV and it suits us to a T….if we could just keep tires on it. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if a blown tire didn’t take the side of the rig off each time. I know we aren’t the only ones with this problem but I think we have had more issues with tires than most. What to do…..what to do?
Today a trip into Weiser and then Ontario to pick up parts for the RV and scope out tire shops for tomorrow.
Weiser (pronounced Weezer) is a pretty old town.
Old, old buildings and lots under reconstruction. Quiet as a mouse today as this is bible country. Not much open on a Sunday.
So a trip into Ontario (about 30 miles away) to the WalMart and then home for lunch. Eric will take the opposing tire on the same axle off and buy two new tires. Not sure if we’ll buy more later before we head into Mexico but I’ll leave that to Eric.
We had a nice evening after our distastrous end to the day and today is bright and sunny. It is supposed to cloud over and rain for the next three days and we’d hoped to get ahead of it and carry on to Jackpot today. We still have two weeks before we fly home on Oct 2nd.
The best laid plans of mice and men aft go awry!
It's not your imagination, you guys do have more tire troubles than most! It's a mystery, Eric is a good driver and unless you are running overweight, it continues to be a mystery. I wonder, is there an issue mixing truck and trailer tires?
ReplyDeleteWell it is a mystery. If you read the RV posts on many websites there are a lot of people like us. The tire manufacturers would like to blame us for now airing up or being overloaded which we are not. We've had the axles realigned three times which was a waste of money. Perhaps 14ply tires will help. I guess we'll see.
ReplyDeleteWe have had very little tire trouble over the years and we probably should have more because we do run overweight. We had a blowout in Oregon a couple of years ago but the tires were 5 years old and due for replacement. We were trying to squeeze one more trip out of them and it didn't work. No body damage and we were close enough to a Les Schwab Tires, our favorite tire store.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the continued tire damage.
ReplyDelete