A Lumpy Tire

Adventure Location: Rockport, TX
Adventure Date: 02/20/2018

Tomorrow will hopefully be the finish of some very busy days. We did not feel any of the activity was worthy of a blog entry so no entry was made. But here is the summary of the activities. 

A list was made of the items we needed to get back in traveling shape. The we whipped the OFM until he went to work on doing the items. During all the activity the OFM also managed to sneak in a mild migraine attack. He will do anything to  get horizontal time when there is work to be done.

Things like replace the burned out tail light bulb in Sierra, wash clothing and tie the ladder onto the Castle. The big one turned out to be the pre-travel inspection of the tires on the Castle. One of them had a shallow but long lump in the tread and weird tread wear.

Careful examination of all the other tires did not find any more troubles. However the lump tire had to be changed out for the spare. The OFM got the gear out for the event. The spare with the new tire was removed from the rear of the Castle. Those tires are HEAVY to the OFM. Anyway he made it and got the tire around to the lumpy tire area.

Then it was time to crawl under the Castle to set the jack and get the bad tire into the air for removal. Well of course the lug nuts were on so tight the OFM had to lay his fat belly on the wrench handle to break them loose. Once that un resistable force was  put into play, the nuts came right on off.

The lumpy tire was checked again to be sure it was lumpy. It is. The other item we noticed is the tire was aged out. It was approaching six years old and ST tires should not be in service over five years before replacing. The spare tire was gotten onto the mounting bolts with much special effort and the nuts tightened.

Then it was time to crawl back under the Castle and remove the jack. It would have been easy except for the long stalk of dried grass burrs that grabbed his tee shirt and dug into his massive stomach. The jack was finally removed and stored away. 

Next it was time to put the lumpy tire on the spare tire mount. Of course that meant the OFM had to hug the road grime covered tire tightly to his formerly white T shirt to wrestle the tire into position. The tire was bolted to the bracket without any more trouble. Boy the OFM was glad that was over.

He sat on the bench to rest a bit. The the wretched thought came to him, he needed to crawl around under the Castle and check the manufacturing dates on all the rest of the tires. RATZZZZZZ that did not sound wonderful at all. 

This time he made sure the sticker burrs were all out of the way. The summation of the effort is that the Castle has two tires that will need to be replaced in 2019. We highly prefer to not have tires explode while traveling down the highway at 60 mph. That is a horrible way of trying to have tooooo much fun.