Crawling On The Pavement

 

Adventure Location: Falcon Heights, Texas

Adventure Date: 3-1-2022

Click the pic to enlarge.

A beautiful day for messing around it was. So the OFM chose this day to see if he could find out why the right rear trailer tire was severely wearing the tread on the inside inch of the tire.

The tires on the Castle were all new in August of 2019 which corresponds with the week of manufacture molded in the sidewalls. That means we have a little over two years more of road time available for them.

The OFM finally figured out that the unused spare tire could replace the worn tire and we would have four good tires on the road. The worn tire is still road worthy so it could go onto the spare tire duty with plenty of miles left on it to get us on down the road to town for a new tire if needed. Now all the OFM needed to do was do the job and try to find the reason for the wear oddity.

He put his decrepit ability to work and got the spare off the back of the Castle. Then the OFM started getting the jack in place to start the jacking effort. WHOA look at that he thought as he was scooting around under the Castle. That spring mount looks bent. The Castle was jacked up and the tire removed.

Now we had a clear view of the area. A slide back under let the OFM examine the area with his flashlight to carefully see the damage. He could see that the angle that came across the Castle to support the black water 40 gallon tank was very bent and pushing on the spring mounting bracket on the Castle's frame. The bracket was flexed in a direction that would cause the tire to tilt in at the top and cause the wear we had.

The OFM got out some heavy duty tools and went to bending the black tank angle back into place. As he bent the angle back to its proper position, it was possible to see the spring mounting bracket flex back more like it should be. We have no way of being sure how much was needed but the spring mount now looked like the mount on the other side of the Castle. We have hopes it will be good now but it will be very carefully watched for a couple of thousand miles to see if more needs to be done at a trailer alignment shop.

Surprising himself the OFM had no trouble putting all the tires back on in their correct locations and tightening the nuts properly on the two wheels.

Tonight the OFM body parts are betting on which part of the OFM will hurt the most in the morning. And we do recommend having all your running gear in good shape on your vehicle when you are out trying to have tooooo much fun.