Road trip from heck

[JWbuchanan]

Well we went to Texas from Peyton CO to pick up three lots of tires that we bid on from gov liquidations. Had a flat on the way down, was able to change to spare with not to much trouble. Noticed that tail lights in trailer were not working and had to rewire so that the bright lights on one side worked and the bulb ( new LEDs rated for 24 volts) on the other side broke while trying to trouble shoot it.

Ran the rest of the way with only one trailer running light and no turn lights and had to drive straight through the night to get there on time. Picked up the tires and found two in the lot that were bad, not happy about that but had no way to inspect them before bidding. Got them loaded with help from gov liquidation folks and headed back.

So we made it to Bucklin KS and had another tire blow. Tried to swap my deuce rims onto two of the 395/85R20 tires and worked over 16 hours ( with lots of help from a local farmer) only to not be able to get the beads to seat! So we slept in the cab until daylight and am waiting for help from a tire shop in Dodge city.

We had hopped to put two of the 395 tires on the front axle and run home with that configuration but am not sure what will happen when the tire shop truck arrives. Only thing we are sure of is that this trip is going to be expensive!

 

[mhassett]

Blew a tire on my trailer going to Cruzin the Coast on Saturday.
Never did make it.
MHassett

 

[JWbuchanan]

Them tires ain't easy to change! The OK tire man just finished seating the tires and mounting them for us. Almost $300, but worth it right now. Back on the road again.

 

[Warthog]

What type of vehicle are you driving? What type of trailer? The more details you give the better your fellow SS members can relate.

 

[JWbuchanan]

Sorry Warthog I have been running on way too little sleep to think right. We have a 1993 M109A4 shop van and were pulling a civilian 18 foot cargo trailer. We loaded 13 tires in the truck and 13 more in the trailer. We made it the last 300 miles home with the two 395/85R20s on the front axle. It drove great and we had no other issues. BTW, thanks to Hundy (100dollarman) who posted a thread showing the 395s would fit on a deuce.

I was thinking about selling all the tires since mine only have 4,000 miles on them but with two blowouts on one trip I'm thinking about running the 395s that I just bought and only selling the 14R20s (I have a post in the classified that I need to update with pics). I'm afraid the stock tires may be the origional tires installed in 93.

I learned a trick from the tire man. We had tried everything we could think of to seat the tires on the rim with no luck. The tire guy pulled out a 5 gallon bucket of Marathon OTR Tire and Tube Mounting Lubricant and worked a couple handfulls between the tire and rime and presto, the tires both seated. That stuff worked great, although it ended up all over the wheel wells. I think any heavy grease would work as well but this stuff is made for tires so I'm sure it won't cause them to break down like a petroleum product might.

 

[Azorian]

Glad to see you guys made it home safely.