I can change a tire in less than 30 minutes

What prompts a title like this?

A little over a week ago, we left Alabama. We were heading to Ohio to spend a week with family and friends at Memorial Holiness Camp, a camp meeting that I (Jason) have grown up attending. As we were driving north to the outskirts of Birmingham, we heard that dreaded noise: POW! I immediately began to pull over while checking my mirror. I saw the fragments of what used to be my trailer tire finding a new home along the Alabama Interstate Highway. Thankfully, it was a merge from the left ramp that I was taking, and the faulty tire was on the drivers side, so I was able to work out of the way of traffic.

I quickly assessed the damage, saw that it was only cosmetic and could wait, and then began the process of changing the tire. I have learned a few lessons from a year ago (read that adventure here), and pulled out my tire changing kit.

It includes:
1-6 ton hydraulic bottle jack
1-12 ton hydraulic bottle jack
1-18 volt impact driver
1-Air compressor with hose and fittings
1-Set of deep well impact sockets
1-High visibility vest (not pictured)
1-18 volt high torque impact driver (added after this incident)

I quickly had the trailer off the ground and the tires swapped out. I don't have a photo of this exact tire, but catastrophic failure is an accurate description. We were soon on our way, chalking this mishap up to horrible Alabama roads and the unofficial state animal, the road gator.

Having kept two tires from our first set that we changed out in St. Louis, we found the nearest Walmart to have one of them mounted to our rim. It may be hard to find a tire, but finding a place to mount a tire to a rim is easy and cheap. We were soon back on our way.

About 30 minutes later, we heard the same sound again. Sure enough, another tire has bit the dust (catastrophically), this one on the passenger side.

Not letting the situation get me down, I hopped out and speedily got this tire changed as well. I'm starting to think to myself, 'I am getting pretty quick with this tire changing business'. I wasn't done.

We once again found ourselves hunting for the closest Walmart to mount the second of our 'spare spares' to a rim. Those gentlemen had us in and out in no time. It was time to hit the road again, trying to figure out how far we may make it with the delays.

By now I am driving a little more cautiously. We make it across the state line into Tennessee, breathe a sigh of relief thinking that we are beyond the horrible Alabama roads and should have some smooth sailing through the Volunteer State. Wrong.

We use a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) on the trailer tires so that we are always up to speed with their pressure and temperature. The system will alert us when the tires are outside of a preset pressure range or exceeding a set temperature. In the case of a catastrophic failure where the tire comes apart in .0125323 seconds, it does not give much warning. With our third tire, it started beeping with a warning. I did not even give it a thought, I just started to decelerate and pull the trailer to the side of the road. I'm glad I did. In less than 15 seconds, the tire went from full and rolling to stopped and flat on the ground. A piece of steel belt had punctured the tire, causing a rapid air loss. Off went that tire and on went the last spare.

That meant it was time to find a place for the night, and hope that we could get there. We were able to make it 10 more minutes up the road to a campground about an hour south of Nashville. This was not even half way to where we had planned on getting for the day.

But we were safe and in one piece.

The next day we were able to find a place 30 minutes north of where we were camped that could get us a new set of tires, including a 'spare spare'. After some back and forth, we had a new set of tires and were on our way. Even with all of the delays and such, we still made it to our destination about 6 hours later than originally planned.

*     *     *     *     *

Overall damage was just cosmetic to the under skirting, which I was able to mostly bend back into place. Having one jack has been handy, but having two jacks seems to be invaluable. More info on the air compressor can be found here.
I used the impact driver with a socket adaptor and the impact sockets, but I would not recommend long term usage. It had enough torque for the lug nuts, but the adaptor was getting stuck inside the chuck with all of the hammering. We had already planned to get the high torque impact, this situation just upped our timeline.

Air Compressor

I have been wanting to upgrade to an air compressor that is capable of easily airing up our tires as well as being portable. After doing some research, I found one that also runs off of 12 volts DC, so as long as I have a running vehicle, I have a working air compressor. I bought a Q Industries MV 50 compressor.
 
It is a popular compressor amongst four wheeling enthusiasts because of its capability to air up a tire in just a few minutes. The compressor is meant to be used directly next to the tire. Once you turn it on, it is pushing air at full boar with no relief unless you are connected to a tire. The little hose that came with it wasn't going to cut it for my needs, since I want to be able to reach any tire with out having to move the vehicle. So I put together a T with a quick connect to hook to the compressor, a pressure relief valve, and another quick connect for my hose. It works out perfectly setting the relief at 80 psi, since the most pressure that I will need is about 70 psi. It gives me a quick and convenient way to air up bike tires and toys as well.

I added a tire adaptor with pressure gauge to make things easy on that end, and also some blower nozzles for cleaning up. So far, it has proven to be a mighty little compressor in filling up tires. It comes with a storage bag, which holds everything perfectly.

Dress up and pumpkins

Well, the past two days have been exciting for the kiddos.  Saturday during the daytime, their grandmother came to visit (and wear them out).  They played hard and had a lot of fun.  After grandma went home, we pulled out the costumes for the kids to dress up.  

Three princesses and a duck.  Sounds like a good joke.

We headed over to Church at the Crossing for their fall fest.  This event has a wagon ride, food, games, blow up bounce houses, crafts and everyone's favorite.....Trunk or Treat!  Instead of heading from house to house, kids get to walk down rows of vehicles with their trunk opened up that are each decorated with a theme and trick or treat this way.  Lots of fun, and the candy to walking time ratio can't be beat.  I think the only time I have witnessed a better ratio was when we did trick or treating in my college dorm.


We headed down the row of vehicles first, since it was still light outside and the temperature was only dropping.  After working their cute charms to get as much loot as possible (somehow Lydia and Ian got the most) we headed inside for the activities there.


There were some games and musicians, but the memorable part was the kids maze.  It is constructed of many cardboard boxes about the size that pumpkins come in at the grocery store.  My three oldest ones entered at the same time, but only Caroline came out.  After waiting about 10 more minutes and seeing 20 kids exit that had entered after mine, we sent Caroline back in after the other two.  Right as she headed in, Lydia pops out.  I asked her where Ian was, and she gave me a blank stare.  So we waited another five minutes and right as I was getting ready to head in myself, out comes Caroline and Ian.  We asked him if he was just sitting in there, and he was like,"Yeah" (insert cute and sheepish grin).  I guess that he was having trouble crawling around and keeping his duck feet on.  We called it a night after this.

Caroline elbow deep while Ian picks up seeds he dropped.

Sunday brought about the annual carving of the pumpkin.  The kids have been begging me to do this for several days now, so I grabbed my knives and set up for the pumpkin carving.  I asked the kids how we should do it this year.  I feel that they have been thinking this through, because they immediately returned with,"Triangle eyes and a square nose".  Easy enough.  What about the mouth?  "Umm, it should have a scared mouth", Lydia responded with.  "Do you mean a scary mouth", I asked.  "Umm, yeah, a scared mouth".  Fangs it is.  The kids really like getting their hands inside of the thing and pulling out the seeds and goop.  Once the seeds are out, they just play with the goop until it is more like mush.  


They also wanted a bat on the side, which I didn't think I would want to carve a hole that big.  So I traced an outline and wanted to do more of a silhouette.  Well, as we all know, that kind of detail work is a little hard to do with a knife.  What should I use?

Carving with power tools.  That's how we Simpsons do it.

Dremel it is.  Nothing like the smell of burning pumpkin flesh and the spray of it's insides to get in the spirit.  Sounds kind of gory, but I think that is was fun.  The kids thought it was cool with me going at it with the rotary disc.  It didn't quite work how I wanted it to, but that was mostly because the pumpkin had some thick walls.  All in all a fun time.