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Australia - 2005-04-28 - Highway 1 - Blown Tire
On the way to Broome on Highway 1, about 80 kilometers away we had our
first major vehicle issue. The tire blew while Adrian was driving. He
was able to slow down & get the truck to the side of the road. The tire
was completely gone as you can see from the first picture. The second
picture shows how close we were to the road, but getting off it further
would have made it really tough to change the tire. The third picture
shows the storm looked like it might be closing in on what was a rather
hot day. After checking it out we decided we had no choice but to change
it there, so we got all the tools around and started to change it. The
problem was the jack that we had was really small & did not have a handle.
So we had to do the first part by hand, then had to use a combination
of wrenches & screwdrivers to get leverage on the jack to lift the truck
high enough to get the tire off. I got 2 blisters on my hands from this
& it took us a really long time. We had one guy stop to help but he didn't
have any tools so it didn't help us much. We got the truck just high enough
to get the tire off & then were going to dig out the space we needed to
put the new one on. After finally getting the tire high enough we took
the old tire off. When we took it off we realize that there was a big
rock right where we needed to dig. Eventually we used the hammer & screwdriver
to get the rock out & dug out what we needed to get the spare tire on.
Then we got it all tightened up & put the old tire on the back door before
heading off. I think the whole process took us around an hour, due to
all the problems we encountered. The happy part of the story was that
we were able to get a "new" tire installed on the old rim & balance, plus
put on the car for $20 in Broome 2 days later :)
Pictures
