Flat tires suck. Flat tires as a symptom of a bigger issue suck worse.
Traffic between LaPine and Winnemucca was nonexistent. Interstate traffic after Winnemucca is sparse. Weather, perfect. The campground that we’re headed to is reputed to be a little short on trees but long on stargazing. We’re on schedule to get camp set up and dinner on the stove before sundown. We’ve got a pretty decent day going.
And then, something feels a little off, like hitting a headwind and patch of rough road at the same time. If the pilot of a Jap Zero looked in his rear view mirror after a run-in with Pappy Boyington, it would look a lot like the scene in my rear view mirror. Instincts pull the clutch and chop the throttle, resulting in way more deceleration than expected, and a Peterbuilt grill getting clearer through the smoke. I reapply throttle and power over to the shoulder. I wish I could say these few seconds went by as smoothly as the last couple sentences.
What we find on the side of I-80 isn’t just a flat, it’s a seized wheel bearing that has stopped the wheel from rolling. Now the wheel won’t budge and neither will the nut that holds it on. When the bearing seized it turned the inner race against the nut, running it down about a half dozen threads tighter. The wrench in the uh-oh kit won’t back off the nut, even with me standing on it. And even if I get the nut off, I fear a bearing race welded to the axle.
We contemplate the pickle we are in for a while. Then we contemplate the pickle we’d be in if this had happened earlier in the day, like back on that ridge leading up to Doherty hang glider launch, where there was no shoulder, no margin for less than full control of direction, and no cell service. I call Progressive and ask if I have tow coverage and if it covers this situation. We do, it does. I ask Flow to get a flat bed to take us to the nearest KOA. The flatbed shows up in about 30 minutes. We load the trailer on the truck and we follow it back to the KOA in Winnemucca. The driver waits for me to check in and then drops the trailer at our campsite.
Just a few notes or things to be thankful for here:
No doctors, cops or lawyers involved-all the way to the end of this adventure. This is the primary indicator of a good ride for me. I haven’t been disappointed with the staff or facility at a KOA yet (though I have avoided a few do to online reviews). The real estate that they put KOAs on, however, often leaves a little to be desired. Most of them are close to the interstate, designed more for RVers to spend a night along their way, rather than as a place for a tenter to enjoy nature. I’d call the location of this one interstate/industrial. But the staff is nice and accommodating. At some, probably most, private campgrounds, the owners would balk at letting a wrecker drop a crippled rig off in the park. Here, they let us in and give us the number to a local mechanic. It’s also the first KOA that we’ve seen with an on-site liquor store.
Monday morning I leave Mrs1911 at camp and trek 10 minutes to an auto parts store. OK, now I’m kind of liking the location of this KOA. I get the longest ½ inch drive breaker bar that they have and a socket, along with a punch and chisel set and a ball peen hammer. With the new leverage I get the damaged wheel assembly off. No damage to the axle shaft-big honkin' sigh of relief! The spare wheel goes right on
Then I check the bearings on the other side and conclude that there is no way these will make it home.
IMHO the bearing set up on the Bustecs is under designed. They are small and, especially the inner, are too exposed to the elements. This particular trip has seen our beloved Bushtec cover some rough ground, like the Forest Service roads to Mount Saint Helens, and the pumice sand and dust of Oregon.
No worry though, there is a set of spare bearings in the bottom of the trailer. Because a forward looking rider with some planning sense carries a set
Or
Because a chronic procrastinator never got around to putting them in before the trip.
Bushtec got me on the oddball sized tires that you can only get from Bushtec $$$ I outsmarted them on the bearings though. I used my power and influence with connections in the auto repair business to cross-reference the number on old bearings and get a set gratis. Or so I thought. All the bearing makers’ cross-reference charts convert the Bushtecs version of a 6203 to their version of readily available bearing. None of them are right. Bushtec’s 6203 has an inside diameter about a 1/16 inch smaller than the rest of the world. And nobody in Winnemucca has a 6203 with the unique I.D. of the 6203 that Bushtec uses.
So I fire up the cell phone and start calling Bushtec dealers, starting with the closest. At the first few all I get is a cog in the parts department of a large dealer that finds it amusing that I might think that they would actually stock a part for a trailer. Then I get hold of Frank at Nunzio’s Custom Trikes. This is the kind of guy you want to talk to when you are in a jam. He doesn’t have all of what I need in stock, and the folks at Bushtec aren’t returning his call. But he does agree to sell me the spare from his demo trailer, so it’s off to Helper, Utah we go. BUT, I’m not feeling real good about getting even that far on the inner bearing in the old wheel.
The guys at the very cool Ace Hardware store in Winnemucca are sure that they have seen an assortment of shimstock in the store, but they can’t find it now. I find some chimney flashing that feels about .030” thick and a cheap pair of shears and head back to camp. This campground improvised spacer will have to get us to Helper.
You can’t ride from Winnemucca to Provo without checking Bonneville, can you?
Provo to Helper should be a pleasant 60 mile ride. The roads closed due to the Spanish Fork fire add a couple hundred miles. The mountains just yards on the other side of the interstate just barely visible.
The hotel in Springville smelled like a campfire and the people on the news were discussing the possibility of evacuating some large cities.
Nunzio’s Custom Trikes is a home based business in Helper, Utah. At first glance I see an air-cooled v-twin trike conversion…..yawn….a something-glide three wheeler. When I noticed the Honda badge I got a little curious and peeked around the corner, looked around the shop. Interesting. Vmax’s from both generations. Frank says the newer one is an eight second bike. It sounds like it could be. Nuzio’s has had some show winning trikes and some calander bikes. Forgive me for not getting better pics of some of the paint work.
We leave Nunzio’s with two good wheel/tire/bearing assemblies on the ground, a spare with a mismatch bearing in the trailer, and Frank’s lunch recommendation, Marcia’s Sammich Shop. I kept my chimney flashing shim as a souvenir. Frank’s lunch recommendation was right on the money.
Helper is a very interesting little town. Check it out. Give the waitress at Marcia’s a little attitude and see what you get
191 north out of Helper DOES NOT suck.
The skies were clear and the shadows were long as we rolled into Craig, Colorado,
and another KOA, with a nice facility and great staff but sandwiched right between a railroad track and the road. Didn’t keep us from getting a good night’s sleep though.
