Road to Orlando

2013-02-17

Sunday was supposed to be an easy run up highway 17 back to the Orlando Thousand trails Campground. About 2/3rds of the way just as we were entering the town of Bartow we heard the unmistakable sound (think shotgun blast) of a 100 psi tire blowing out a sidewall. It was one of the rear dual mounted tires and we were only doing about 45 mph so there was no driving danger. There was an empty parking lot just ahead so we just pulled in and parked. A call to my road service dispatched a service truck to our location.

The spare tire on the old motorhome was mounted in its own little locker in the back cap, it was very convenient. The spare on the new motorhome is mounted on a rack under the back like the spare on most pickup trucks. The problem is these tires are very heavy and there is no ratchet mechanism to raise or lower the spare. It took both the service truck driver and me to manhandle the tires.

This was my third tire failure in my nine years and 60+ thousand miles of motorhoming. I’ve had two side wall blowouts and one road hazard blowout thru the tread, all on the rear. Front tire blowouts are far scarier and potentially dangerous if it happens at speed.

All’s well that ends well; we were back on the road in short order and soon arrived at the campground. I was so busy helping the tire guy I never thought to get pictures for the blog.