Fritz Maurer
Well-known Member
Purchased two 10.00-20 caps to put on my dump truck, and I was in a hurry cuz I put a topsoil ad in the paper early, before I was ready, thinking I'd get a slow response due to the economy, heat, etc. Got two hits for 20 yard loads right away. Selected the worst set of duals on the truck,one of which was flat. Got the outside mounted up OK, but the inside (the one I should have left alone, but too stubborn to mount a new tire next to an old one), was solid rust. Beat on that thing for 4 hours and finally ruined the rim,tire, tube, flap. The snap ring was the only thing that survived. Found a spare 20" rim, flap, and a tube with a hole in it. 5:00 pm Thurs, no tire place open. Went to Auto Parts Store for patches. Come out of A.P.S. and hear hissing sound. Drywall screw prominently displayed on top of half-flat tire. O.K., if I hurry I can make the four miles back to the shop. Local cop visible, everybody obeying speed limit. Made it two miles. No sweat, I'll just air it up enough to get back to the shop. Battery dead on compressor. No air in tank because I didn't fix that leak I was supposed to. Have to jack it up and change it. Found out 1-1/2 floor jack won't pick up my F-350 crew cab, tool body, and air compressor. Also found out I was parked near a dead raccoon. Had to jack on frame, using planks, to get the piston out of the jack some, where it had better mechanical advantage. Got it off the ground, another sick feeling set in: no air for impact wrench.Rage increasing, I reached for a breaker bar and set to work on Ford's A- hole self-locking 9/16ths lug nuts. Got the spare on an hour later, got back to the shop where a friend with nothing to do was waiting. Not much in a mood for conversation, I kept busy around the shop hoping he would leave. But, no, he pulled up a chair next to my Farmall 460 and yapped. After a while he went silent, this made me uneasy. I went over to see what he was doing, just in time to see him fiddling with the corroded green air-water valve on the tire. Before I could draw a breath the thing broke off in his hand.and calcium was squirting everywhere. He escaped without getting a drop on him, I had to dive in and hold my finger over the hole, calcium getting into the scratches I had gotten that day, hurling profanities at him that I didn't know that I knew, hollering for him to bring a pencil from the desk to jam in the hole. I wasn't concerned about the calcium, I was worried about the front of the bell housing being precariously balanced on a jack stand, I wasn't sure it stay under there with one flat tire. Another 2 hours lost. Got back to my original project, got the two tires on, walk around the other side, another flat. This one went better, it was a new rim. I felt like I had been freed from prison. It was finally over! I checked all the lights, put on the licence plates, walked around the truck and one of my new tires was flat.
