Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Yesterday, after getting propane from Hanneman Service, we worked on swapping the repaired tire back into place on the Astro. We also discovered that the spare tire was very low on air. The tire says it should be 44 psi, but it registered less than 20 when we tested it. Hanneman Service used to have an air station, but too many people were leaving the valve on the ground and then driving over it, and they got tired of replacing it, so we had to go over to Pilot and pay $2.50. We should also have remembered to check at Big O Tires, where they do have free air, but I was so worried about missing the opening hours and Roseville that I forgot to do it.

Anyway, the tires are now all correctly pressurized and the spare is cranked back up into its space underneath the van, so all is well again.

[Back-dated due to an internet outage]

We now have four solid new tires on the RV; however, not all is well yet.

( At Last )

With the road tires settled, we went to take the RV for a short drive to make sure everything else worked. Unfortunately, after sitting for several months, the battery was dead. While I went to a chiropractor appointment, Lisa jump-started the RV from her pickup, let it charge up for a bit, and made sure its air conditioning seemed to work, and drove it around the block.

We needed to get groceries for Lisa as I'll be away for the next two weeks, so we though we'd drive the RV given that its AC works. Except that when I started it up, I realized that the driver's side mirror needed adjusting. I tried to roll down the window. Nothing. The power window didn't work. While investigating this, we ended up rolling down the passenger side window. In this case, both the up and down buttons rolled the window down and nothing rolled it up. So we shut things down again and Lisa went to work on the passenger side door. While Lisa worked on this, a thunderstorm rolled in, which make the temperatures much cooler, but also started getting things wet and harder to handle.

After Lisa removed the paneling from the door, she was able to access the window mechanism, but not to get the power window to move up. She was able to force the window back up and jam it into place temporarily so that we could secure the RV again, but this is only a quick patch and once again we'll have to put off a fix until I get back from the Bay Area.

I got the email from TireRack.com this morning, so this afternoon when I got off work, Lisa and I drove over to USA Parkway and the warehouse, backed up to the retail customer pickup lot, called the designated phone number, gave my particulars, and presently a worker appeared with a cart containing our tires. I showed my ID and credit card with which I'd paid, and at our request, he set the tires on the dock and allowed us to load them ourselves. They fit just fine.

( A Tiring Day )

To my great annoyance, we knocked loose several black widow spiders while doing the wheel work. I'd never seen a black widow with white spots on its back, but I later confirmed that some do have spots. We dispatched everything we could find. I'll poke at the next removed wheel tomorrow before putting it into the minivan to take it to be removed and replaced. I don't like spiders, but black widows are the worst. I'm glad we don't have to deal with their even worse Australian cousins.

So that's one tire down, and three to go, or actually four because we have to swap the best of the remaining tires on to the wheel for the spare. I hope that we'll get this done by the time I leave for the Bay Area on Friday evening.

Yesterday, Lisa got out the torque wrench and tighten the lug nuts on the spare tire for the Rolling Stone and then lowered it off the jack. Some of you may remember that we had a tire more or less shred itself (I think we were lucky to get home) and that we had put the spare on. We did not lower the jack, planning to replace the tire soon (we did not). In light of my minivan being in the shop in Sparks, we figured we might be able to use the RV to take us back and forth; however, it looks like the tires have other ideas.

The spare was clearly low on air. Lisa measured it at 50 psi when the rated pressure should be 80 psi. So we drove the RV (not exceeding 25 mph) over to Pilot. There we found that their air pump cannot fill tires above 70 psi, and after $2 and five minutes, it wouldn't even get to 60 psi. We gingerly made our way home, and Lisa looked more closely at all of the tires.

( Not Ideal )

These tires are sufficiently old, and the sun sufficiently hard on tires even when you don't drive the vehicle this often, that Lisa says we should not drive the RV very far, and when we do we should do so at low speeds. This means we'll need to replace five tires (including the spare). I'm leaning toward trying to buy tires from TireRack.com (which has a warehouse at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park, with a discount for picking up from their will-call), and then have the tires mounted by a shop locally. There are several tire shops around us here, so we just need to ask them if they'll mount tires that we bring them and how much they would charge.

Our first choice would have been Hanneman Service, but their tire-mounting machine is broken and they do not intend to fix it as it's not part of their core service these days. I'd rather give the money to people with whom I've worked before and who I trust, but we'll see if one of the other shops (one of which is within walking distance) will do the work.

So I reckon we're looking at around another $1000 in vehicle work. Tires are expensive, and getting more expensive. On the bright side, TireRack.com does show you the country of origin of each kind of tire, although you can't filter by it, so you have to look at each tire's entry. It's better than just taking pot-luck at the tire store.

No, not another tick bite. The leg is getting better, although the edema in my right foot is still annoying. Keeping my leg elevated last night helped some. The pain is mostly gone except around the actual site of the bite.

I had today off from work as part of the use-it-or-lose it PTO regime, and so around Noon we went to Reno to do grocery shopping at Cost Plus World Market, WinCo Foods, and finally Raley's. After loading the groceries into the minivan and getting ready to go home, I spotted a problem.

( Yet Another Flat Tire )

We really should get a new mini-spare, but Big O doesn't sell replacements for that kind of tire and says we need to go to the Chevrolet dealer and see if they can provide a replacement mini-spare for a 1987 Astro.

We also priced getting all four tires replaced on the Astro. While there seems to be more than sufficient tread on the tires, at the current rate it does seem like the left rear tire is due to fail, although it could of course just be a coincidence.

It's a good thing that I didn't need to go down to the Bay Area to work this coming week, because late last week we discovered that the right rear tire of the Rolling Stone was flat. On Friday we learned where the jack and lug wrench are hidden in the storage compartment. We could have used the tools Lisa has around the property (they're a little easier to use), but Lisa said (and I agreed) that it would be better if I learned how to do it myself on the road without support.

The jack is a screw type (not hydraulic), and you need to have some boards to put under it, because it doesn't really have enough lift to get the tire clear. My arms were very sore once we got it up to where we could remove the tire. The lug wrench was relatively easy, and I was able to break loose the eight lugs that hold the tire in place and get it off. I wrestled it into the back of the Astro and we took it to Big O Tires in Sparks where we bought the tire in the first place.

The immediate problem turned out to be a nail in the tire, which they fixed; however, they also told us that the wheel rim must have failed and it would not hold air. We took the wheel and unmounted tire back home with us, because with that diagnosis, we would need to buy a new wheel. When we got home, Lisa put some boards under the tire-less wheel and lowered it onto the boards, as pictured below.

( Taking the strain )

Yesterday, Lisa examined the wheel rim and said that the diagnosis must be wrong, because the piece they said had failed isn't something that holds air anyway. It's a solid one-piece wheel, not the two-piece type used in some vehicles. We could have taken it back to Sparks tomorrow and asked them to remount it under the tire's warranty, but instead I took it Hanneman Service down the street and paid them $17 to remount it. This evening, we put the tire back on and we'll let it sit for a while and see if it holds air.

It's a good thing I don't have to drive it as often as I did when we first bought it. However, even so, we know that the vehicle (repairs and all) has more than paid for itself versus the cost of even cheap-by-Bay-Area standards hotels, when the fleabags in Fremont are charging $99/night and selling out. Nevertheless, even though I'm now officially 100% Work From Home, I have commitments (medical and dentist appointments, SFSFC and Worldcon meetings) that will take me to the Bay Area several times a year, so we'll need to keep the Rolling Stone in "warm storage" and run it periodically to keep it usable when needed.

If I do get a flat out on the road, I may well call AAA though. They have jacks in their trucks that are easier and faster to use. I'll only resort to the hand-crank jack in an emergency.