Sunday July 22, 2007
Trip Start
Jul 21, 2007
1
2
6
Trip End
Jul 26, 2007
El Paso, Texas
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The next morning we were up early and out of town going a route suggested to us by Louie and Sibyl. We were out of town in minutes on Texas 213 and driving by the scenic Franklin Mountains and heading towards New Mexico 404 and connected with I-10 north of Anthony, NM.
We drove along I-10 by the towns of Las Cruces, Deming and Lordsburg and were through New Mexico pretty soon. We stopped at the first rest area inside Arizona and marveled at the huge rocks and magnificent views from there. We would be in really rugged country for a good while now.
About 20 miles out of Tucson we were passing a truck up a steep grade and hard on the gas when we heard a loud bang. At the same time the trailer go squirrelly and we knew from experience it was a tire and we looked for a spot to pull over. When we got out of the truck, we could immediately see that it was more than just a tire. The cover on the hub was gone and so were the insides of the bearings and hot axle grease radiated out from the center of the wheel, completely covering it. We had a new spare wheel and tire, but without bearings we weren't going to travel far. Our fear was that the hub and wheel would come off the axle or that the axle shaft would be ruined by the old bearing races cutting into it.
There was a lot of junk and trash in the roadside and we hoped to find a washer to put on the axle in an attempt to keep the hub from coming off the axle, but there was none to be found. All we could do was change the wheel and tire and snug up the axle nut a bit and take off down the road very slowly. We thought about 'The World's Fastest Indian' again where the old Indian man shows Burt how to lash an old tree limb to the axle and drag it along road to the next stop. That just didn't seem like a good option with three bikes on the trailer.
We limped along the shoulder at 15 to 18 mph and it got scary a few times when we had to get on the highway because of a bridge or close guardrail. After almost ten miles of this we saw an exit for AZ 83 and took it. This was the exit for Sonoita and Patagonia. There wasn't much there, just a small, very new housing development. Paul decided to go down the streets and look for a home that looked like someone lived there who worked on things. The first street we went down we saw a house with a new Toyota work truck in the driveway and an open garage door where we could see a large floor jack and big work tables and a gun safe. Just the kind of place we were looking for.
Paul stopped the truck and walked up to the door and introduced himself and explained our dilemma. Steve came out and told us we could park the trailer in his driveway and use any tools he had. It didn't take long to get the wheel and hub off, but it was Sunday afternoon now and the chance of getting what we needed to fix the trailer were slim. We called a trailer supply house in Tucson, but of course they were closed. So we wrote down the numbers and took off.
We were starving by now so we drove over to Vail, a little suburb of Tucson and saw a bar and grill with a bunch of Harleys parked out front and stopped and went in. There we had burgers and cheese steak sandwiches with fries and lots of iced tea. I though there might be a chance that Wally World might have bearing kits since they stock wheels and tires for trailers. It was worth a chance so we asked for directions and as we drove north we passed by Davis-Monthan AFB and the Military Aircraft Boneyard.
http://www.sarimage.com/Aviation/DavisMonthan/
I had seen this place on 'Boneyards' on the History Channel and was fascinated by it. Now we were seeing it for real. I'm sure this was out in the country when the base was built, but now it is right in town with a major street cutting right through it! I took photographs out the window as we drove by and later we would stop and take more.
We got to Wal-Mart and they didn't have what we needed, but I had seen a Autozone closer to the base so we went back there. They had a bearing kit that includes everything but the hub cap, even a tube of grease for under $20. So we took it and went back to Steve's place passing the boneyard again.
When we got to Steve's it was easy to see that the bearings in the kit were not for a one inch axle like it said on the package. They were more like one and an eighth! So it was back to Autozone to return the kit and see if we could find one that had the correct bearings in the kit. Before we left, I looked at the hub and saw that there was a crack running most of the way around the hub from the stress of running without a bearing. We would need a new hub for sure! We decided that it would be best to keep the bearings if we could get the right ones in case the other side went out. This proved to be a good idea.
After returning to Autozone, they sent us to another location where we exchanged the parts for the right ones. Next in order was to find the trailer shop and a nearby motel so we could be there when they opened the next morning and get what we needed. We found a Econo Lodge with wireless internet two blocks from the shop. After that we went out looking for a place to eat and wound up at the Macaroni Grill, a place Paul had eaten at before. When he saw that what he wanted was not on the menu, the waiter sent over the manager who told him what to write on the ticket so Paul could get what he wanted. The food was great and the waiter brought around one of those tall pepper grinders like on 'The Bob Newhart Show' years ago.
