- 11:18 AM,
Thursday, February 21st, 2019:
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- Took a day. Here's
the video...
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-
- So the whole story
is pretty much this: bought a new/used car a couple
months back as the Explorer just wasn't up to task and
I happened upon a stunningly clean and low-miles
Expedition. The tires seemed fine, but upon further
inspection, probably would've been wise to just
replace all four of them. They were 2013 tires. Who
knows.
-
- Basically the
added weight from the trailer (and the car and trailer
add over 5000 pounds) put pressure on the back wheels
and out of the blue: BOOOOOOOOOM. My immediate thought
was that something broke on the connectionfrom the
trailer to the car but I looked in my mirror and saw
that wasn't the case and knew it had to be a tire
blowout. The car drifts left and straight into the
lane next to me that thankfully had no one there and I
just tried to keep the car under control as I pulled
over to the right. I have to believe the drivers
around me saw what happened because I suddenly
had a clear path that I most assuredly did not
have before that.
-
- "Well, this is
gonna suck."
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- The kids were all
"what was that?" and I told them. They went back
to what they were doing and I started trying to
figure out how to get the spare off as Talya stood
behind everything to hopefully keep cars from hitting
us. That's the actually scary part is there's hardly
any shoulder and the way people text and driver?
UGGGH. But I got to work and quickly found that
no matter what, those bolts were not coming off.
Called AAA and with 2 breaker bars measuring over 6
feet from the nut we finally made it work.
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- But of course even
getting back on the road I wasn't doing well. I'd
never taken the kids on a road-trip with the Explorer
because it never felt safe and an accident while
towing a car is just... so, many, different ways to
die. LOL. Like - it absolutely changes all dynamics of
driving. However in a bit of a catch-22, what caused
the blowout also kept us straight: the trailer. That
trailer made it so I had only lost 1/8th of my
wheels, not 1/4th. When you still have 7 of 8 tires on
the ground, it might veer... but it isn't likely to
spin out like it could when you only have 3 left.
Either way, it's gonna be a really long time before
I consider putting them in a car when I'm towing
that much weight. It's an innate need to protect them
and this felt WILDLY irresponsible.
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- So we stopped a
couple times on the way back home because I just
needed to walk around. The mental exhaustion just
floored me. I'm still not really over it. Thankfully
the kids are oblivious but you add that to the list of
things parents keep with them for the rest of their
lives while the kids just keep on livin'.
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- That's all that
matters.
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- Adam
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