A Tail From the Road

We left Georgia at about 9:00pm and I drove until prudence dictated otherwise. Tim took the wheel at about 12:00am and I crawled into the back to curl up next to Amy for some sleep. After thirty minutes the alternating drone of tires on tarmac and the thunk thunk of expansion joints had lulled me into the state that passes for sleep in a van.

Moments later my comfortable trance was disturbed by Tim calling me gently to return to the front of the van. I noticed as a crawled over bags, coolers and pit crew that the van had come to rest on the side of a very dark and moonless stretch of South Carolina highway.

"We just lost a wheel bearing" Tim stated " I could hear the rollers bouncing around in the hub cap."

I let that sink in a little.

I had repacked those very wheel bearing not 2000 miles ago. I then remembered the torch the guy had used at the alignment place to make twisting the I-Beams possible. The heat from the torch, I surmised, had fried the grease and, hence, the bearing.

I stepped out into the fifty degree night to pull the wheel and survey the damage. Tim jacked up the van while I loosened the hub nuts and removed the bearing cover. The 7,000 lbs of 85 mph van had welded the bearing to the axle and tried to wear through the washer and nut retaining the wheel. It appeared that the only thing that had kept our wheel on the axle was the guiding forces of the brake pads and caliper.

It looked very bad.

At about that time a cop drove up lights flashing. Perhaps my encounters with the man have been atypical but past experiences include fines, harassment and aimed pump 12 gauges. I figured that, in addition to the necessity of getting the van and trailer somewhere safe to effect permanent repaired, I was going to have to pay a fine and talk to an officious judge about my "failure to grease a bearing in a timely fashion".

My first reaction was to get the cop the hell out of there.

"Have a problem sir?" inquired the state trooper in an obvious attempt to elicit a confession from me.

"No everything is okay. Little problem with the van but we can fix it. We'll be alright. Thanks for stopping." I responded masking my guilt.

"Want me to call a tow truck for you?" queried the state trooper trying to gain my confidence.

"No that's okay. We'll be fine." But I knew he had me on the ropes.

"I'm the last patrol until 5:00am. You'll be out here all night if I don't get you help now." he cautioned using the good cop/bad cop interrogation techniques he probably learned in some CIA training program.

"We'll be alright. Thanks." I replied as a last ditch attempt to throw him off.

"Okay then. Have a good night"

And he was gone.

My knees weak with relief at the close escape I walked back to the van.

"Is he calling us a tow truck" questioned Tim.

"uh, no. I told him not to" I replied weakly.

"You sent him away!" asked Tim worriedly.

"uh, yeah"

"SAM! SOMETIMES YOU CAN USE THE MAN!!"

"You guys need any help" asked Steve from under a sleeping bag on the front seat.

"No, we're okay" says Tim

"Can we close the door then. It's getting cold in here" offered Steve helpfully as he pulled the down bag over his head.

Tim settled in to cutting off the bearing races welded to the axle by flashlight while I scrambled for a solution to this problem. Tim later told me "You had gotten us out of enough jams in the past to make me believe that we were going to get out of this one although I was very very curious to see what you were going to do."

I shuffled through a box of spare parts for the race bike looking for a bearing. We had some wheel bearings but Yamaha wheel bearings are ball bearings not tapered roller bearings and what we needed was a tapered roller.

"Uh, Tim, do you think the top steering head bearing out of an FZR 400 would fit in that hub?" meekly asked I.

Tim looked up from his hacksaw. "You refused a tow truck. You sent away the cop. Now you are asking me if I think an FZR head bearing will fit in a FORD VAN?" Pregnant pause. "Go get it."

Twenty minutes later we were doing 25 mph up the shoulder with Tim riding out the window watching the hub with a Maglight. Ten miles up the road was an exit. Three miles off the exit was a parking lot of an abandoned gas station. We slept until 10:00am.

I took Amy's bicycle for a reconnaissance mission and found an auto parts store with Sunday hours. By 12:30pm I had a new hub and rotor, new bearings, and new brake pads. By 1:30 pm we were headed north at 80 mph.

As Walt Schaefer says "If you can't field strip your transporter, you are in the wrong game."

11:30pm, Sunday Morning