The picture you are looking at to the right is a good example of how to meet a firey death NASCAR-style. Those oh-so-cheerful arrows are pointing to the studs that, in theory, keep a spinning tire attached to a vehicle. Note that when they are not there or improperly secured, your tire is imbued with an inertia-based freewill. Let me explain to you how it happens from my personal experience. After I completed a sequence of tough and lonely solo hikes out in the far southwest, Jody agreed to lend me the use of her company AND her truck to hike Storm King Peak. Storm King's trailhead requires a 4x4. Since she had just gotten over $1,000 of work on her truck to get it running in tip-top shape, we planned the hike (and drive) for this past Sunday. The repairs on her truck were to her rear differential, a component of the rear axle. Because it was a progressive problem, she hadn't driven the truck much--and thus was not made aware of a problem a PREVIOUS mechanic had made in not properly securing the front left tire.
To make a long story short, we headed out towards Storm King, a very remote peak with a backwoods access road. As we headed up the highways to the back country, we both noted the tires making a "funny sound" but attributed it to low air pressure or something like that. We had (thankfully) gotten off the main highway and headed out on Fremont Pass-- to those in Colorado, Rt. 91 from Copper to Leadville. All was well as sped up the pass around 60 MPH when there was a sudden and very unexpected jarring, like hitting a mammoth pot hole-- yet there was nothing in the smooth mountain pass road. An awful grinding sound accompanied the surreal sight of Jody's front left tire bounding by us in tremendous leaps, speeding up a mountainside, completely unfettered to the vehicle.
I'm sure it was quite a thrill for the bicyclist who was coming downhill towards us, to see a huge tire flying towards him.
Amazingly, the tire didn't hit anyone or anything and Jody's calm driving probably saved our lives. She got over to the side of the road; we got out and checked the damage. First off, yes the tire was gone, a good quarter mile up the road from where we had stopped. Our silver lining to this accident came in the form of the metallic rotor--completely undamaged--meaning the brake system was not affected. The control arm and ball joint were almost completely ground away, but they had taken the bulk of the impact and prevented the brake line from failing.
A second problem arose when we found out that when thieves had broken ito Jody's truck a few months back, they had stolen her jack. Wanting to relieve the pressure on the damamged components, we flagged down a fellow Toyota driver and borrowed a jack. Using a big rock and the jack, we got the truck high enough off the ground to get a good look. I ran up and retrieved the errant tire. Again, here we had a bit of good luck--using the lugs from the remaining attached tires, we were able to refit the stray tire onto the remaining studs. In this sketchy manner, we were able to drive at walking speeds to the town of Frisco--a drive that was no more than 10 miles away and took us over two hours to complete. Once there, the mechanics were amazed at the extent of the damage--over $2,000--as well as the fact we didn't get hurt AND we limped the truck down from the pass.
Again, to summarize--we ended up getting a $450 tow into town, directly to the Toyota dealerhsip in Longmont. Thanks to Jody's presuasive (and ultimately accurate) assesment of mechanic error, Toyota has agreed to repair the truck and reimburse the tow charges for free. While that's a pretty strong admission of error on their part, it's still a good PR move, as tires detaching from vehicles is not the best word of mouth.
In the end, the only thing lost was a few good hiking days, though the very next day Jody and I salvaged a hike of the Citadel (using my car). It was good to get some stress-relieving fresh air, plus it gave me an excuse to use another fat photoshop arrow. The shot is Jody scrambling down from the east summit of The Citadel, which was no where near as scary as this photo makes it seem. So tomorrow, I'm back on the road to get Bill's and Byer's Peaks, then Mount Ouray and perhaps give Storm King another shot this weekend. I'm glad I'm not a cat, as I would have used at least 6 of my 9 lives writing this book (this of course, implies humans have many more lives than kitties--let's hope so!)
