We were almost bound to get a puncture at some point, and I guess it happened “easy”. For luck Sarah was out of the truck taking a hike, and I had stopped a few KM down the road waiting for her. I hopped out of the truck and heard air coming out of somewhere, and as I’m used to a few air leaks on the air system of the truck, I was not majorly concerned but took a walkabout to track it down anyway. As I got to the rear tyre, the sound was getting way too loud to be good. Luckily it had not gone completely flat, which meant no damage had been done to the tyre, and I could easily identify where the leak was.
It was easy to see where the damage was.
And we had another issue, it was about 6pm, and we needed to get back to the nearest town to collect some laundry we had left in. As it was a Saturday evening, if we didn’t collect it, we would have to wait until Monday morning to get it. Time for some quick tyre changing, and as anyone who has had anything to do with a Mog knows, not much happens quick!
Something missing from here… At least I got to inspect the brakes, all good there.
One question we often get is “how do you change a wheel?”. To get the wheel off – it’s easy. Getting it back on can be fun. This next photo is the crux of it. To get the wheel onto the rim, move the wheel about, and lift it and spin it a little, you use 2 long lever bars. One on each side of the tyre at about the 5 and 7 oclock positions. To get the top of the tyre to go in onto the studs, once it is lined up, you just give it a nod of the head. Easy really. Top marks to my buddy Norm for teaching me this trick, you gotta hand it to a trucker.
Normans 2 levers and a head trick
Once we had the spare on, we had to pump it up. We carry the spare almost flat, about 10psi so that it will fit in under the body of the camper. We have a slightly oversized tyre from the standard size, so we need all the help we can get to get the spare in, so we carry it pretty soft to allow it to squeeze in. And since we have onboard air pressure, we just pump it up when we need it.
Sarah pumping up the spare
We normally have about 80psi in the rear tyres, and about 65psi in the front. Getting from 10psi to 80psi in a large tyre takes a while!
We had been hearing some air leaks from under the truck, so I took the chance to have a good rummage about while the spare was out.
The completely flat spare went back in easily, and we were on our way pretty quick. We made it in time for the Laundry which was great or it would have cost us 2 days.
On the Sunday as we went through Junin de los Andes, we spotted a tyre place (Gomeria) open, so we got it fixed. It’s very nerve wrecking driving with no spare in Argentina, the distances are so great. There are tyre places in most towns, but getting a flat wheel to and from them could be fun. Bringing a Mog wheel on the local bus or taxi might be a tad difficult!
All the tyre fixing places have signs like these.
The tyre with its new patch.
The continental tyre goes on and off the rim pretty easy as truck tyres go.
The cost of the repair? A$100, which is about €14. Not so bad I suppose 🙂
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