And I thought my luck was bad ! My seized control seems trivial by far !

Clive

"Steve Lomax" wrote in message
...
I hope you don't mind me sharing this with you.

Sunday morning. Great weather. Wife suggests "lets take the kids and the
boat up to Windemere, we could be there in a couple of hours." OK" I
thinks, could do with checking out a recent prop repair.

So, after spending 2 hours freeing a well siezed brake drum, we are 3
hours
later heading up the M6 around J34 when 'Hiss - Bang', blowout on the
nearside trailer wheel. "Its OK!", I smugly announce to the family, " I
have brought a spare" . 10 Minutes later we reach the roadworks 1 mile fom
J35 and again, 'Hiss Bang', the spare gives out too. It's now 2.00pm,
baking
hot, I'm eating humble pie, and I phone our breakdown company. A police
patrol reverses back from the exit to check us out and calls up the free
motorway recovery service to the end of the roadworks. We get recovered to
Truck Haven Services an hour later and await our recovery company. at 5pm,
the breakdown company phone back to say they can't get a flat back truck
big
enough for the boat trailer, and offer to send a mobile tyre mechanic. At
8pm we are finally inflated again and head for home. 2 miles to go and an
alarming grinding noise forces us to pull over. Wheel bearing had given
up.

Lessons I have learned

1 Make sure brake shoes have actually released from drums when parking
the trailer for any length of time. Releasing the handbrake is not
sufficient.
2 Trailer tyres that have plenty of tread are not necessarily OK.
3 A cheap "it will do as a spare" remould wont.
4 A top quality, heavy duty tyre is cheaper than keeping the family
amused at a motorway service station for 6 hours. (but you need a mortgage
for three)
5 I am kidding no one when I say "Hmm, the wheel hub's running a bit
hot,
but it'll be OK 'till we get there".
6 Just because we have recovery insurance doesn't mean that they can
actually recover us. (They did get us going though,-eventually)

Steve.