Note to Self: New Tires Before Alaska

When we pulled into a Pemex station this afternoon for fuel in Cuidad Constitution, the men at the station immediately started pointing to the passenger side of the 5^th wheel with a look of alarm on their faces. It turns out the forward tire on the trailer was extremely flat. Closer examination showed it was another sidewall failure, rather than a puncture. Bob has read that when new trailers are delivered, their tires are usually not that great. Well, it looks like a sidewall failure after only 5,000 miles supports that statement.

We were lucky there was a llantera (tire repair shop, only dealing in repairs and used tires) next to the gas station, and they were able to take off the flat tire and replace it with the spare in about 10 minutes, and charged us a whopping 20 pesos (about $1.50). Ciudad Constitution is a town of about 35,000 so it’s large enough to have at least two stores which sell new tires. The second one had the right size, although it wasn’t quite the right weight rating, but beggars can’t be choosers, and it’s about 600 miles before we get to the next town of equal or larger size. So we had them put the new tire on the spare rack and were on our way. Total time from when we pulled into the gas station to the time we left the second store with our new tire was exactly one 1 hour. Seems like that problem worked out very well.

We’re planning to drive the Al-Can Highway to Anchorage in May-June after we get home from Baja. We’d already decided on new tires for the truck after a sidewall failure in La Ribera a month ago, but now it looks like we’ll need 8 new tires instead of 4! Guess we’ll have to do some research.