Moeller Travels: Utah, Danish Flats Apr 10, 2015

This is one of them days that makes one bite his tongue hard not to utter some very nasty words. But I keep my cool and did my thing. We were about 75 miles east of Green River, UT when Another camper pulled up alongside of me, pointing at my 5th wheel. OK I thought, I must have a flat tire so I stopped. About then, Kay pulled up behind me and said the tire was laying alongside the road about two miles back. Sure enough when I went around the camper there was no tire or rim on the back axle of the camper. It looked like all 8 lug studs had shared off. We were about a mile from an exit, so I had Kay drive the truck and camper up to that exit to wait for me. I jumped into the car and went back down the road to find the wheel. There it was just laying alongside the pavement. I loaded it into the trunk of the car and headed back to where Kay was parked. Fortunately it did not do any damage to the rim or tire. The next thing was to pull the brake drum off the camper. Oops, I did not have a socket big enough to fit the nut on the hub. So off to Fruita, CO about 36 miles east of us to find a Napa store. I forgot to take one of the sheared off studs with me, so I guessed the size. Picked up the right size socket and headed back to the camper. Well 1 out of two is good. The socket was the right size, but the studs were all too small. After taking the hub off and beating the old studs out of the hub we went back to the Napa. Well Napa did not have the right size of studs, but told me to go to Grand Junction to a trailer store and they should have the right ones. We found the trailer store and got 8 new studs and 8 new lug nuts then headed back to the camper. By the time we got back we had put over 162 extra miles on the car. We were sure glad we had the little car to do all the running around. If we had not had the car, we would have had to unhook the truck from the camper and do all the running around with it. With the new studs I could put the whole wheel assembly back together. This whole thing was a good experience in self control. I am thankful that I know a little bit about a lot of things so I could do the repair work by myself.