Winter car prep

[TC Chris]

I've already posted about my oil-change disaster. The appointment is for next Tuesday, and when they're done, I'll drive the Mustang in for its new steering rack and diagnosis of the front brake bleeding problem. The new shop is right next to where I work--as convenient as you can get. Plus they seem to welcome interesting vehicles.

Tonight I picked up a snow tire for the truck at the tire shop. One of the two was a leaker. Last winter it needed filling every 10 days. That's a PITA. In the spring when it came off I labelled it "leaker" and 6 days ago took it to the tire shop. Today I called to check on progress and it was ready. I took the non-leaker to the shop with me because they have free air. The non-leaker had probably lost some; might as well fill it up there. So after picking up the repaired one I stopped at the air hose and started filling the second tire. All of a sudden it let out a huge fart of air. ^&(*^%$$#!!!!, I must have broken the stem. I drove back around to the garage area and begged another repair. Bear in mind that this is their busiest season. Everybody is there getting their tires re-mounted. But the guys were accommodating. They decided it was a bead leak. After another half hour I had two functional snow tires. Then it was home and hoping that I could get the lug nuts loose on the two rear tires. Yay, they backed off because I had put them on and I don't over-tighten. Yay, the floor jack worked. Yay, I got the snow tires on. The bed weights had been placed on Saturday. Now I'm mostly ready for winter driving. Why the worry? Well, Thanksgiving trips are usually when I face the worst snow storms. And two weeks ago, heading south to Bay City, I ran into a snowstorm near Cadillac that made the road super-slick, and that had me going about 15 mph in second gear at the top of the long hill with white knuckles. Nope, don't want to try that again.

Yesterday I rode the winter commuter bike to work. It has full fenders and studded tires plus lots of flashing lights fore and aft. We had snow on the ground and the puddles had frozen. The studded tires are great, and in Michigan they are legal only on bicycles.

Chris Campbell