Spare Tire Addendum

Few of the blogs I've written have generated as much response as the one last week about spare tires on the Alaska Highway. In it I wrote that I made the extra effort to purchase a spare wheel and tire for my class A motorhome, which did not come furnished with a spare.

What I forgot to write was how I handle being able to change it, and at least one reader took me to task. It's true, you don't change one of these as an after thought as the wheel-tire combination weighs more than 200 pounds and the lug nuts are tightened to 375-foot-pounds of torque. Both of these are beyond the capacity of most of us without some sort of mechanical advantage.

First the lug nuts...I bought a one-inch-drive breaker bar, the appropriate-sized socket, and a four-foot piece of steel pipe to slip over the breaker bar for the necessary leverage to loosen and tighten the lug nuts. This will do the job, though you'll need to have the torque you apply to the spare checked at the first opportunity.

Dealing with the wheel-tire combination is another matter. I finally solved this with a crow bar and a piece of two-by-four. (I carry the spare in the small truck I tow as a dinghy so it is relatively easy to get at--I don't even want to think of trying to handle this monster on a bracket under the motorhome in the space provided.)

Taking off the flat tire is relatively straight forward after you break the lug nuts loose, unless it is an inside dual. Then you may need a five-pound, short-handled sledge hammer to break it loose from the wheel. Putting the spare on involves rolling the spare up to the now-vacant wheel, lining up the bolt holes with the lugs as much as possible, adjusting the height of the jack so you only need raise the wheel a quarter to a half an inch, then using the two-by-four as a fulcrum for the crow bar to lever the wheel off the ground with one hand while you push it onto the lugs with the other. This last took a couple of practice runs before I got the hang of it, but using this technique I was able to do a complete six-tire rotation on my rig last spring. Considering the advanced state of my arthritis, I'd say this worked out pretty well, though I was certainly ready to visit the aspirin bottle after I finished.

A final note about jacking up a motorhome is also in order. If you have hydraulic leveling jacks as I do, put them all the way down on the affected side of the motorhome. This alone may raise the tire off the ground. If it does not, slip a small hydraulic jack under the axle near the affected wheel and raise it the rest of the way. If your rig uses compressed air for leveling, you are going to need a much stouter jack because the air bags raise and lower the frame in relation to the axle; they do not raise or lower the entire rig at once as do the hydraulics.