Welcome back again to Engel's Coach. I'm Dave. How many of you have a bucket list?
You know, one of those things that is on your desire to do before you die. We're
all gonna die. Well, back in 2009 I decided to check off
one of the items on my bucket list. I always wanted to experience firsthand
what I had read about in the old days, 1800s, of individual men headed to the
mountains to become a mountain man, and living a solitary life, traveling by
themselves. I was always kind of curious what that
was like, so I decided about this time in 2009, March, April, that I was going to do
that, and so I headed for from Joliet here to Great Falls, to Bozeman and back.
I ended up traveling by myself 650 miles, over five weeks,
and I headed across some pretty wide-open country. I has some pretty stormy nights.
Rode in rain road and snow, rode through the mountains. As I would go through
different towns, about every other week, I would stop and resupply.
I stopped and saw son and his wife in Bozeman, and resupplied there before I headed home.
So anyway I got home the first week of October and it was cold and cloudy
and dreary and this the forecast was for snow coming in, so I made it in just kind
of right before that. Well I got a call from a gal that wanted to do a bucket
list ride from Mexico to Canada with her horse and a little wagon and her husband
followed along with a pickup and trailer a support team well if you remember back
a while, a year or so ago, a year and a half ago, I did a little video on some
miniature horse wheels. Tightened them up, well this was for preparation for this
ride. Well she did this last spring, through the summer and fall, and partway
through, about mid-June, I got an email that she had lost a rubber tire off of a
front wheel. What should we do? And I said just keep on going.
That wheel's going to be fine. The channel iron is going to keep your wheel sound
and secure. Just keep on driving. Don't mess up your dream ride for the sake of
a rubber tire. Well through the course of the rest of that summer she drove, she
lost two more, so she ended the ride with only one rubber tire left intact, and
you'll see what that looked like, but that first front wheel that lost the
rubber tire the earliest, ground its way down to where it was only 1/8 inch metal
band left on the wheel. I'm gonna put a one-inch rubber on that, that has two wires
instead of the 3/4 inch rubber that they had on, with only a single wire. So this
video was putting new rubber on these wheels. She still has the state of
Colorado that she would like to finish and so let's get these rebuilt so she
can continue her bucket list ride and finish the Mexico to Canada ride.
Well as I was cleaning up these bearings, one outer bearing just fell apart, just
shelled out, so it was ready to fail anyway. I do have a replacement for that.
The grease seal, sometimes I can salvage them. These I couldn't. I kind of messed
them up when I was pulling them out, so I'm gonna put new grease seals in here
too when we put these back together.
Well this one front tire that lost the rubber first, ground down to where was
just an eighth inch band left. Well this, being driven on gravel roads, actually
hammered this steel and stretched it out, so this was actually a pretty loose tire.
So from here in Joliet Montana to wherever you're at, I hope you're staying
safe, and if you have a bucket list, here's hoping that you make the time, or
find the time, to check one of those things off.
Once again, Thanks for watching!