Spare wheel warning!

At a recent service on my Bailey Bordeaux by a mobile engineer he pointed out a nail in one of the road wheels tyres, it was not leaking air though, I decided that the following day I would remove the wheel and take it to my local tyre company for a repair and have the tyre put onto the spare wheel and the spare tyre onto the road wheel.

So jack up caravan and remove wheel, no problem, drop down the spare wheel cage, no problem; remove the large hand wheel type clamp, a little stiff but no real problem, undo the further securing nut, it won’t budge, now I have a great deal of engineering experience and I like to think practical skills, I tried every thing in my arsenal of ideas, it would not budge.

 Day two sees me back with a nut splitter and a large chisel, after a good deal of bad language and grazed knuckles I eventually remove the nut.

The moral of the story is check you can remove your spare before you need to on the side of the road.

Now some will say no doubt that with my engineering knowledge I should have check this, true, but in mitigation this had been greased on all the yearly services.