MIDNIGHT RIDER
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- Sep 29, 2005
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This is a good place to tell my rubber valve stem story which is a good example as to why metal stems are much to be preferred over any sort of rubber.
My life-long good friend who I grew up with has this CJ-5 Jeep with 15-38.5-15 Gateway Gumbo Mudders on 12-inch wide white-spoke "wagon" wheels; real steel wheels with genuine real bias-ply tires from back in the good old days.
These fifty-year-old wheels have the big 5/8" holes for the valve stems; this is important to remember.
The Jeep sits around for weeks at a time and gets driven occasionally to one of the vanishing burger joints with curb service and roller-skate girls that bring a tray out and hook it on your side glass (of course, the rag-top CJ has no side glass)
One sunny afternoon, he decided to run it up to the local coin-operated car-wash and give it a bath; a lot of dust can settle on a vehicle that sits for months at a time.
As he was swabbing around the insides of those huge wide wheels with that big brush that has soapy water squirting through the bristles, all of a sudden, a projectile shot past his ear and there was this loud whooshing sound = he had washed off one of those forty-year-old dry-rotted rubber valve stems.
Like the little boy at the ****(I typed the proper and correct word for an earthen dam in Holland and the powers that be replaced it with these stars --- oh well...), he crammed the end of his thumb over the hole to prevent further escape of the air.
I can't remember just what; but, he managed to knock the nearby garbage can over with his extended boot and roll it close enough to examine the contents and found something somewhat suitable to cram in the hole and slow down the escape of air.
There is a tremendous lot of air inside a properly inflated 15-38.5-15 Gateway Gumbo Mudder.
He made it back to the house; and, when I arrived a few hours later with a handful of new stems, she was listing hard to Larboard but still had a long ways to go before the rim rested on the sidewalls.
My life-long good friend who I grew up with has this CJ-5 Jeep with 15-38.5-15 Gateway Gumbo Mudders on 12-inch wide white-spoke "wagon" wheels; real steel wheels with genuine real bias-ply tires from back in the good old days.
These fifty-year-old wheels have the big 5/8" holes for the valve stems; this is important to remember.
The Jeep sits around for weeks at a time and gets driven occasionally to one of the vanishing burger joints with curb service and roller-skate girls that bring a tray out and hook it on your side glass (of course, the rag-top CJ has no side glass)
One sunny afternoon, he decided to run it up to the local coin-operated car-wash and give it a bath; a lot of dust can settle on a vehicle that sits for months at a time.
As he was swabbing around the insides of those huge wide wheels with that big brush that has soapy water squirting through the bristles, all of a sudden, a projectile shot past his ear and there was this loud whooshing sound = he had washed off one of those forty-year-old dry-rotted rubber valve stems.
Like the little boy at the ****(I typed the proper and correct word for an earthen dam in Holland and the powers that be replaced it with these stars --- oh well...), he crammed the end of his thumb over the hole to prevent further escape of the air.
I can't remember just what; but, he managed to knock the nearby garbage can over with his extended boot and roll it close enough to examine the contents and found something somewhat suitable to cram in the hole and slow down the escape of air.
There is a tremendous lot of air inside a properly inflated 15-38.5-15 Gateway Gumbo Mudder.
He made it back to the house; and, when I arrived a few hours later with a handful of new stems, she was listing hard to Larboard but still had a long ways to go before the rim rested on the sidewalls.
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