We woke up to frost on the grass, but apparently it hadn't been there long enough to do much damage and since the sun was shining it was gone in no time at all. After getting the header trailer hooked back up and grabbing the 'continental' breakfast at the motel, we hit the road just after 8am.
We made it through South Dakota without incident, enjoying the fact that there was hardly any wind...crossing the Big Bend Dam at Fort Thompson, the water was like glass, it was so calm. We stopped at Springview, NE so Marilyn could get fuel and we could get a quick lunch, before crossing through Nebraska.
We had passed through Bassett and were about 7 miles south of town, when Al called Marilyn on the radio to ask her if she blew a tire on the header trailer because there was smoke coming off something back there. After pulling over on the grassy shoulder and taking a look, it was the front passenger side tire on the header trailer that was smoking...the tire itself was fine, but the brakes seemed to be the issue.
Al came over and with our very limited array of tools, tried to take the wheel off to see what the problem was. We could see that the hub had shifted over about an inch, which meant the bearings were likely shot and we would have to gut the thing. Problem number one...besides the obvious...was that we didn't have our 20 ton bottle jack with us, because Marilyn had borrowed it to her friend to do some deck lifting repair and hadn't gotten it back. We drove back into Bassett and fortunately Brent, the tire man at Rock County Tire, was good enough to lend us his bottle jack and a few 4x4's to block it, then we went back out to the rigs sitting along the highway.
While we were working on getting the tire off, Cory, a good Samaritan stopped as he was driving by to see if we needed any help. We had just gotten the hub off and could see we were in big trouble...there was no way to get the crown nut off so we could get the remnants of the old bearings off. We told Cory we would likely have to go back through Bassett and west five miles to Sand Hill Equipment, the New Holland dealership, to see if we could get parts or repairs. Well, what a coincidence...that is exactly where he works as a welder! He went back into Bassett to see what he could bring out for tools to help get the nut loose and by the time he got back with a wrench that might work, we had good news...and bad news...
We got the nut off...but the threads had been stripped in the process.
We gathered all our parts and drove back into Sand Hills Eq. to see if they could match them up, but they didn't have the parts we needed, so we headed into Bassett to see the Napa man. He had what we needed, so we bought two of everything...just in case...then went back out to the trailer. Cory had come back to the NH dealership with us to see what he could do, then met us back out at the trailer after our Napa trip, to help put everything back together.With the bad threads being an issue, we figured if we could get the nut back on...we would only have one chance to do it...we would tack weld it so it wouldn't come loose. Now, we needed a portable welder. It just so happened there was a poster in the Napa store for someone who had just started a mobile welding service, so we called him and he was available to come out when we had it all assembled.
Al always said that it was a good thing moving on weekends because there was less traffic, but if you broke down, the fixing was limited. This weekend was also graduation in Bassett...other priorities.
We waited for Peter Budde, the welder to show up. It took him longer to get his cables unwound and laid out than it did to weld the nut on...but at least we were finally ready to get everything back together and hit the road again.
Just as we were getting ready to leave, Brent from the tire shop was driving back to Bassett from Sargent and stopped to see if he could help out...we were pretty much done by then. We were glad that he stopped so that we could give him back the jack and avoid yet another trip into town, but he insisted we take the jack with us and drop it off on our way back next week.
We took off, stopped to check the hub about 20 miles down the road...it seemed fine, so we carried on to Ansley where we parked the header trailer and Freight, then drove over to Broken Bow for the night.
What a great bunch of generous people we met today in Nebraska...
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