We stopped for a quick bathroom break and as we drove slowly through the little South Dakota town of Mitchell, we heard a loud popping noise from the back of the trailer. We pulled over to investigate and as Jonathan drove very slowly I could hear something rattling near the rear passenger side trailer tires.
We moved the rig into a large, empty parking lot and Jonathan began the process of removing the tires to inspect the bearings and brakes.
(Side note, is there anything my man and YouTube can’t do?)
In order to remove the tires, he put the jacks down making sure to loosen the nuts before lifting that side enough where the tires rotated freely off the ground.
We started with the tire closest to the front of the rig and after spinning it we concluded that the noise was not coming from that tire.
We moved to the next tire and inspected the bearings which thankfully seemed fine. We then removed the hub locking ring and nut, being careful with the bearings, and inspected the brakes. We came to the conclusion that our brakes are starting to show some wear but are in good condition to continue moving forward. While we had the tires off, we rotated them and greased both bearings using bearing buddies connection at the end and then adjusted the brakes.
Our conclusion for now is that maybe the popping noise was something outside the trailer on the road. The rattling noise corrected itself after our inspection/ service. This was a two hour stop in our day, but as always, safety comes first.
UPDATE:
We have a saying, "If you see something, say something and if you think something, do it!" When we got to our several days respite stop at Palisades State Park in southeast South Dakota, Jonathan said that before we leave he wanted to pull in the slides and get access to the driver side trailer wheels and rotate those tires and inspect them before we got on the road again. Rather than take care of it during the two free days that we had, he waited until it was time to leave thinking that it would only take a few minutes to swap out the tires. Looking back, he wishes that he would have followed up on his original thoughts during those free days rather than waiting. But thank God that Jonathan listened to his inner voice and followed through before we got on the road!
As Jonathan started to remove the tires, he immediately noticed some cracking in the sidewall of the first tire. When we replaced our tires in March, Jonathan had been sure to get a matching spare tire- so he knew that at the very least he could put that on to keep us moving down the road. Because the tires were only 6 months old, he called the shop where we purchased them to inquire about the warranty. While he was waiting on them to call back he decided to go ahead and inspect the bearings and brakes at each axel. When he had taken things apart a few days earlier, he had only inspected the passenger side tires because we were absolutely sure that was where the rattling was coming from. As he took off the last drum, he discovered the broken pieces of the brake adjustment linkage! The mystery of the rattling was solved! We are so grateful that we made it to Palisades State Park safely and that we found the broken brakes before we got back on the road!
Not wanting to run on the spare tire rim, we took the spare and the cracked tire to a local tire shop and had them swap and balance the tires. We also stopped and got a new brake assembly. Back at Palisades, Jonathan got to work replacing the brake assembly. A few hours later we were back on the road. The delay meant a night in a Walmart parking lot in Minnesota and a little bit of a longer driving day to our next stop in Wisconsin. This was a great reminder that God whispers to us and we need to do our best to listen.
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