greyhook wrote:
When taking a long trip in any vehicle, it's a good idea to be prepared. The old saying, "Ya never know", comes to mind.
This past summer, we embarked on a 5000+ mile trip that took us to Texas to Key West. On the way home, our Greyhawk developed a shimmy after a short patch of rough road. Shortly thereafter, I discovered a flat left-side inner drive tire, not a blowout, just flat. From what I could tell, I was a valve-stem. At least the tire would still be salvageable. Fortunately, I had brought everything I needed to change it myself. We do have AAA but I didn't see the point in waiting when I could do it myself. Less than an hour later, we were back on the road.
The next day, over more rough road, I felt the RV shimmy again. Pulled into a rest area and found that the spare, which I had mounted on the outside, had spun a belt. A quick consultation with google told me there was a tire shop 8 miles up the road. I parked in the lot of the tire shop plaza and took the tire with the bad valve stem in to be repaired. The shop had it done in short order and we were once again on our way.
It could have been a lot worse. Our good luck had us in nice dry weather on flat ground. The inconvenience to our trip was negligible. The peace of mind that comes from being prepared, though, is priceless.
If I understand your second situation ... you drove about 8 miles with only one tire supporting all of the weight on the one rear corner of the one dually set with the bad tire in it?
If so, that in itself is a tricky/dangerous situation and at the very least seriously over-stresses the one good tire and could permanently compromise it internally. We did that for 5 miles once due to a flat tire in one of the rear dual sets and it was "scary". Driving that way made the rear of our small Class C feel very unstable and "squishy".
