| Re: Trailer Stories By:
OK, Gary, I'll bite, but this might take a while...
I used to share a race car with a friend, Jeff, and he had an unusual trailer--a Chinook 5th wheel camper with the back end cut into two big doors. The rear "living room" of the trailer was gutted to make room for a car. We were traveling from Oregon up to Seatte International Raceway (the old name) and the race went fine. The trip back got interesting.
We got a flat on the trailer and pulled over to the side of I-5 sometime around dusk, say 9:00pm on Sunday night. Jeff is an optimist, so we didn't have a spare, and this was before cell phones were popular. As we are standing beside the road, a cop pulled up behind us and noticed that we were standing around staring at the smoldering tire. He observed that the tire was flat (thanks for letting me know!) and asked if we had a spare. We said, "no" and he replied that it would be better if we had a spare, and then he left. Not even a, "can I call a tow truck?" from him. Nice guy.
So Jeff and I unhook the truck from the trailer and he goes off with the wheel to get a new tire mounted. We opened the big doors on the back of the trailer and turned on the race car flashers (they still worked!) so we didn't get run over in the dark. My future wife and I then waited for Jeff to return while the air rush from the trucks pushed and pulled on those big doors. It was not relaxing.
But Jeff didn't come back.
Sometime around dawn (~5:30am) Jeff's daughter drives up in her minivan (no Jeff) and demands the battery out of the trailer. With no explanation, she takes off again.
About 30 minutes later, Jeff drives up in the truck. Evidently, he had found a tire for us in the middle of the night, but the truck alternator had failed on his return trip. Jeff had driven back up the freeway to within a few miles of us before the truck battery gave up the ghost. He had walked to an exit and called his daughter (about an hour away) to help. But by the time he got back to the trailer, the second battery (running the truck) was also starting to get weak. So we did what McGyver would have done...
We had a gas-powered generator and the trailer, which still had it's inverter. So we reinstalled the trailer battery and powered up the generator. But we didn't want to sit around and wait all day to charge, so we cut the ends off of an extension cord and ran 12V from the trailer up under the truck hood to charge the truck battery and power the ignition and EFI. Put the running generator in the truck bed, and we were mobile again. It probably looked a little strange to have an extension cord duct-taped down the side of the truck but we were moving.
Long story long...When I bought my current race car trailer, I added a mount to hold a spare tire.
Garrett |