Leaking Tires and Sticking Slide, Oh My

Posted by hankster

I have been in the same park in Mission TX for 2 1/2 weeks now. At the beginning of the week I had a low pressure alarm on my TST tire pressure monitoring system when I got into the truck to go to the store. When I got back I checked the pressure in that tire and it was at 40 psi. Thought it was a bit strange but aired it back up to 50 psi and didn't think much more about it.

2 days later I got another low pressure alarm. Checked again and the tire pressure was low. Thinking that maybe the TST sensor was leaking I aired the tire back up and put on a regular valve stem cap. Checked the pressure today and the pressure was again low.... time to get it checked out.

I called the Good Sam Emergency Road Service number. Took about 12 minutes to get someone on the phone. Found out that the bad weather has them swamped with calls and that was the reason for the delay. They sent someone out to chenge the tire. Said it would be an hour and it took them an hour to get here. Once the service guy removed the tire he found the metal valve stem leaking. It was installed incorrectly crimping the rubber grommet. He replaced it with a new metal valve stem, put the tire back on and I am all set. Total cost was $15 for the valve stem replacement, Good Sam EMS took care of the rest.

I am planning on moving towards NM on Tuesday. If the TST alarm didn't go off I wouldn't have checked tire pressures until Monday evening which would have meant I wouldn't have been able to get it fixed until Tuesday delaying my departure time/day. So tire pressure systems are useful when you are not on the road.

As a side note, I was going to retract the room slide to help the tire guy remove the tire as it was under the slide. When I tried to retract it, it would only move about an inch then stop. I later found out that the nylon slide plate on the floor inside the 5er had come loose and was jamming on the slide floor instead of allowing the slide to go over it. I tightened the screws holding down the slide plate and it now works fine. This is something I wouldn't have found until Tuesday morning when I was ready to leave so my tire problem also found another unrelated issue.

New RVing According to Hank : Always check your rig a few days before you are leaving. If you wait until the day before you leave and find something wrong, it may delay your departure.