Re: 1972 GMC Jimmy PENNY
Sooo a few months ago my sister came up to the mountains to spend the weekend with my wife and myself. We decided that we wanted to take the Jimmy camping so we loaded it down and drove about 1.5 hours to Hot Springs, NC. Once we got out on the interstate doing about 65 mph I heard what sounded like a thunk on the underside of the truck. Then a couple minutes later I heard another thunk. I waited another minute and didn't hear anything else so I kept on digging. Shortly after that happened we got off the interstate and were on back roads doing about 50 mph so it didn't happen again. When we got to the campground it started to pour rain so we covered up with a tarp and hunkered down hahaha.
The next morning we got up at 4:00am to head up to Max Patch to see the sunrise. We packed up camp and went to grab breakfast before heading up the mountain. When we pulled into the diner I took a look underneath the truck to see if anything looked off or out of place, couldn't see a thing. I went inside and ate breakfast and then it occurred to me, my tires are pretty old and the sound could have been one of the tires falling apart. I couldn't see anything obvious from the outside but I reached around the backside of the left rear and sure enough the sidewall was flying off in big chunks.
So we had to ditch the Max Patch plan and head back home. We took back roads and I did about 35mph the entire way. Somehow it held enough air to get us home, sit in the garage for a few months, and then I drove it to the tire store yesterday to get two new tires mounted. Since the RR was still decent I kept it and am going to order a spare wheel to mount behind the rear seat so I have a backup plan if this happens again hahah.
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