So, we just drove 75 miles of twisty mountain roads, 180 switchbacks, 7 mile long up and down grades over 10%... In the dark... Towing a 28 foot 13,500lb trailer.
She actually rode pretty good, smooth and quiet, and not too much push on the downgrades... Good trailer brakes help a lot there, as does a good weight distributing hitch.
Did the last 10 miles on the freeway at 70, then a couple miles on city streets, light traffic, but through some busy major intersections.
Finally, we pull into our destination and see this:
We were driving for god knows how long, with one wheel missing.
f you take a closer look you'll see, the studs were sheared clean off.
Just... you know... 40 pounds of tire flying off in some random direction at 60mph...
...hopefully not in or into any of the residential neighborhoods we were passing.
If we'd caused a car accident I'm sure we would have noticed that... I'm pretty obsessive about checking mirrors when I'm driving the trailer... But I couldn't see the tire the way my mirror was adjusted (I would have in daylight, just not at night).
If it happened on one of those twisty downgrades... It very well might have killed us.
I'll investigate further in the morning... It could have been any number of things.
Scary...
