Switching gears, switching tires

First, here's the other two NEDA photos. I think this gait stuff is fascinating, and it's my blog, so you get to read about it too!

Picture A: Dixie's doing a step-pace. The front left has almost finished picking up and the rear left is coming up. In a step-pace, the front left will touch down, then the rear left, then the right side will pick up. Some horses do a horrid jouncy pace but hers is quite comfortable - you can see I'm sitting it easily.
Also note the big tree casting a shadow on the top right corner of the photo.


Picture B: She's doing a foxtrot. Now the diagonals are picked up - the front left is further along than the rear right, which is just pulling off the ground. The front left will touch down before the rear right - again, it's pretty smooth. It's postable, but it feels like a western pleasure jog even though you're going 9 mph.


Here's the cool thing - look at the tree! It moved from the top left corner to right of center. Jumper people, help me out - those pictures are one stride apart, yes? So she just did this superfast bobble with her back legs - slammed the rear left down and yanked the rear right up while the front left was slowly completing its path?

ANYWAY. So I decided to trim Dixie's feet this afternoon, because long toes make her stumbly. Lazy Funder that I am, I didn't trim them before the weekend ride. So I grabbed my trimming tools and got to work on her, but after getting really sweaty and annoyed doing her back feet I decided the rasp was dull. I looked it over and the tips of several of the teeth are woobly. So I went to the trailer to get the emergency rasp (actually a nice Black Diamond, but for some reason I got a pony-sized one and I'm used to a horse-size rasp, so it lives in the trailer.)

TRAGEDY!


Shit. Got the other rasp, ripped through her front feet like I was carving butter, threw her back out in the pasture, and headed to town. I knew I needed a spare, but I hadn't gotten around to getting one yet. Les Schwab hooked me up with a spare and a trailer jack thingie, and I came back home.

You do know how to change a tire, right? I know most of you have grumpy men who will fix these things, and I think we ALL have USRider (right?), but you should know how for exactly this kind of situation. For a trailer, all you need is a lug wrench and a drive-on tire stand thing.

STEP ONE DO THIS FIRST BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE: Loosen the nuts. Unless you let some jackass at Walmart with an impact wrench install your tires, you are strong enough to break the nuts loose. Right is tight, left is loose, so turn the nuts counterclockwise.

After the nuts are loose, then you drive the trailer up onto the tire stand thing and take the nuts all the way off. Should you, oh, jack the trailer up with a truck jack, or even drive upon the tire stand thing before you loosen the nuts, you will quickly realize that you have fucked up because you'll just spin the wheel and not the nuts. I am the voice of experience here.

Get all the nuts off. Pull the evil flat tire off. Put the spare tire on (probably the hardest part - tires are unweildy and it's hard to get the lugs lined up with the holes). Hand-tighten the nuts. Back the trailer off the ramp thingie and tighten the nuts as hard as you can, but don't do them in order - do, say, the top one then the bottom one then the left-top one then the right-bottom one etc. I go a good half-turn on each nut in order and it took me about five passes to get the nuts tight. Check them during/after the next trip to make sure they're tight.

PRO TIP: Never let some jackass with an impact wrench install your tires. NEVER. Real tire people are supposed to use a torque wrench that only tightens the nuts to the proper torque. Jackasses at Walmart just go at it with an impact wrench and overtighten the nuts so that no human can remove them. Would you rather have Your Man / USRider change your tire or haul your whole trailer to the shop to impact-wrench the damn nuts off?

Another pro tip: once you figure out which of the four ends of the lug wrench fits your nuts, mark that end with your colored duct tape. You do have duct tape in your "colors", right? I think eventers use colored electrical tape; that works too.

YAY!


Then I plugged the tire. The culprit:


For this, all you need is a tire plug kit, a tire pressure gauge, and some way of inflating the tire again. I have a cheapie 12v that lives in the truck, but it would take like 45 minutes to inflate a tire to 60 psi so I broke out the air compressor. But a little $12 car inflator WILL do the job, and it will get you home if you've got a slow leak while you're away.

Again, you can hassle your grumpy man into doing this, or you can pay somebody $10-30 at a tire shop to do it, but it's good to know HOW.

STEP ONE DO THIS FIRST! If your tire is still mostly full of air - like if you noticed it looked low and saw the nailhead sticking out of it - let the damn air out of it. Like, almost all the air, to where you can squish it almost completely with your fist. I will never forget the time I let two grown men talk me out of plugging my own tire because it had too much air for any of us to shove the pointy thing in there. :headdesk:

Anyway, you've got two pointy things - a stabby awl and a giant sewing machine needle. Pull the nail/screw, stab the awl all the way in and waggle it around. This is not easy. Put the tire in between your legs and lean all your weight on it. Then, somehow, thread one of the incredibly sticky caterpillar things in the sewing machine needle, stab all that all the way in, turn the needle a quarter turn, and pull it out. Magically, the gooey stuff should stay in there. Blow the tire back up. Pour some soapy water on there and see if it bubbles; if not, you're good. That's what your tire shop will charge you $20 to do. It's probably worth $20, but sometimes it's not convenient to take the tire in.