After class on Saturday I finally broke down and bought new tires.  I've been reluctant because I want to switch to 16" rims and a certain tire size (255/85r16) but between the higher cost of those tires and the additional cost of new rims, couple with the fact that it is difficult to find the rims that I want and also difficult to find the tires that I want in this area, I gave up.   Sounds dramatic.   I always fret too much over tire purchases because I figure I'll be using those tires for the next 3-5 years and prefer to do it "right" in the first place.

But the old tires were wearing very fast.  There was still plenty of tread- at least 30%- but the steel belts had burst through the outer layer on one tire last month, and another this week.  I swapped the first into the spare position, but had to drive on the second for a few days and was very nervous about it.   Driving around unsafe is dumb.

So I bit the bullet and bought some new tires in Santa Cruz.  Ended up with 33x12.50r15 Yokohama Geolander MTs.   I would have been happy to have put an all terrain on- saves a little bit of fuel consumption/noise, but there weren't any to be found in that size.  The slightly larger (I did have 31's) tires look great on the truck and it drives much better with new, balanced tires.

Since I now had tires (and had fixed some other stuff earlier in the week) I immediately drove the hour south to the vehicle inspection station to get my annual revision completed.   Dropping in without an appointment on Saturday was a bad idea.  I spent over an hour waiting to get into line, then about half an hour in line (faster than normal), then another half hour driving through the whole station, just so that a tech could look at my new bushings (10 seconds) and say "ok!".

One plus to being stuck in the station chit-chatting with the tech was that he was happy to help me weigh the truck-- they have a big suspension machine onto which you can drive front or rear tires, then it displays the weight at each wheel.

Mine were:

	driver's	passenger's
front	642 kg (1412 lbs)	552 kg (1214 lbs)
rear	664 kg (1460 lbs)	640 kg (1408 lbs)

Just in case you were wondering.  Not sure why the front driver's side is heavier, I certainly don't weigh 100kg (200lbs).  Not sure I care too much.

One the way home there was a transit police officer sitting under a shade tree, casually gunning people on the highway.   I passed and waved (I always wave in the hopes that over time they'll recognize me and be nicer should I be caught speeding- there are only 10 or so officers in this area in the transit division).  Then it ocurred to me that I could check the new tires effect on my speedometer against the cop's radar gun.  In the end, I'm more interested that my speedometer match the cop's gun than that it be accurate.  They're not ticketing based on reality but rather based on what the radar says.

So I turned around and drove back, pulling over at his truck.  I think it made him a little nervous to have someone pull themselves over.  But I slowly got out and chatted him up.  Once I explained what I wanted, he was happy to help out.

So I did another pass, he recorded my speed, and it looks like the taller tires have put my speedometer bang-on.  I was doing "just shy of 80 kph" on my speedometer and he showed me driving 77kph.  Good enough for me.   Chatting with him the second time, he was much nicer and asked me some questions about the truck.  I'm always amazed at the bad rap that police are given.  I've had some bad experiences, sure, but whenever I talk to them for a bit, they almost always turn out to be friendly.

Sunday was a lot of work for little progress.  As Jocelyn points out, I may have set a new record for installing my rear sway bar.  I started around 7am, planning to be done in about an hour.  I finished around 1:45pm.  Short version:  I sheared a bolt head.  Lesson learned:  a few minutes chasing out old, rusty holes with a tap before installing old rusty bolts is time well spent in prevention.

Lesson #2:  "Easy Out" isn't a good description for the tool it describes.   A better name would be:  drill-in-awkward-position, struggle to set not sharp tool into bolt, crank until passing through bolt, then have to weld rebar to shank to pull out before finally giving up and drilling out old nut to re-tap with larger diameter and use different bolt.   But that would be a lot of words to fit on a small package.  So I'll just have to remember that "Easy Out" isn't.  Lesson learned.

At least the sway bar is installed.

But I can't drive the truck to test it because my driver's window motor seems to have failed.  I'll be working on that this morning (Monday) so that I can actually close said window.  I don't like electric windows.

Sure is a pretty morning-  coolish, light breezes, time to shut computer and open car door to fix window.

Labels: land cruiser, repair, tamarindo, weather