Video: Rotating the Tires on an EarthRoamer in the field

[roadtrekker]

We've been playing with our new GoPro Hero2 camera and decided it was an opportune time to show Jim's hard work doing a five-tire rotate on our EarthRoamer. All this work is in prep for the upcoming Mexico / Central America leg of our RTW trip, scheduled to begin in a couple weeks.

This time lapse condenses four hours of hard work into a 2.5 minute clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5lws...ature=youtu.be

What do you think?

Let us know here or on our website at http://globalroadtrekker.com

Wendy & Jim

[haven]

Thanks for sharing. Which step took the longest? breaking the wheel nuts loose? jacking up the truck? How heavy is each wheel? How difficult is it to lift the wheel up to align with the wheel studs?

We're all looking forward to the promised "truck porn" section!

[roadtrekker]

Haven,

Overall it was not a difficult project, just time consuming. I planned and used extra time to make sure I was working safely (Step back and double check your work). The tires / wheels are plus 200 lbs and require a lever to put in place, not difficult to line up with a little practice. The limiting factor was the on-board air system because the impact wrench uses a large volume of air and Hutchinson supplied lug nuts that are of a locking design. Working the impact wrench to break the lug nut free and manually removing the nut the rest of the way was an efficient way to work while the air system recharged.

You can do this project without the air wrench, but it's nice to have. The other part of the project that was time consuming for me was removing and stowing all the tools to their secure locations. I plan to do this project only every 5000 miles, therefore the tools were placed deeper in the infrequent use storage areas, which required me to move the closer - more daily - items to gain access.

As for the "truck porn," its coming soon and we'll post here when the section is redone. But as far as the name, we're still debating it. My take is that it may be funny and aptly named but we will probaly not use that heading. We do not want to atract the wrong crowd to our web site and the way that search engines work these days it is not what we are trying to promote. I don't know -Wendy and I are still battling over it.

RoadTrekker.

[camperman]

Oh Jim, you are right! Search results can really wonder you alot. Especially when deal comes to vids and pics

[1leglance]

great video and I give you credit for doing this now so you will be well practiced down the road...
Heck I give you mucho credit for doing it at all vs having a shop do all that work

I like your site and looking forward to more, thanks for posting

[McZippie]

FWIW ....rotating tires don't make them last any longer. I stopped rotating decades ago.
Rears wear about twice as fast as fronts, so when rears need replacing, put new tires on rear only.
When rears need replacing again, replace all 4 tires.

[Christian P.]

just curious - how do you reset the pressure monitor sensors?

[roadtrekker]

Christian. The TPMS is aftermarket and to reset you have to let about 3 psi of air out for it to signal its ID and locate at its new position.

McZippie
Rotating tires on a two wheel drive vehicle may not be as important while doing domestic traveling (still not advised). On a 4 wheel drive vehicle it becomes very important that all the tires including the spare are all a consistent diameter. For example you have not rotated the spare into your routine and you have a complete tire failure with a tire set that is 60% worn. You put your brand new spare on and the tire diameter maybe up to or more that 1" bigger. At a minimum you will create handling issues depending on the position you put tire, increase stresses in the drivetrain, and if your vehicle is equipped with computer aided traction or stability control it may make these systems inoperable because the computer always thinks it is wheels a traveling at different speeds and cannot adjust with its parameters.

Just my 2 cents.

[Christian P.]

Wendy and Jim

When I drove from Cape Town to London, I did not really rotate the tires as my 2 spares were different brands/sizes. My friend with a Defender religiously rotated his.
Both of us had BF Goodrich A/T

By the time we got to Sudan, mine had about 30% thread left, and his were still new - I couldn't believe the difference. Of course he was rotating with the 2 spares, which I wasn't doing. But still, the difference was stunning.

I wonder if perhaps it also had something to do with the speed we were driving...

[Ford Prefect]

Great video! I left a comment on the youtube page, but I liked it a lot. Really love the spare lift set up.

Regards,
Brian