Driving up the highway Saturday we were waved over by some teenagers driving an older GQ patrol, they had obviously spotted our Patrol and were pulled over in a bad spot and looked like they had tyre trouble.
They were pulling a small beaten up boat and sure enough a quick look showed a fully delaminated rear passenger tyre on the car.
They had been there for 2 hours getting nowhere, didn't even have anything to drink.
So I offered to help them change the spare wheel.
Turns out they had left
home with a faulty spare, not just flat
but with a big tear in it, with no hope of it being repairable.
In fact a third person had hitched off to a town 30k up the road with the spare in the hope of buying a replacement tyre.
Talking to one he indicated that the failed tyre had even had a slow leak
and of course they had no pump or anything.
So they waved me down with the plan to borrow my spare wheel and drive
to the town.
I reluctantly agreed to the plan, so they began to jack up the car
only to find they had no jack handle and where using a 6 inch shifter (there only tool).
Looked like an accident in the making to me so I got my stuff out.
Got the wheel off, and you could see that the delaminated steel belt had
torn out the rear wiring loom.
They new that and had tie in back up against the chassis rail
out of sight and out of mind I guess, bare wires and all.
Made them tidy this mess up then they put my wheel on whereupon we discovered that they had old style Nissan alloy wheels which used a big flat flanged wheel nut.
These nuts can't be used with normal Patrol wheels so they were stuffed again.
I probably could have taken a nut of each of my other wheels to fit it and would have in a real emergency but not here.
Didn't have a high level of sympathy for there plight be I agreed to pick up
there mate in the town and bring him and the wheel back.
Looking into the small boat it seemed to have not even a life jacket and
the local
Lake Eildon has claimed quite a few unprepared fishing parties.
I don't know, I don't think even when I was
young poor student I would have headed off on a trip so unprepared - but maybe my memory has faded.