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85 Barth Motorhome wrenching
I used my motorhome over Labor day weekend. I bought it in 97 and havent used it much in the last 7 years. It is an 85 Barth. These were top end custom motorhomes built in Indiana. Mine has a 454 Chevy bib block on a P30 Chassis.
Anyway it left me stranded, which turned out to be the starter. It suffers from much deffered maintanance from me. i have decided to invest the time at fixing it. First thing is the tires. It has michelin six 8R 19.5 tires that were new in 94. About 7000 miles on them but dryrot has set in. One had sidewall cracks big enough to bury half a penny!! I got 3 estimates for 6 tires installed $2900, 2800 and 2700. Now being cheap, that was just too much money to spend on something I hardly use. I looked at Smas club and the tires were $346 each, no instalation available. I started looking on the net and found: http://www.trucktireretreading.com/servlet/the-New-Truck-Tires/Categories They had these Chinese tires for $135 each delivered. I hate to buy Chinese but these will need to be replaced due to age, not wear. I made the decision to mount them myself. I have a tire machine from the 40s but the bead braking hardware was not far enough out to handle these. I broke the beads with a lead hammer. Getting the tire off the rim, and the new tire on the rim were easy. The hard part was getting that narrow tire to bead to the rim. For an hour, nothing I tried worked. i though, if I could find something to fill the big gap at the top I could get the bottom to bead. Then it clicked, I would use a 20 inch bicycle innertube. I have an electronic wheel balancer, but dont have an adaptor to handle these wheels.
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1959 Gravely LI, 1963 Gravely L8, 1973 Gravely C12 1982 380SL 1978 450 SEL 6.9 euro restoration at 63% and climbing 1987 300 D 2005 CDI European Delivery 2006 CDI Handed down to daughter 2007 GL CDI. Wifes ![]() |
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