Crown King to Phoenix

Driving home from camping in the Bradshaw Mtns, Northwest of Phoenix, the campers stopped to look at a flowing wash. Once we dismounted out of the Explorer just off of a graded Crown King Road, we could hear a “hissing” coming from low or under the truck. Put my near the car and heard the tire leaking air. The passenger side rear tire had a 1 ½ inch nail in the outside row of tread. The tire had not lost a lot of air as of yet, however it was slowly leaking. We were seven miles from the next town, Bumble Bee, AZ. The town consisted of less then a dozen old homes, a ranch and a school house. It was an additional five miles of forest road to Interstate 17 and about more miles down a steep interstate to the next town of Black Canyon City. The consideration was to simply drive slowly the remaining distance to Black Canyon City. This was ruled out due to the tire loosing air and the extremely slow speeds needed to drive on the forest road even if we still had 4 good tires. We were going to change the tire.

The car was jacked up with the standard issue mini-jack Ford provided in their Explorer models. I was also using the standard issue lug wrench. I could not get the lugs off. An anemically sized tool, the wrench was 12 inches long and did not provide enough torq for breaking loose the lugs. The tires were last rotated at a local dealership. I was able to break loose just one lug. The impact wrench may have been used a little to liberally on the other four. The stubborn lugs were determined not to turn.

There were a few cars driving by on this road, possibly one every 15-20 minutes. We stopped the first car driving past, a FedEx truck. The driver said he did not have a toolbox, a lug wrench, or even a spare tire for his own truck. A couple more vehicles each drove by in 10 more so minute intervals each stopping on their own to ask if everything was all right or offer assistance. No one had a larger lug wrench. The next truck to approach was a Suburban license plates from Nebraska. Three gentlemen in their late 50’s rolled down the windows as we flagged them down. They did not have a wrench but pulled over to see if they could help. I explained our situation and one of the men, obviously well corn-fed growing up due to his size, attached the lug wrench so he could pull up and directed me to grab the wrench just below his hands and I could pull simultaneously. With a hard pull from both of us, a few moments later a second lug came loose. The remaining three lugs came loose with similar efforts. The damaged tire was replaced by the spare.

The wrench was inserted back into the jack to lower the car. As the jack was cranked counter clockwise the truck was not lowering. The placement of the jack was one foot in front of the passenger side rear tire on the frame rail. The Explorer was a 4 wheel drive with 16 inch wheels and all weather tires with sizeable tread. The frame rail was high off the ground. This required the jack to be raised a bit higher to get the wheel off the ground. If another placement had been chosen, directly behind the wheel the jack would not have been raised as high to get the wheel off the ground. The extra distance the anemic jack was raised apparently caused the cog teeth of the internal mechanics to get off track. The jack would not lower. Another 10 or 15 minutes went by as we pondered how to get the truck off the jack or the jack from under the truck. I considered just slowly rolling the truck off the jack. But conjecture what could happen as the jack was being moved with the weight of the truck combined with movement forward or backward. The jack could choose any number of destructive or dangerous routes. Yet another person stopped to ask if we needed assistance. The driver of a white Silverado came to a stop and rolled down his window. As I approached the car with the anemic wrench in my hand the driver actually hesitated and then began to pull forward, maybe wondering if I was not in any trouble at all but setting the scene for a Texas hold'em-up. I casually convinced him to stop and assist by explaining our situation briefly. I sampled for him the action of the broken jack when he stepped out of the car. He suggested putting a flat but reasonably thick rock under the rear tire and backing the truck up onto the rock. This would do one of two things, raise the truck up as to pull the jack from under, or simply knock over the jack. As we searched the desert roadside for an appropriate sized rock, the gentlemen got in his car and went on his way. The rock was placed under the passenger side rear tire. Before moving the vehicle, the passenger side front window was rolled down to able communication with my friend as he watched from the side of the road what was about to transpire. As the truck rolled slowly onto the rock, I could hear a light thud and the truck sank instead of rising after rolling onto the rock. Walking around the truck to see the outcome one could see the jack successfully was knocked over as the rear wheel rolled onto the rock, however the car sank due a nearly flat spare tire.

The situation was now this; A nail in one tire, a flat spare and a broken jack, 22 miles from civilization in the middle of the Upper Sonoran Desert.Someone is always looking out for me. 10 minutes later the very next car to drive by was a local couple. They gave me a jack to use, voluntarily took my spare tire back to their house where they had an air compressor. They returned in another 15 minutes, inflated the spare and brought it back to me. They also brought with them a puncture repair kit. The gentlemen pulled the nail out of the tire, and patched the hole on the spot. Then they would not take anything for helping us. They just said to help someone next time. Good people.The entire inconvenience lasted a little over 2 hours. There were no less then 7 vehicles to offer any assistance. The one vehicle, which did not stop, was a Forest Service truck. Funny he did not stop. The sign for the Tonto National Forest was across the forest road and back 10 yards. I suppose he did not stop due to we were officially out of the park.

After all this hospitality in the middle of no-wheres-ville we drove toward home. During the drive home there were probably 20 cars defiantly keeping us from changing into their lanes.