Shortly after I bought my Jeep, I had all new tires put on it. On discovering that the spare wasn’t the same size as any of my other tires, I arranged to have that one replaced, too. When I went to pick it up, I was told that they couldn’t get it off, and so had not replaced it. I asked about this the next time I was at the Jeep dealer, and they tried, and also were unable to get it off.

When turning the nuts, they would simply free-wheel in their sockets, as though the other end wasn’t attached to anything.

I ignored this little problem for several years.

This morning, however, I had a flat tire, and this caused me to give it a little more thought. I mentioned it to Annie this morning, and she told me to come over so that Bob could look at it, before I went and spent a lot of money getting someone to tell me that they couldn’t do anything about it.

So, I went over to Bob and Annie’s house, and we worked on it for about 4 hours. By which, of course, I mean that Bob worked on it, and I peered at him and tried to appear useful. Finally, we got it off of the Jeep, and got the bolts cut off, so that we could remove the tire from the bracket to which it was bolted. We then re-mounted everything, and attached it with bolts that can actually come off if the occasion arrises.

So, if any of you jeep-driving readers in the state need a P225/75R15 tire, never used, Goodyear Wrangler, just let me know. I imagine we can work out an arrangement. The tires that I’m actually driving on are 235s, and so, although I could use this as a spare in a pinch, I’d really rather have one that’s the same size. Hopefully I’ll get that taken care of as soon as I return from Washington.