Decades ago, coming home from a weekend of camping along the Murray, my father was driving his relatively new Holden XT station wagon, towing a Hartley half cabin boat. The wheel nuts on the right hand side of the trailer were not tightened properly and eventually fell off one by one. When the last one fell off, the wheel was flung off the hub with such force that the wheel overtook the car while we were still doing about 50-55 mph. If you can imagine, there was an instant where everyone in the car was looking out the driver side windows thinking WTF where did that wheel come from, before the grinding, swerving, @rse clenching ride came to an end.
By the time my father managed to stop the car, the u-bolts had been completely ground down on the road to the spring plate and the axle was now floating above the leaf springs. Out in the middle of nowhere, you immediate thought is 'How in the hell are we going to get the boat home?'. No brakes on the trailer, so the hub and spring plate were pretty well both level with each other if you take into account the axle saddle, which meant with no wheel on the axle the nuts on the spring plate came into direct contact with the road.
Well, my father, who is a bit of a lateral thinker, quickly looked to see if the coast was clear before cutting about 3 yards of wire from the rural fence on the side of the road, jacked up the trailer, wrapped wired around the leaf spring and axle, pinched a wheel nut from each wheel on the car to replace those that fell off, and had us on the road again within about an hour.
Now I'm not advocating stealing fence wire, but since that day, my tool kit has always included a roll of 16 gauge wire. This has proved handy for purposes such as temporary hose clamps, feeding wire through the chassis on my trailer and numerous other jobs. I think if you put to imagination to work, a roll of wire could potentially make any number of emergency repairs.
Cheers Marschy
