New additions

We went and met Brett and Sandra's new members of the family the other night, Zoe and Mischief, two really cute kittens.

Aren't they something?  Two lively little balls of fur!

We had a nice visit, including a great wine tasting, and a good dinner.  Nice to visit with good friends.

Atlanta

One dentist appointment done, one to go.  Been running around doing some errands, visiting friends, and drove down to Newnan to see Jason's place.  Weather is beautiful!

Still haven't paid for the tires?!?

On the Move Baby!

Zero hour was 0800am, and we only missed by a little bit.  The hookup with the new truck is a bit more involved than it was before the braking system.  But after a few more times, we will have it down.  Stopped at Flying J, a truck stop to fuel, and decided to weigh the coach and the new truck.  Everyone should do it.  It is the only accurate way to set your tire pressures, and with our new tires, still not paid for:-), we thought it would be a fabulous idea.  Good news is we are under full gross weight, bad news is we are a bit heavier than the last time we weighed.  Time to jettison some cargo.

The new TPMS, tire pressure monitor system worked terrific on the ride up here to Elko, GA to the Twin Oaks RV Park.  It is our normal stopping point northbound to Atlanta, especially when we are visiting the vet on our way in.  

Yes, we take our cat, Bert to the vet in the motorhome, and you would too, if he trashed your vehicle like he has ours several times.  He HATES to ride in the truck!  He blows his coat, pukes, and both other not so delectable things all over himself and anything he comes in contact with, so we take him in the motorhome.  He needs his annual inspection and shots, and we need to get some health certificates for our venture into Canada later this summer.

Tires rode great, we had a good trip, and it sure is nice to be moving again!

Good news and HUH?

The good news is we ran the motorhome up to Callaghan Tire in Bradenton on Wednesday and they put on 8 brand new Michelin X Coach HL Z tires.  They did an awesome job complete with new valve stems and installed our provided DynaBeads in lieu of balancing.  We are big proponents of the beads, an absolutely smooth ride with the beads "magically" always balancing the tire and wheel!  Only drove it 30 miles back to the campground on the new tires but they were smooth and comfortable.  Now the weird thing is we still haven't got the exact numbers on the new tires, the warranty money back from Michelin, other than them saying they will definitely pay the claim based on tread remaining.  We measured the tread, the dealer conversed with Michelin and...........we are still waiting.  Another amazing part of this story is we haven't yet paid anything!  The dealer is quite a gem.  So hopefully we will hear today and put this all to bed.

We got a pleasant surprise that Jason is going to run down and visit for the weekend, I think all he really wants is lobster:-)  We've got another lunch with friend's Jack and Betty today, did a couple of lunches with friends and family the past couple days, and Easter dinner with Ray and April, about 3 more things on our list, and we are off Monday morning!  With tires paid for or not:-)

Down to a week

Got good news, Michelin is going to pay a warranty claim on the tires as determined by tread depth.  Very fair, and very welcome!  Our new tires are in and we are setting up an appointment to have them put on either Wed or Thurs.  New feet for the coach, and ready for Alaska!

Been busy visiting with friends and, of course, eating with friends, and more and more have headed north already.  The park has many holes in it now, something we haven't seen since December when we arrived.  We've put the scooter and the bikes to bed in the storage unit, have essentially everything on our list accomplished, even had the motorhome washed and waxed.  

Less than 2 weeks!

I had hoped to hear Michelin's response to our issue by now, but it's taking a bit longer than anticipated.  Maybe in a day or two.  Our calendar is filling up with trying to get the last few things on our to-do list done, and to see everybody one last time before we head out.  We have good friends, Bruce and Cathie, who are in the area for a month looking for a home to move to from cold, cold Maine:-)  We have accompanied them on a few open houses which has been fun and enlightening.  Seems as if real estate, at least in this area, is heating up again.  But there is no lack of inventory, lots of places for sale.  They are trying to figure out what suits them best, a pricier place on the island of Venice where they can walk around easily, or a more affordable place just off the island where they would still be able to bike and get into town easily.  It's been especially fun for Jan and I as we haven't really paid any attention to real estate in quite some time.

We've been showing them around and of course eating at a bunch of our favorite places.  All things we are obligated in doing before we leave:-)  We have a few more lunches and dinners with friends, and a trip down towards Naples to see Joyce and Douglas before we leave as well.

We did get a little good news on the tires though, the dealer found Michelin's new X Coach HL Z, so he ordered 8 for us.  As I said it is a brand new tire that I think we will be happy with.  So hopefully next week we'll get them installed, with considerable help from Michelin.  We have a couple sensors, a water in fuel sensor, and a low coolant sensor to install, less than an hour's work, and just a couple other little things, and we'll be out of here until next December.

Oh Man, tires, too?

The general rule on motorhome tires is they are replaced based on years of life rather than tread wear.  It is very doubtful a normal coach owner, even some one like us that drives quite a few miles in a year, would ever "wear" their tires out.  These are basically truck tires that are designed for many, many miles 100,000 and up.  So the rule of thumb, depending on your aversion to risk is 5-7 years and you should replace your tires no matter how good they look.  A typical motorhome tire sits in one place for long periods of time which is not friendly to the tire.  Most have chemicals that are in the rubber to keep the tire flexible and supple, but they require the movement or driving with the accompanying flexing of the tire to move that chemical around.  When they sit the UV from the sun tends to win out.  Also worth mentioning, each tire has a date stamp on it telling when that particular tire was manufactured. It is a 4 digit number representing the week and the year of manufacture.

My tire here was made the 29th week of 2010

I am pretty careful with our tires.  I make sure the inflation is correct, I inspect them regularly for any problem, make sure I don't curb them, and try to avoid potholes and road hazards as well as I can, but as I was installing our new tire pressure monitoring system I noticed my tires have, what I thought, was a lot of "ozone or weather checking", especially for their age.  

As you can see from the date stamp, I figured we should have another year or so before we needed to replace our tires.  We have 6 tires that were made in the 8th week of 2010, and 2 tires that were made the 29th week of 2010, only about 4 years old.  We had hoped to do our Alaska trip with its approximate 10,000 plus miles and then next spring look into new tires.

This shows the checking pretty well

That made me take a closer look, and I found that all but one tire have a significant, at least to me, amount of checking.  I called Michelin and talked with them about the issue and they said I needed to have the tires inspected to see if it could be a problem.  I called a couple Michelin truck tire dealers in the area and one of them offered to come to us to inspect the tires.  Fantastic!  Well he showed up yesterday, agreed that they shouldn't be checking this much at this age, and we are awaiting his findings and deliberations with Michelin.  In the meantime I decided to look into new tires.

These are pretty big tires, 295/80R22.5, and I might add pretty expensive.  We belong to FMCA, Family Motor Coach Association and one of the perks is their Michelin Tire buying program which offers a significant discount on tires, but only Michelins.  If Michelin does find something wrong with my tires and steps up to the plate we will put Michelins back on.  We had been very pleased up until now.  In the meantime though I looked at Continentals and Bridgestones that according to various forums get good reviews as well.  We don't want to go to a inexpensive Chinese tire.  That's not to start an argument as there are a lot of satisfied customers according to various reports, but for us it is not a player.  We then found out there is a nationwide shortage on our particular tire in our size a XZA2 Energy tire which might be a challenge if we need tires ASAP, but we just learned Michelin has come out with a new motorhome tire that we are looking into, the X Coach HL Z.  This new tire looks promising, it is very similar to our present tire but has more weight capacity at the same pressures, which means we would be able to support our weight with a lower pressure which would mean a softer ride.

So that's where we are right now, waiting to hear if Michelin will kick in some warranty money, can we find new tires and get them put on, all before we are scheduled to leave in about 2 weeks??  Tick, tick, tick.