On The Road Again

We took 3 days to tear down our site this year.  It was so hot, we did a little bit each morning before it got unbearable.  Any time we travel, we usually make it a point to move in the morning, that way any issue, problem, or unexpected turn of events doesn't impact you as much.  But this year our first stop was a service call to Josam Frame and Alignment in Orlando, in which we had an early appointment on Thursday, so were only going to spend the night beforehand, and it was only 120 miles, so we waited and left around 1pm.  Out on the interstate northbound and what do we find, the entire northbound side closed!  We were able to detour around it, but we also needed to get fuel and it almost looked like we weren't going to arrive before they closed for the evening.  Luckily we made it with about 30 minutes to spare.  Lessons learned.

  

In for the night

Our appointment was for several items, rotate the tag tires to the steer and vice versa, install Balance Masters on the steer and tag, change the air system desiccant cartridge, and check for air leaks.  So into the shop first thing in the morning and man o man, bad news!  BUT, what we found was our drag link was bad!  Really bad, and had to be replaced.  So bad that we felt it wouldn't be safe to even drive 25 more miles.  This link was replaced back in 2013 with the OEM part, the only available part at the time, too expensive, 3 weeks to get, and only had one replaceable end.  It was a total fiasco at that time, so we were astonished that it was bad again.  Good news and bad news, there is a much improved, stronger design available now with replaceable ends, but it is made in Oregon.  And this is Thursday, we have all sorts of reservations and doctor and dentist appointments and could be in a real time bind.  Luckily they had one when we called when they opened and were able to overnight it so it should arrive tomorrow and be installed tomorrow, so we will hopefully only be one day behind.  Keep your fingers crossed.  Then we found out we had unusual wear on our tags which were planning to move to the steers, so we bit the bullet and are putting 2 new tires on the steer.  Also, they felt the unusual wear on the tags was caused by an alignment issue, and checking records we had never had the drive or tag aligned.  My bad, thought we had.  So onto the alignment machine and sure enough the tag was toed in way too far causing the wear.  But they were able to fix it by heating the steel and bending it.  Sounds scary, but they do it all the time.  

Getting aligned

These are the Balance Masters, they are steel discs that have a liquid substance in the tubular edge that automatically balance the wheel and tire.  I've done quite a bit of research on them and people seem to love them.  I have always used beads in the tires, but more recently we haven't been as pleased.  This will be a new experience for us in which we will report back what we think after a few thousand miles.  Right now we only put them on the tag and steer, later we will put another pair on the drive.

All unexpected, but better here and now and not on some windy, twisty, narrow two lane high in the mountains with a catastrophic failure.  Oh yeah and I forgot to mention when we pulled into Josam's we noticed the windshield on the truck was broken!  Looked like a rock caught the top of the windshield and cracked about a foot.

What a nice surprise

They also checked for air leaks and found quite a few, all fixed, but in the morning after sitting overnight, our auxiliary air pump which provides air for our leveling ran numerous times, obviously, we still have a few leaks.  They will look again this morning when the pit opens up.  Now we are biding time waiting for the drag link to show.  As an aside, yesterday it was in the 80's here, hot and humid, this morning 48df and windy, wow, what a difference!

Fantastic update!  The drag link arrived at 10am, woohoo.  Installed by 10:30.  It is a brute, hopefully this is our last drag link:-)

Our new brute of a drag link

Installed

Then they checked for air leaks again, and sure enough we had several more.  You have to realize we have probably hundreds of connections and fittings, and they all leak a little bit, the air compressor on the engine can keep up with most of them but air provides our suspension support and our brakes, and in a motorhome like ours the air leveling system we use when parked.  A tech shoehorned himself under the rear of the coach and was able to repair all the leaks they had found, although it took a little longer than planned as they had to source an unusual fitting they didn't have in stock.

Getting the last of our leaks fixed

But even so, we pulled out about 3:30.  We had changed our plans when we had to spend the extra night there and instead went to a very nice park we like a lot and most importantly was only 60 miles away, Grand Oaks Resort in Lady Lake, FL.  It has huge sites, very quiet, amidst an enormous equine center, even a restaurant on premises.  We'll chill here two nights before we head up to Atlanta.

Our much better view from our site at Grand Oaks:-)

We also have decided that in the future, any service appointment we make will be no later in the week than Wednesday, running it any closer to the weekend is asking for trouble, we lucked out this time, a little lighter in the wallet, but feeling very confident we made the right decisions, and very happy they found a potentially dangerous situation and took care of it.