Newsletter 28

NL 28

Mar 2000

Hey folks!

Betcha all thought I was never gonna send a new newsletter. No such luck! LOL! But aside from the two cancer scares I have been "drafted" out of retirement to help some friends with a new major web venture as their director of operations.

They want me to do for them what I did to start up the first private ISP in the Eifel Region of Germany. I was resistant to going back to work, especially for a new venture. I know the hours involved, been there, done that. But to tell the truth, it's really good timing as I needed the last two years to decompress from the previous few years. I find the idea of going into a new challenge intriguing. So the owner had me out to Silicon Valley and convinced me that they needed my organizational skills. And the compensation potential is

unbelievable. Now I am a partner, and on full expenses. So I am committed to bringing this group to team and profit status.

I am in CA now and am one day away from my destination. I turned my phone off and hit the road on the 14th. This trip has been one minor problem after another! Sheesh! And we do our maintenance!

Before we left we found that the "noise" we had been putting up with since before we did Alaska, and which our local dealer said was just a normal dually "characteristic", (yeah right!) was from the clutches in the rear end. They were totally burned up! A new rear end was $1700, Vs $1020 for a rebuild. We had Kittlers Machine shop (known throughout the region for their racing engines and technical excellence) do the work and they were fantastic. We could have had them break and strand us at any time in the last two years! G.A.'s just keep on workin overtime.

The dealership told us we needed to add a whale oil additive to the rear end. Sheesh! They put us in harms way. Then we had the brakes completely done including: new rotors, pads, calipers, etc. We found that the rear brakes had never been adjusted to even help stop us and we had been running the past two years on the fronts only and had deformed the pistons in the calipers!!!!! Accck! The local dealer had done the last two brake jobs! Now we have ten times the stopping power! No wonder we kept having brake problems! I am getting with that dealer as soon as we get back there. Those dudes owe me some refunds. ! They are a five star dealership! Guess again. I give their service dept. a minus 5! I changed the oil early and had the transmission bands adjusted in town, not by the dealer. I readjusted the trailer brakes, and did all the service points on the trailer and the truck. Now we thought we were ready. Little did we know.

It took five days to cross Texas, as opposed to my usual leisurely two. We had our first tire separation failure on the trailer. Fortunately we had stopped at a rest stop (I was ready to keep on but of course wimmins can't hold it as long as us men), and Lynn (My significant harassment,) got all involved in my end of traveling by saying that a tire looked low. Right. I had checked the pressures and treads just two days earlier. But I humored her, and went to look, just to make her happy. I found the left rear tire smoking hot and almost flat (5 lbs. of air left!) And the other one on that side very hot too from taking the full load for who knows how long! Accck! She'd done it again! If we had gone five miles more we'd have had it blow and destroy the wheel well and had some serious damage to repair. The G.A.'s were workin shifts on this trip!

So I changed the tire and she just stood there giving me that "look" (you know, the "aren't you glad I had to go to the bathroom??" look). I, of course, made some comments like "uhh, well, uhhh, I would have caught it before we left, but I'm glad you are learnin to look."

I found that about 2 inches of the inside tread shoulder was missing. And, on looking at the other tire found that it had suffered from taking the load and had cracks all over the treads! We limped into the next town, at a slower than normal speed. The Goodyear dealer where we stopped had no replacements. We had just replaced our old Marathon's with the new ones with the "S" in a circle just the year before. Then the dealer at the next town had none. We contacted Goodyear the next day after driving and staying at Big Springs and Pecos to try to get a replacement.

They told us we had to drive 250 miles to El Paso to get warranty help! Accck! No spare and the other tire was looking bad. Well we made it and had to hunker down for the night due to a dust storm. We went to Fort Bliss and they had no spaces left, so we boondocked for the night. At least Goodyear replaced both tires (they said that the other one was about to blow too!) at NO CHARGE! I always wondered why people had tire problems in twos and now I know.

New lesson: When one goes on a two axle the other tire on that side has to take the whole load and can be overheated and damaged, then blow SOON AFTER! Whew! Then after being sandblasted for two days took off and went to Benson AZ.

There we had 32 degrees overnight and were boondocking for the second night in a row (No power, water, or sewage hookups which is OK 'cause we have batteries, fresh water tanks and sewage holding tanks, that can run our rig for 5 days if we don't use the furnace.) There were no spaces with hook-ups left in our club park as late as we got in. All the RVrs were getting off the road because of the dust storms, snow, and 70 MPH gusts, and the parks were filled up in Benson.

The furnace ran all night and kept us from freezing. (To our surprise, as we expected the batteries to die after running the furnace fan almost continuously all night) Then in the morning there was barely enough power left to bring in the slide and raise the jacks. I jumped in the truck feeling proud of our batteries, and tried to start the truck. Ooooooops! I had left the truck hooked up to the trailer all night and it had drained the truck battery down too!

New lesson learned. Never leave the truck connected to the trailer while boondocking!

So I got jump-start (embarrassing to need one) and did my light checks on the trailer and the truck. The clearance lights were all out on the truck and the trailer. Fortunately the brake and turn signal lights were working, so off we went to Yuma. We were driving in daylight so the clearance lights weren't an issue (we thought!)

The first few miles were OK but then we hit a snowstorm and drove through it for the next 60 miles! This less than ten miles from the Mexican border! With no clearance lights! Just as it started to accumulate and we thought we'd have to stop, it turned to hail, then sleet, then we drove out of it. Whew!

On the way to Yuma we noticed the truck was shaking and bouncing worse than usual. We got a spot with full hookups and I unhitched the truck. It was a long day, and we were in the Kofa Coop, and needed a nights break.

The next day I went first to a frame and driveline shop called "Truck Parts" in Yuma. The guy checked over my driveline and did a test drive and assured me that my driveline was fine and the problem was tires, shocks, or both.

Wow! An honest broker and knowledgeable to boot. I took my truck to Discount tire and had em balance and check all my tires. They found two tires with weights missing, and they all needed balancing. I drove off and the difference was remarkable!

Next stop - Tipton parts place and a set of KYB rear shocks. I had replaced the fronts the year before and they checked out OK. Got back to the park and removed the old ones and found em both completely shot and had leaked out all of their fluid! They were the original shocks and had blown after only 186,000 miles! LOL! Bolted on the new ones and I had what drove like a new truck.

The next stop was Dodge for the headlight switch, which had obviously melted down again. I had replaced it in Anchorage the past July (the dealer there told me all I needed was another light switch). The service guys at Fisher Dodge were unlike all my bad experiences with all but one dealership (Chanute Kansas, the only other dealer I'd recommend), so knowledgeable and professional I was immediately impressed. They told me not to buy another 80 buck switch set (this time the female harness end melted too!), but to buy the recall set for only fifty dollars that had all the parts in the 80 dollar set plus a new harness and relay to control the running lights.

It seems the additional load of trailer clearance light is too much for the OEM switch. I asked how long Dodge had known of this and they told me several years! Acccck! The Alaskan dealer had set me up for another failure and should have known. It was now Thursday and they couldn't get it in till the next morning at o-dark-thirty. I could replace just the switch, but this real solution involved modifying the harness, so I had to let them do it. Better right the first time. And they did it right. Thank Gawd!

By now I was almost ten days behind schedule and had no opportunity to hook up and download mail.

We scooted to San Diego and stayed on Coronado for two nights, and visited with my Mom and brothers there. Then on to the north on I-5. We hit heavy traffic in L.A. and finally called it quits after we hit Bakersfield.

Here we found the best deal on this trip. Bakersfield Palms RV park. They have a free phone hookup and no charge for local or toll free calls! I retrieved my 186 emails, deleted the 50 junk mails, and can send this out. One small drawback to me is the railroad runs right behind the park. So if you are a light sleeper, might not suit ya. But for 17 bucks a night, spa, pool, great cleanliness, and fine folks running it, is a deal for this retired GI, who lived near bases with jets flying over at all hours. I slept like a baby. The trains were no problem for me and we are staying here one more night. (So I can catch up on my mail! Accck!)

The Silicon Valley area, where we head tomorrow, is outrageous on their prices for RV parks. The place we are going is 600.00 a month! And the only two others are 625.00 and $800.00 a month for the one on the coast! Sheesh! Anywhere else, you can stay at the luxury resorts for 300.00 a month, and an average park is 150-250 a month! Where we are going they don't even have room for our truck and trailer! They said they have alternate parking, but that most of them are taken up and it's a walk to the truck! This for 600.00 bucks?? I have got to open a park there! LOL!

So here we are. And we are not fallen off the face of the earth! LOL! In a week or to we'll have a place with a phone and we will be here for as long as it takes. I will be workin' and slavin for a bit and will let y'all know when we are up and runnin and you can check us out. For now that's all I can say. LOL! Industrial security!

Derek, Lynn, and Bogart the "Wonder Dog"