I was doing an inspection and found something hanging down under the coach. Upon inspection I found a damaged wiring conduit.
The damage was caused by the exhaust from the generator. The conduit is the wiring from the generator to the coach. the wiring fastener that was installed by Thor broke and the conduit fell down on the exhaust.
I did an inspection of each damaged point and found no damage to the actual wire.
I did a repair by taping each melted point and bought a larger conduit and split it down the middle and placed it over the both melted points and taped it up using duct tape. I reworked the method of holding the conduit to the coach. Problem solved.
We were anxious to take an extended trip with our new RV. We made plans to go to Florida. First, we planned to join up with Henry at Twin Lakes Resort in Defuniak Springs, FL where friends of ours were the park hosts. Then we would go to Florida where we would join up with our cousin Bill and spend time with him, then to Orlando to meet up with the family; my daughter Tammy, her husband Guy, and the twin granddaughters, Meg & Kate.
Needless to say, this trip had to be set by some sort of time frame. Most RV parks require you to make reservations to save a spot. We scheduled our first stop March 15, 2016 at Twin Lakes.
We were 88 miles into our trip and we lose engine power. We could smell brakes burning. Unable to get any acceleration made it dangerous to drive on the interstate where posted speeds were 70mph. We pull off to the shoulder to evaluate the situation. We knew we had to find a Ford Dealership and thankfully our GPS found a Ford dealer a few miles away, so we slowly drove there.
I was pretty upset, this being a brand new RV with only a few thousand miles on it. It was near closing time for the Ford dealer so we had to find a place to boondock. We again slowly drove to a Best Buy parking lot and camped out.
The next morning we drove to Ford to have them figure out what the problem was. Upon their inspection, they concluded that it was a manufacturer fault. A relay had fallen loose and lodged itself between the brake pedal and the frame. That is what caused the brakes to depress. The problem was fixed and once again we were on our way by 10 am, this being the day we were supposed to check in at Twin Lakes.
It took me a long time to calm down. We continued on, having 7 more hours of travel. We were getting close and I start3ed to relax, the, three hours from our destination, a rear inside tire blew.
Ok, now I am fit to be tied. It was obvious that we were going to be late for check in.
We were stuck on a 4 lane highway with only a small shoulder to pull over on. I have seen too many stories of people standing by the roadside and getting hit by traffic so I decided to take our dog Cerys and walk up a large hill away from the speeding traffic. Rich called Ford road side assistance and they were sending someone to fix the flat.
While we were waiting for the mechanic, an officer stopped by to check on us. He informed me that I should watch out for snakes which made sitting down not an option. An hour of standing on that hill side the mechanic shows up. I am somewhat optimistic at this point, knowing Cerys and I would only be standing on the hillside for a few more minutes.
Well, the mechanic comes to our RV with his tools and finds out he did not bring the right size lug wrench to remove the tire.
WHAT!! So he calls his buddy who is only 30 minutes away and asks him to bring the proper wrench. 30 more minutes of Cerys and I standing on the hillside as darkness closes in. I can do that! The minutes tick by and after an hour, I finally get to my end point. I went down the hill and ask what the heck was going on. The mechanic called his buddy and found out he had turned the wrong direction on the interstate which now put him one more hour away from our location.
“You have got to be kidding me”. I took my stand back on the hill side and waited, ready to explode.
When he finally arrived, I had all I could do to not let loose on both of them. If the first mechanic had brought the right tool, we would have been far on down the road, but 3 hours had passed from when we first made the call to roadside assistance. Cerys and I standing on the hill side watching for snakes.
This is not a good start to a vacation. We started wondering if this is what RV’ing entailed.
We continued our journey, keeping in contact with my brother as to our status. Our 2 pm arrival time on Tuesday ended up being 2 am on Wednesday.
Thankfully we had little set up to do in the dark. When electric, sewer and water were all hooked up we could actually kick back and start our vacation.
