Bad bent Badger

‎Hit the road again this morning after almost 2 weeks spent catching up with Pris and Bill in central Oregon. We camped next to them after our first day on the road in Palm Desert 18 months ago, and they sort of adopted us, and they have been asking us when we were going to pass by their summer place ever since.

We ended up staying a little longer than initially planned as whilst I thought badger had survived the winter with not too many problems, it turned out he had a couple of surprises left in reserve. 

I fixed the mirror in bellingham and capped off the water line to the ice maker to stop the leak before we hit the road, and had filled and emptied the fresh water tank a couple of times to flush out the anti-freeze with no issues. However, when we refilled the tank and started moving there was water pouring out of the bodywork around where the tank is located. Bugger.

And then, for his piece de resistance, when we stopped for the evening at Stephanie's in washington (someone we met our fist night in badger south of LA), I pressed the button to automatically put the jacks down and level the coach, and for some reason it threw a fit and tried to stand on one leg. Net result, one rear right jack that is now angled at about 20 degrees ‎rather than vertical, and the whole bus being pushed sideways whenever we tried to put the jacks down again. Spoke to an RV repair shop in Bend that Pris and Bill recommended and they said the earliest they could see us was the 1st, so hence the longer stay.

Took him in there on Monday and left them to look at the jack and do a routine service, and when we got back mid afternoon they informed us that he has bent the mounting onto the frame, that looks to be about 6-8mm steel angle welded on to the frame rail, and also bent the jack itself, so they hadn't done anything to fix it as it's a 3 week lead for the new jack. If they had phoned me earlier in the day I would have told them to cut off and reweld the mounting for now, and I would get the jack ordered and done further down the road, but as they ‎had already taken him out of the bay and parked him back on the road I couldn't be bothered to argue.

Got back to Pris and Bill's and took a look at the jack with a straight edge and the outer tube looks straight to me, and having worked out how to put the jacks down manually one at a time ( not trusting the auto button again) the ram comes in and out smoothly enough, so I think and hope they may have been overselling the problem. Did some phoning around to places on our upcoming route and i've found somewhere that will take a look at doing the welding in southern utah next Friday, so we'll see how that goes and if the jack does need replacing I have found a couple of breakers selling used ones on-line, although getting in there myself may be a bit of a struggle as I don't have a pit or any ability to jack the coach up to work under it safely‎ - might have to take bus and jack to another garage further long the route. But we'll cross that hurdle once the welding us done.

This enforced delay did give me a chance to investigate the water tank - can't find any leaks so hope it was just water from the fridge leak that was sat on the horizontal surfaces under the coach ‎until we started moving then ran down. I ordered a replacement ice maker solenoid from the web which turned up, so I was able to get a new pipe locally and pull the fridge out to replace that and it turned out that the old pipe had fallen apart anyway over the years, and it was just the insulation holding the water in and passing up to the ice maker. So now we have nice clear ice with no bits of pipe in it.

I also finally gave in and ordered a new 39" Lcd TV and fitted that above the front windscreen. It's  double the screen area of the old one, so I can actually see what is going on if we watch a film when it is too light for the projector.

And never having seen another avatar on a campground or dealers, an almost identical one suddenly turned up with a for sale sign outside the hardware store in Terrebonne where Pris and Bill live - literally in the last couple of days as it wasn't there the previous times I drove down there‎. It was slightly tattier than Badger, and still had the old CRT TV above the dashboard and it turns out that hangs down even lower than the new LCD, so I feel pretty good about my handywork.

Off to idaho tomorrow, craters of the moon national park on saturday then on down into salt Lake city on sunday. Couple of days there and then bonneville salt flats, great basin national park in nevada for a couple of days and then start the major attractions in zion national park next Friday and bryce canyon the following week....