It is Thursday and we are on our way to a church campout this weekend in Chehalis, WA. Now one of the advantages of having a home on wheels is that you can schedule your maintenance on the way to these events. We were due to have the oil changed and the chassis lubed. I scheduled this event for Thursday around noon at Pacific Power in Ridgefield. Now that would give us time to seek a campground if all went well and leaves us a whole extra day if things implode.
We now have 75,000 miles on Arcturus, our Alpine motor home. I was having them check things like brakes and shocks. The reason I was suspicious was last winter as we were driving through Laredo, Texas we had to stop at five or six lights in a row on a stretch of 50 mph highway. Judy looked out her side of the coach and declared we had a rear tire smoking! I pulled into a parking lot and surveyed the scene and it was just hot brakes. Still it was something to check out.
Today we have the diagnosis: The rear axle seal on one side of the coach is weeping oil onto the disk brakes and the other side is just starting to ooze a little. So tonight we are camped under the breezeway at Pacific Power. It will be $500 for the night’s camping and tomorrow they will replace the seals for free! Such a deal!
Another seal story? O.K. You remember we were headed down river with Regal Jug, our 23 foot sailboat? We were preparing the boat for launch and I started to move the outboard motor to place it on the transom. An ounce or so of dark oil drained from the lower unit onto the cabin sole. I assumed the worst case situation and decided the seals in the lower unit had been damaged. I was unwilling to take a seventy mile trip with a sick outboard, so we abandoned the trip and stored the boat for winter. Later I was trying to locate some parts to repair the motor and the service manager listened to my diagnosis. He assured me that I had misdiagnosed the problem. These Honda outboards are famous for loosing crankcase oil through the exhaust pipe when laid on their sides. It doesn’t hurt them, it just makes a mess. The seals almost never give trouble. If I had taken the chance and gone anyway we would have been fine. However, I would have stewed over the perhaps imminent failure of the outboard all the way to Astoria and back. I don’t regret taking the safe course.
If you want to review my earlier seal story look up the story of the new born seal pup in my July 14th blog.
We will see some of you at the camp-out this weekend.
Gary and Judy