jenn December 22nd, 2009
It snowed. And then it snowed some more. It snowed so much that Amazon/Integrity hired buses to bring in their staff from Reno. It was nice of them, but I wish they wouldn’t have called me at 1pm to let me know that they were going to do it. I am not in Reno and the call woke me up a couple of hours earlier than I would normally get up. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I been able to go to sleep at my normal time, but we went to sleep a few hours later than scheduled. So, after 4 hours of sleep I awoke to this:
A light snowfall. I know. Its not a big deal. There isn’t much snow out there at all. Its about as much snow as I expect when there is snow forecast and usually its gone by the next afternoon. However, this was no ordinary snow day for us.
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johnny February 3rd, 2009
Internet connectivity has been spotty, but not as spotty as the sides of the truck. About a week ago, we stopped overnight at a horse trail in the national forest just off the Natchez Trace. On pulling in, we saw a rather deep looking mud puddle and in our infinite wisdom, decided to try and keep the truck clean. A few words of advice: in Mississippi, if the road looks bad, the ground around it is awful. Fifteen feet off the road, the ground sunk in bad enough that we needed to put the truck in 4WD and lock the hubs to get out.
Now this is the point where everybody tells you that 4WD allows you to get stuck deeper in. The smart course of action, would have been to back out. However, I looked at the ruts we’d already made and looked ahead. No big deal, just a little 10″ deep ditch. Nothing the truck can’t handle, right? At this point, the ditch, with water running through it, somehow, looked better than the foot deep mud behind us. I guess everybody that’s spent much time in the mud is giggling about now. I hadn’t taken into account that a ditch, WITH WATER IN IT, is likely to be at least as gooey as the ground around it.
So, long story short, another fifteen feet of driving put us in quite a bit of nasty crud and the poor, overloaded truck refused to budge any direction but down. I got out and started digging in some hope of flattening the area out. Jenn decided it was a great time to snap a picture. Women! I can’t fault her too much though, by the time the night was over, she did her share of digging.
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johnny December 19th, 2007
Monday night we drove the camper back to the campground through the Orlando highway system; about 45 minutes if you skip interstates and toll roads. Between the new brakes and the timbrens, it drives like an entirely different vehicle.
Its not quite a sports car, but it does stop with a lot more firmness and a lot less noise. While it won’t be doing pace car work over in Daytona, it certainly deals with corners and uneven pavement a lot better than previously. It’s still top heavy and prone to lean a bit, but there is no side to side rocking to speak of.
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johnny December 17th, 2007
It poured on us pretty good late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, but by about 9:30 in the morning, the rain had stopped and the clouds were clearing out.
With great enthusiasm, we hopped out of the camper (well, after wearing out the snooze bar and having a cup of coffee) and started tearing off one of the front wheels and the brake caliper. We broke a couple of cheapo sockets breaking some nuts free and had to run out for replacements, but eventually we got the caliper off and got to the brake pads.
And then we had to run out for parts again. Apparently the last guy to work on the brakes couldn’t be bothered with putting things back together correctly. He left off one of the anti-rattle clips and BOTH of the V springs. Eventually, we found a auto store with a ‘brake kit’ that consisted of 4 V springs and 8 anti-rattle clips. A whopping $20 for about one ounce of cheap steel… but if you don’t have it… Anyway, we now had what should be all the parts and proceeded to try and pull this apart:
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johnny December 16th, 2007
Today was a work day as we try and get the truck ready for a trip to North Carolina over the Christmas holidays. We were hoping to change the air filter, fuel filter, oil, the front brakes and add a set of timbrens.
We managed to get everything except the brakes done today. Thankfully, the rain held off, but it should come in full force tonight. We’re hoping it will be over by tomorrow and we can get the brakes done as well.
There was some mild excitement during the proceedings. Mostly, myself cursing the engineer that decided to use fine threaded bolts in the timbrens as I tried to get them to line up without being able to see them. The other exciting bit involved screwing the fuel filter cap down too tightly, which caused the gasket to bunch up and allow diesel fuel to spray out. It was a very fine stream, but between the wind and the spray, it covered the entire front half of the truck.
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