At last!  The new brake actuator arrived yesterday and with the help of friends it was installed today.  We’re back in action!

Those of you who followed the saga of our aborted trip to California know that our third Actibrake disc brake actuator quit without notice recently.  I’ve had a long and painful history with that product, which you can read about in the Tour of America archives and the Man In The Maze archives.  Suffice to say that this time we chose to switch brands, and after some research into the various products I chose to go with Dexter’s brake actuator, model K71-651-00.  It’s a 1600 psi unit designed specifically for disc brakes.

When the new actuator arrived I was immediately impressed with its design.  It’s a bit smaller than the one it replaced, and has a less-complicated 4-wire installation process (12v+, ground, brake controller, breakaway switch).  The previous one required five wires and I’ve seen some competitors that need six or more.

The mounting feet are integrated into the cast aluminum case, so I was able to toss the funky hold-down straps that we’d used before.  The whole thing seems tougher and neater, and from what I’ve read this Dexter unit has a good reputation for reliability, which is of course the highest priority in your braking system.

Removing the old dead unit was simple. The first step is to disconnect the trailer’s power, which means unplugging the trailer from shore power and removing the negative terminal on the battery.  Then I unscrewed the straps that held the brake actuator down, snipped the wires, and unscrewed the flexible hydraulic line.  It was out in five minutes, and it would have been quicker if I wasn’t working the confines of a closet.  I haven’t decided what to do with the old one yet.  My friend Rob suggested I send it to the Smithsonian.  I suppose it could be refurbished with a new circuit board but I don’t feel very good about passing on a proven unreliable product to someone else, given that I’ve had three of them fail.

Most of the job would have been fairly easy if it weren’t for that closet.  Having the actuator inside the trailer eliminates possible future problems from weather exposure, but it also means it ends up in some really awkward spot.  To get into the closet I had to lie on my side and wedge myself in, which was uncomfortable to say the least.  Fortunately, Rob came by and shared the joy by taking turns with me crimping wires in that tiny space (and he’s bigger than me).

The only other attachments needed were the hydraulic line, which just screws on with low torque (22 ft-lbs), and four wood screws to attach the Dexter to the floor. I pre-drilled the floor holes with a 1/16″ bit, screwed the actuator down, and we were basically done inside.

The next step is to fill the reservoir up with brake fluid, which required about a quart.  We reconnected the power, pulled the breakaway switch, and heard the reassuring hum of the actuator’s pump in full operation.

Once we knew it was working, we needed to bleed the air out of the brake lines.  This is the part I hate, because I have never managed to find a way to get a hose tightly on the bleeder valves so that it doesn’t leak.  I always end up with an armful of brake fluid, and this time was no exception.  But the bleeding went fairly quickly (there wasn’t a lot of air to be removed).  It definitely is crucial to have a buddy standing by at the breakaway switch to activate and deactivate the unit while you’re underneath getting doused with brake fluid.  We kept an eye on the fluid level but didn’t need to top it up until the bleeding job was done.  All told, we used about 1.5 quarts of DOT3 brake fluid to fill the reservoir and bleed the lines.

After that, the next task was to clean up the wires, which are a bit haphazard with different colors and multiple butt splices left from prior re-installations. The photo shows it before I wrapped things up.  I may also install a shelf so I have a flat surface above to store things, later.

At this point I lost my assistant, but the hard work was done.  All I need to do now is hitch up and go for a test tow.  When I do that, I’ll be checking that my previous brake controller settings still feel right for this controller (they probably will) and that I’ve gotten all the air out of the lines.  I’ll know if there’s air because it will take longer for the actuator to build up pressure and hence cause a delay in braking action.  Hopefully I got that part right.

If you are contemplating this job yourself, you’ll need these tools:

• 2-3 qts of brake fluid
• open-end wrenches to remove and re-attach the hydraulic line
• brake bleeder wrench (5/16″ or 1/4″ —check your brake calipers for correct size)
• yellow and blue butt splices
• wire cutter/stripper/crimper
• drill & small bits (to put new mounting holes in the floor)
• clear tubing & bottle for draining brake fluid
• rags or paper towels
• headlamp (very useful in small spaces)
• an assistant for the bleeding process
• mounting screws
• screwdrivers
• a test light or multi-meter
• wire loom and/or electrical tape

What a great feeling it is to have this done.  Not only are we ready to get back on the road, but I no longer have to worry about a random failure of the brakes. Dexter is a major company with a lot of experience, and they have a good product, so my confidence level in my disc brakes is high—for the first time in years.

Once in a while things don’t go according to plan.  Fate has decreed that today will serve as a demonstration of that principle.

We spent the last two days packing for an 11-day trip to southern California.  Eleanor hustled mightily to get all her stuff ready for the Airstream; she’s got big culinary plans in addition to the usual challenges of packing up a household and child.  I was busy too, packing, testing, filling, tweaking … Around 2 p.m., while Eleanor was making her finishing touches, I pulled the trailer forward a few feet and found that we had no brakes.  The disc brake actuator (a hydraulic pump) had failed.

I knew at that moment we were probably screwed, because we’ve had a long history of problems with brake actuators.  The unit was made by Actibrake, a company that has since disappeared, and whose legacy is hundreds of brake actuators that are known to suffer sudden failure.  This is our third Actibrake, and we have it only because when the prior two failed they were replaced under warranty.  For the past three years I have considered preemptively replacing this one to avoid a possible inconvenience, but since a replacement unit would cost $600-700 and this one was functioning properly, I let it go.  And so, it died in our carport without even a whimper to warn us.

But to be sure, I ran through the usual checks.  I added a little brake fluid, since it seemed low.  I cleaned the main ground for the trailer with a Scotchbrite pad.  I checked the 30 amp fuse that protects the unit, and all of the other fuses too.  With Super Terry on the phone, I verified power was going to the unit and that the ground was good.  I power-cycled it by disconnecting the battery. I even banged on it a little.  Nothing.  Dead dead deadsky.

So I told Eleanor, “We’re not going today,” which was no surprise to her by then, and I got on the phone to see if anyone in Tucson had a replacement unit.  At 3:30 pm on a Saturday, New Year’s Eve to boot, I didn’t expect much but I did get one RV parts store that was willing to order in a Dexter or Carlisle replacement actuator on Monday.  So the very best I can hope for it is to get one on Tuesday.  If I install it myself and all goes well, we could be on the road Tuesday night or Wednesday.

I think the fact that I made reservations for this trip is karmically jinxing us.  We don’t usually make reservations, and often when we do, we come to regret it and pay lots of cancellation fees.  That’s going to be the case for this trip.

Super Terry pointed out that we have a “backup” trailer, our 1968 Caravel.  So I picked up the Caravel from its parking spot and delivered it alongside the disabled Safari, and we started figuring out how to fit at least some of 30 feet worth of stuff into 17 feet.  It’s not easy.  The Caravel is a weekender.  The refrigerator is 1/3 the size of the Safari’s.  Storage is extremely limited.  It’s so small that when one person stands up to do anything (cook, make a bed, get something out of storage) everyone else has to sit down.

In 2004 we took the Caravel to the WBCCI International Rally in Lansing, MI.  That trip was 17 days, our record for length of time in that little trailer.  But Emma was a tyke then, taking up hardly any room, and it was summer so we were outside most of the time.  (In the photo, that’s Emma at age 4 pretending to be asleep.  Don’t be fooled—she never slept.)

Things are quite different now.  Emma is over five feet tall, she travels with an immense collection of books and stuffed animals, and we have the added complication that she has a nasty cold at the moment.

Plus, I just blogged about how cold it gets in the desert in the winter, and how sunset comes crashing down early.  I’m envisioning ten long nights in a tiny trailer with a sick kid …

But what can we do?  If we wait until the new brake actuator arrives, we might be on the road Wednesday.  That would cause a huge ripple that would eliminate much of the plan we’ve carefully laid out over the past few weeks.  And still something might go wrong that could cause a further delay.  Taking the Caravel is the best option we have to salvage at least some of the plan.

So we’re re-engineering everything.  About a quarter of the stuff we were bringing along is now staying home (but the Dutch oven is still coming!)  The Mercedes will now serve as our outside storage, loaded up with all the things that won’t fit in the Caravel.  (I don’t normally like to carry a lot of stuff in the car when towing the Safari because of weight limits, but the Caravel puts very little weight on the car so we are free to pack it full.)  Some plans that required big refrigeration are getting scotched, other plans are being modified.  We worked on this until about 7 p.m., but we need a lot more time to get it all figured out.

If we can figure it all out by tomorrow afternoon, we’ll get on the road and just miss our first night in the campground.  If we need more time to pack or if Emma needs more time to get over the worst of her cold, we might leave Monday instead.  All we can do is be flexible.

So tonight Eleanor broke out the cheese fondue that she had planned for our New Year’s celebration on the road, and I’m making popcorn for the movie we’ll watch.  It’s an enforced “staycation” tonight.  Not the New Year’s Eve we had planned, but a memorable one nonetheless.

The Caravel is a wonderful trailer, into which we’ve lavished attention, parts, and buckets of money, but still it has a few bats in the belfry.  (Note: Halloween-y reference in appreciation of the upcoming holiday.)   I fired up the water heater in the morning, took a shower, and discovered several new problems.  Problems are to be expected in any travel trailer as a result of time, miles, or — worst of all — long-term storage, but it just seems that at some point I should get into it and find that everything works as expected.  So far, no luck on that one.

In fairness, the problems are small: water leaks in both of the supply lines leading to the bathroom faucet, and another water leak at the water heater output line.  It’s not that the issues are big or expensive, it’s simply that they are there when they shouldn’t be.  None of this plumbing leaked last April when I last used the trailer, and it’s only a few years old.  So what happened?

Well, storage happened.  There are some types of plumbing that are better than others for long-term reliability.  Nearly every part of the Caravel has been replaced or renovated in the past few years — except the plumbing.  It looked good, so we left it, and that has turned out to be a mistake.  I think these leaks are number 5, 6, and 7 since we put it back into service about two years ago.  Every compression fitting seems to be failing, possibly as a result of thermal stresses (heat in the summer, cold in the winter) or maybe just age.  Some have been fixable with teflon tape, others have required outright replacement.

Paul fixed the water heater leak by replacing a kludged set of rigid plastic fittings (going around a tight corner) with something more elegant.  That got me to the rally site in the Grasslands yesterday, although I have had to keep an aluminum pan under the sink to catch the water that is leaking from the other two leaks in the bathroom.  (After every use of the water, I turn off the water pump and de-pressurize the system to minimize the leakage.)

The other plumbing surprise was the smell of the hot water.  Yikes.  Imagine a mixture of onion, wasabi, and sulfur, and then take a shower in it.  Phew.  It was a result of leaving the trailer in storage all summer.  I should have drained the water heater before storing it.  Fortunately, I didn’t smell like it when I came out of the shower.  After that experience, we drained the hot water tank and flushed it out with fresh water, which seems to have mostly eliminated the issue.  I’m going to do a full flush of the system and sanitize it when I get to a full hookup campground, or at home, whichever comes first.

So with the emergency tweaks done, we lined up the rigs in the  driveway and set off. There were three of us: Paul & Anne’s 1955 Cruiser, my 1968 Caravel, and Pat’s 1966 Globe Trotter.  We paused in Decatur for lunch at the Whistle Stop Cafe and then headed up to the Grasslands, in a steady cold drizzle.

There’s not much positive to say about the first night, unfortunately.  It was cold, windy, rainy, and a little muddy.  Six Airstreams were parked at the primitive campground we are using in the Grasslands, and all of us hunkered down for the night with the heat on (well, those of us who have heat –Paul never got around to installing his) and stayed inside.

I watched a movie and studied some travel books I’d brought.  The catalytic heater was my best friend, hissing quietly and glowing dimly all night long.

Today, however, is another story.  The weathermen were right: it is sunny, cool, and dry, and the wind is gone.  It’s the kind of weather that Texans have been waiting for all summer.  Airstreams are trickling into the campground for the weekend. I have no idea how many we are expecting, but when I left this morning there were 10 already.  I took off for a few hours in nearby Decatur to get the parts needed to fix the rest of the Caravel’s plumbing issues, and to take a couple of hours at the local Starbuck’s to catch wifi and charge up the laptop & phone batteries.  That’s where I am now, milking an iced decaf Americano with cream and hazelnut as long as possible.  This afternoon I’ll install the new pipes in the Caravel.  Tonight there will be a potluck dinner and I expect to find a few friends will have arrived when I return to the campground, so it should be a much more interesting evening than yesterday’s dark & stormy night.

It was hotter than Hell yesterday, but today it’s cool in Paradise (Texas).  Not only did the heat wave end, giving us a beautiful day, but our new 15,000 BTU air conditioner was installed and is now chilling out the Airstream.

We don’t really need the AC today, but hey, we’ve got it finally and I want to make sure the unit is solid (not about to have a “crib death” as electronics sometimes do) before we drive away.

The refrigerator, however, is another story.  No “smoking gun” issue was found.  It seems to be slowly failing for an unknown reason.  We found no sign of leaking coolant, no blockage in the vent, no ammonia smell, and it works equally badly on electric and gas.  This points to internal blockages in the cooling unit, which are not repairable.  The cooling unit has to be replaced, or the entire refrigerator.

Since it’s working a little (the freezer still makes ice but the refrigerator warms up to 50 degrees during the day), it was reinstalled for the trip home.  We’ll use it with some bags of ice to complete this trip, then figure out how/when it will be replaced later.

The new AC comes with a high-tech looking thermostat which basically does what the last one did but looks cooler doing it.  It reminds me of a Samsung front-loading washer.

Since we don’t trust the freezer entirely, Eleanor has embarked on a mission to cook up a bunch of the frozen stuff.  Last night she made dinner for seven (Paul, Anne, Marvin, Annie, and the three of us) which we ate in Paul & Anne’s house.  Tonight we’ll have dinner for five, since Marvin & Annie are leaving soon.  Tomorrow, it will be IKEA day: Swedish pancakes and meatballs for brunch before we hoist our moorings and point the ship west.

Struggling with the dual appliance failures and talking to Paul, Denver (tech), and Marvin has gotten me thinking about other upgrades and fixes for the Airstream.  Marvin & Annie are using a very interesting composting toilet in their 30 foot Argosy trailer, which they are enthusiastic about. It has several advantages:  no more black tank, no smell, and the ability to boondock for long periods of time.  On the other hand, it’s expensive at about $1k, does require you to empty a urine cartridge regularly, and requires a little user education.  You can’t just turn someone loose in the bathroom with this thing and expect good results.  I read the manual that comes with it and the manufacturer clearly has a bit of fun with the explanations of What To Do, and Where To Do It.

Eleanor and I had a chance to go inspect the Caravel, which is parked nearby, and see the work Paul did on it.  It looks great.  We asked for a few additional tweaks to the gaucho and battery mount, but nothing major.  It will be great to break the Caravel out this winter and perhaps take it to a vintage rally (if we can find one in a reasonable distance) or do a weekend at some tiny campground like the one in the Chiricauha National Monument.  It has been great visiting with Paul & Anne, so in a way I’m glad I’ll be making the 900-mile trip back soon to pick up the Caravel in the next few weeks.

Things looked hopeful in the morning when our refrigerator was reading 42 degrees, but as the morning sun rose, so did the interior temperature.  By 11 a.m. I had conceded that it wasn’t cooling properly on gas yet, and Paul switched it over to electric to see if that worked better.  I also turned on our fridge vent boost fans, which we normally use whenever the ambient temp is above 90 degrees.

No joy.  By 2 p.m. the refrigerator had risen to 52 degrees inside, which suggests the worse possible scenario.  These units don’t have a lot of failure modes. When the fridge won’t cool on electricity or gas, and the circuitry has been eliminated as a cause (as proven by use of Paul’s testing device), it usually means the cooling unit is a goner.  They aren’t field serviceable, so the only solutions are either a replacement cooling unit or a whole new refrigerator.  Either way, it’s bad news.

Before we go to the replacement scenario, we’re going to try “burping” the fridge, which basically means turning it upside down for a while to try to work out an internal clog of the gasses and liquids that are essential to the cooling process.  That’s a desperation move.  We’ll also remove the topside vent cover to see if perhaps something nested in there during our stay in Vermont.  The refrigerator will be removed during this process.  If this doesn’t work, we’ll have to consider various replacement options, which are dependent upon shipping and availability.  We might have to go home with no refrigerator and donate all of the frozen goodies Eleanor has collected over the summer to Paul & Anne.

To add to the fun, this is the hottest day we’ve experienced in the trailer without air conditioning since we dry camped in Death Valley in May 2006.  (In fact, that was the trip that inspired us to later install a pair of boost fans in the refrigerator vent, which have worked very well since. Until now.  There’s no compensating for a dead refrigerator cooling unit.)

It’s 100 degrees outside as I write this.  Because we have no air conditioning, the trailer interior is also 100 degrees.  It would be hotter but our three vent fans running at full speed are keeping us on par with the outdoors.  Eleanor had the excuse of grocery shopping for tonight’s dinner as a reason to drive off in the air conditioned Mercedes to an air conditioned store, but Emma and I just toughed it out.  Emma worked on math, and I worked on Airstream Life.

When the interior of the Airstream reached 100 degrees, Emma and I went into full-blown Death Valley Cooling Mode.  It’s dry here, so evaporative cooling is the trick.  We took cold showers and then put on wet cotton t-shirts.  I wiped down the dinette seats with wet cloths and rigged up a makeshift evaporative cooler for my laptop too, using a wet rag and a plate.  All of this made the heat somewhat tolerable.

Good thing, because it would be easy to lose my cool given two expensive appliance failures.  The air conditioner is gone after six years, and now the refrigerator is gone after just three years.  This will be our third refrigerator.  I’m not impressed with the quality of RV appliances — never have been, but this really seals it.  I said earlier that they don’t make ‘em like they used to, and I meant it.  We replaced the original refrigerator in our 1960s-era Caravel after 37 years, and it was still working. (We replaced it only to get a larger modern unit with better cooling control, but now I’m wondering if we made a big mistake.)  It’s not uncommon at all to find vintage Airstreams with original refrigerators in them.  In twenty years, will anyone with an early 2000s-era RV or travel trailer have an original appliance left?

This afternoon we relocated all of our refrigerated items to a spare refrigerator Paul & Ann have in their house.  We were too late for a roll of biscuit dough, which popped spontaneously in the refrigerator, and our milk is also history.  But at least we are in a friendly place with resources.  Eleanor is making dinner for Paul & Anne in their kitchen, which will use up some of our food.  I know for sure we are having biscuits with dinner.  Meanwhile, we’re working on Plans A, B, and C for the next few days, dependent on whether we fix the fridge, replace the fridge, or skip it until later and head home with an ice chest.

Remember that 1970s-era Euro-pop tune by Kraftwerk?  “Wir fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn”  (English: We drive drive drive on the motorway) That pretty well sums up the past two days.

We just needed to get the Airstream from the panhandle of Florida to north Texas as expediently as possible, and for that job there’s nothing like a nice boring Interstate highway.  Load the snacks, the podcasts, and some books and and the Gameboy for Emma — we’re going to check out half a dozen Interstate rest areas along I-10, I-49, and I-20!  Woo-hoo!

After an unremarkable overnight in Alexandria LA, where the height of excitement was discovering that we had accidentally spent the night parked next to a sign that said “NO OVERNIGHT PARKING,” we plowed up through Louisiana and across north Texas into the dark heart of the Dallas/Ft Worth metroplex.  The Louisiana roads were fine, quiet and even a bit scenic, but I do not enjoy the D/FW traffic nightmare when towing.  We encountered about 40 miles of construction zones (narrow lanes, signs missing, Jersey barriers) and the usual maniacal drivers making high-speed radical drifts across three lanes right in front of us while texting.

Twice we were forced off the road by a combination of “Exit Only” lanes that weren’t marked in the construction zones and drivers who would absolutely not let us enter “their” lanes.  At one point I decided to assert the mighty power of a 48-foot rig and almost literally crushed a small econobox that was being obnoxious.  He got the message. But most of the time we played nice and tried to be steady and smooth as much as the twisting and crazy construction zones would let us.

We survived D/FW once again and eventually emerged on the northwest side near Decatur.  We are now parked at Paul Mayeux’s home, where he is running his own 2-man Airstream service center.  Long-time readers will recall that last April I left our Caravel here for repairs and never got back to pick it up. So now we have two Airstreams here at Paul’s, 900 miles from home.

Our primary reason for coming here was to get a new air conditioner installed.  We’re going with a 15K BTU model (high capacity than the 13.5K model it is replacing).  We’re skipping the expensive dual AC/heat pump unit because we hardly ever used the heat pump and we have two other sources of heat anyway (furnace and catalytic heater).  That saves about $450.  Paul and Denver (who used to work on our Airstream when Roger Williams Airstream in nearby Weatherford was in business) will install the AC on Friday.

It always seems that when we get to a service center we find a bunch more things to fix or check.  During our last two days of roadtrip we’ve noticed that the refrigerator has climbed up to 52 degrees during the day.  That’s very bad, because it could indicate a failing cooling unit, which is very expensive.  The fridge has been running on gas during this time, so Paul checked the gas pressure with a manometer first and found that our pressure was below spec.  We adjusted the regulator and left the fridge running in a test mode (basically at top cooling capacity) all night to see if it would cool down.  This morning it is showing 42 degrees, which is better but not yet good enough.

Since it was packed full of food (thermal mass), it may be that a few more hours are needed to reach optimal temp (somewhere in the low 30s).  These gas absorption-type refrigerators are very slow to remove heat relative to your home refrigerator that uses an electric compressor.  That’s why you have to start them the day before you go on a trip.  Today we are expecting highs in the upper 90s, so it’s a good test day. If the fridge continues to cool, we’re fine, but if not, we’ll have to dig a little deeper to find the root cause.

We’ve also noticed that the bathroom vent fan seems to drip a little in the rain even when closed.  It probably has a crack in the plastic, so we’re anticipating replacing it on Friday as well.  That’s not a major job.

Parked next to us is a Canadian couple in an Argosy who are here for installation of solar panels, Marvin and Annie.  We’ve met before, way back in 2005 when Project Vintage Thunder was first displayed (unpainted and incomplete) at the Florida State Rally in Sarasota.  They remembered us and Vintage Thunder.  So it’s like being in a little campground here at the shop.

The best news we’ve had so far is that nights up here are cooling down nicely.  We’re getting 65 degrees by daybreak, and the humidity is low, so even without AC at the moment it’s very comfortable.  We finally used a blanket on the bed last night.  And added to that, we zipped up to Decatur last night and got our first Texas barbecue dinner of this trip, which is always something that makes us all happy.  I don’t know why, I guess it’s just a tradition now.  Memories of other great trips.

I don’t blame Super Terry, really.

He tried his best.  He spent hours replacing the burned out motor in our air conditioner, and it seemed to work in heat pump mode when we tested it.  But as he joked, it had the “taillight warranty” — when he can’t see my taillights anymore, the warranty is over.

We’re 489 miles from his view now, near Birmingham AL, and I just turned on the air conditioner to remove some of the intense humidity we are feeling tonight.  It blew warm for a few minutes, cooled down a little, and then started blowing very warm humid air.  … sigh…

We did a quick telephone consultation but the consensus is:  “He’s dead, Jim.”

(note to non-geeks and those under age 45: That’s a Star Trek joke)

The full post-mortem hasn’t been done but it doesn’t matter, because I’m out of cheap options.  We aren’t going to repair this air conditioner at shop rates. At six years old, it has gone Tango Uniform. Farewell, Dometic Penguin — you are already missed, on this humid night in an Alabama state park.

I would like to wait until later this winter to replace it, but we also use the Airstream as a guest apartment and we have people slated to arrive in October, which is still air conditioning season in Tucson.  Somewhere in the next 1,900 miles I’ll find a good deal on a replacement unit (probably a 15k BTU air conditioner without heat pump) and we’ll do a swap.  That’s a topic I’ll start researching in the next few days.

I hope that this will be the last maintenance post for a while.  It’s good to have gotten things tweaked and fixed but I’d rather write about our travels.

Just to wrap up the repair saga, Super Terry came through with an amazing job on the Dometic AC/heat pump.  He salvaged the 1/4 hp electric motor from another unit and installed it in ours starting at about 6:30 Monday evening.  The job, conducted entirely atop the roof of the Airstream, took until about 9:30 pm, so mostly in the dark by flashlights.

I went up and down the ladder a dozen times to fetch tools as requested, and otherwise just stood at the top of the rungs admiring a mechanic with 30 years of experience solving what appeared to me to be an insoluble problem. That unit is not designed for easy serviceability, and the motor didn’t come out without a fight.  But at the end it was in, the whole thing went back together and upon testing it ran like new.  I’m amazed and grateful that this effort allowed us to avoid an expensive replacement, which is normally the only option.

For those who suffer this issue, believe your mechanic when he says the best fix is a whole new air conditioner.  Counting the time it took to salvage the motor from another unit, Super Terry put in a solid five hours on the job.  He did this as a friendly favor, but if I were paying shop rates it would have been probably $500 plus parts, and I’m left with a 6-year-old unit that probably will have some other fatal issue in a few years.  At the risk of sounding like an old RV codger, they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.  Hopefully ours will hold on for a few more years but I’m not expecting decades of service.

With the late dinner and the usual post-dinner conversation it was a late night, and then this morning we had a slow-motion getaway.  It was 11 a.m. before we got on the road, westbound for Alabama.  We got as far as 30 miles past Atlanta (hit downtown right at rush hour, which was challenging), then stopped for dinner and overnight parking in a private lot. It’s pouring rain tonight, so I’m very glad we resolved the leak in the Fan-Tastic Vent.

Our goal tomorrow is Birmingham.  It’s a city we’ve never visited, and there are a few sights we want to see there, which I’ll write about in future posts.  From there, our travel plan is basically to head back to Tucson in two weeks or less.  We’re going to leave the exact stops loose, but this is familiar territory so if we want something different we’ll have to divert plenty from the beaten path.  There are a few days built into the schedule for that.

The big splurge of our two-week return budget is going to be this weekend.  I’ve actually made reservations — a rare thing indeed — for a park in the Florida panhandle for four nights.  We all want beach time, to fill that piece of our souls and sustain us through the dry interim in the southwest this winter.  Detouring to the panhandle will add 300 miles to our route but I’m sure it will be well worth it.

So that’s the sum total of our remaining travel “plan.”  Not much, really.   Rather than figure it all out, we’ll let circumstances and whimsy suggest the opportunities.  In the nearly 1,900 miles ahead, I have a feeling we’ll find more than a few interesting things.

Believe it or not, a day spent on the roof of an Airstream can be kind of fun.  That is, as long as the news from roofside isn’t too bad.

We had left off yesterday with a few mysteries up above: a rain water leak and a non-functional air conditioner/heat pump.  With perfect fall weather and no rain, Sunday was the best opportunity for me to climb up onto the roof with Super Terry.

We had thought the AC problem was likely to be a control board, and in fact already had the spare part on hand.  But it wasn’t.  A few minutes after removing the shroud and firing up the unit, we noticed a burning smell and then the blower motor began to slow down.  It’s burned out.  That’s really bad news, since the motor is not designed to be replaced.  The typical “fix” is to replace the entire unit.  A quick check of prices for this combination AC/heat pump shows that it runs about $1200 plus shipping (nobody has it in stock locally).  An AC-only unit would cost about $850.  Not psyched.

Fortunately, he isn’t called Super Terry for nothing.  Just because the blower motor isn’t designed for easy replacement doesn’t mean it can’t be.  The job requires ripping up glued insulation and other bits, so it won’t be a pretty process but I expect the result will work out fine.  The real problem was that we didn’t have a spare blower motor and it was Sunday.  So, we set aside the problem until Monday and planned to extend our visit here so Super Terry can find one with his x-ray vision.

The other mystery was The Case of the Dripping Speaker.  The ceiling mounted speaker above the kitchen area was dripping rain water on Saturday.  I suspected the center Fan-Tastic Vent.  This vent has a bit of a history.  It’s original to the trailer, and I had re-caulked it 11 months ago in Florida.  At the time I couldn’t find the right caulk and eventually used some common “self-leveling RV caulk” that was sold by Camping World.  I was not happy with the stuff but it appeared to still be OK when I inspected yesterday (photo below).

Super Terry pointed me to a tube of Sikaflex 221, which is a very good polyurethane sealant, basically white Vulkem.  You know it’s great when a tiny smudge is absolutely impossible to remove from your clothing even after multiple washes. I have a pair of pants with a gray Vulkem smudge that is still pliable and sticky after several years.  For this reason I never start a caulk job without sacrificial clothing.

I took a few minutes to strip and re-seal some of the older caulk points on the roof (the FM antenna, the cellular antenna) but couldn’t find a smoking gun.  I was looking for an obvious caulk failure, which is indicated by the caulk peeling up, gapping, or starting to break down in the U.V.  Eventually S.T. found a small crack on the corner of the plastic flange that surrounds the Fan-Tastic Vent that wasn’t covered with caulk, and we had the culprit red-handed.  It doesn’t take much of a crack to let in a lot of rainwater.  The crack was in exactly the right spot to be allowing water to run to the ceiling speaker, given the tilt of the trailer.

Once we pulled off the caulk to inspect, we discovered that the entire flange surrounding the fan body was badly cracked.  The caulk was holding, but the multiple cracks were creating water entry points.  About half the screw heads were rusted underneath the caulk.  At this point there was not much hope for caulking our way out of the problem — the best solution was a replacement fan body.

We’ve got some time pressure, so although the warranty on the fan would allow us to request a replacement body from the company, I chose the more expedient option of going to the store and buying a basic model of the same fan to replace this one.  Super Terry transferred the advanced features of our old fan to the new one (rain sensor, power open/close, smoked cover), and so the $100 basic fan we bought became the equivalent of a $300 model, and we installed that with the Sikaflex.

It won’t be leaking again for quite a while.  From my personal observations, the OEM caulk will last 5-6 years under average conditions, but as little as 3-4 years if left full-time in a sunny environment like the desert southwest.  A good quality polyurethane caulk like Sikaflex or Vulkem stays good and pliable for a much longer time.  I’ve seen Vulkem on vintage trailers that is decades old and still holding tight.  It pays to use the good stuff, but you do have to hunt for it a bit.

Now that we knew we’d be spending at least another night here, waiting for the replacement blower motor, it was time to discuss our future plans.  Since we left Vermont we had expected this stop in North Carolina to be a literal fork in the road, and we’d have to make a choice:  go for an extended trip with several weeks in Florida, or hang a right and start west toward home.  The difference was basically $1,000 in camping and fuel, and 1,000 miles, which would get us three or four weeks of Florida fun.

But our decision has been made for us.  Late last night Emma’s orthodontic appliance failed again — for the third time — and after consulting with her home dentist we have come to the conclusion that the best choice is to head home.  The appliance will be disconnected by a local orthodontist in Winston-Salem today.  To avoid a major setback in her treatment, we will aim to get back to Tucson in less than two weeks, which means no long visit to Florida.

We knew this might happen, and even discussed the possibility months ago.  An orthodontic problem (or really any sort of medical problem) can easily derail a long trip.  Sometimes there’s no choice but to go back to home base.  The important thing is that everyone rolls with the punches and there be no recriminations.  Today it was Emma’s issue, but tomorrow it might be mine.  At least traveling by Airstream gives us the flexibility to re-arrange our plans without paying penalties for cancellation fees or last-minute airfares.

So, starting Tuesday we will be heading westward.  There are still several interesting stops to be made along the 2,000 mile journey back, so it won’t be a waste.  I’ve started mapping out possibilities and will work up a fairly definite plan as soon as we button up the air conditioner.

I have been paranoid about our disc brakes since about 5,000 miles after we got them, and our tires almost since we first started traveling with this particular Airstream — for good reason.  The brakes have had a long history of wearing unevenly and the tires … well, let’s just say we’ve had our share of problems with them.  (If you haven’t been a long-time reader of this blog and the prior Tour of America blog, just try searching the word “tires” in either of them.)

But after about five years of traveling and trying various solutions, we seem to have finally gotten it all worked out.  We installed Michelin LTX M/S LT235/75R15 tires (Load Range C) on the trailer in January of 2010 and replaced the ceramic brake pads with semi-metallics at the same time.

About a year ago, in October 2010, we met up with Super Terry to do a maintenance check and everything checked out perfectly.  Since then, we’ve put about 8,000 additional miles on the trailer, for a total of approximately 18,000 miles of towing on this set of brakes and tires, so I decided it was time to do another check.  And so here we are with Super Terry again, about one year later.

I figured that we’d probably need something at this point, so my other goal was to learn the full disc brake replacement procedure, along with best techniques for re-packing wheel bearings.  But when we pulled the wheels, everything was perfect.  Absolutely no service needed.  So I didn’t get a chance to observe much of anything.

The tires currently have 12/32″ of tread depth remaining (they started with 13/32″, so barely any wear so far).  If we eventually replace the tires when they reach 4/32″ of tread, we’d have over 160,000 miles on them.  That’s incredible.  Realistically, with uneven wear that usually occurs or just aging, we’ll replace them with about 75,000 miles on them — still incredible compared to the 30,000 mile life I would get if I could wear out an ST tire before it had a belt failure.

The disc brakes were similar.  I could not see any wear since last year.  (We didn’t measure the pads but they are still in excellent condition.)  I’ll continue to do annual brake and tire checks but that’s just good practice.  We finally have a really reliable running gear setup.

Given the excellent condition of everything we observed, we decided to skip wheel bearing service at this time.  We did notice slightly more wear on the rear tires, which is normal, so we rotated the tires front-to-back.  We also took the opportunity to replace the remaining original lug nuts, which were cheap-o type with fake chrome caps on them.  The chrome caps tend to come loose at inopportune moments, which makes them very hard to remove.  They also stretch so that fitting them into a socket can be difficult.

We found solid nuts at Autozone.  The replacements take a 13/16″ socket instead of 3/4″, which is slightly less convenient.  The Hensley hitch strut jacks take a 3/4″ socket and so do all the stabilizer jacks, so now I have to carry one more socket, but that’s no big deal.  In the photo, the solid nuts are pictured at right, and one of the original capped nuts is on the left.

I am still finding reminders of the summer of storage in Vermont.  It was sprinkling lightly this morning, so I opened up the awning to cover us while we were working on the curbside.  Rolled up inside the awning was a colony of very large ants.  They appeared to be dormant, and began to wander randomly around the awning.  I knocked them off easily enough, but it was not a pleasant surprise.  We’re still carrying quite a few spiders too.  They are slowly being captured and removed.   I am just hoping we haven’t picked up a load of stink bugs on the east coast like last year.

With the rain coming and going we didn’t feel like getting on the roof for the final scheduled repair, the air conditioner.  It started getting wonky a few weeks ago, spontaneously shutting off or blowing hot air.  We suspect a bad circuit board, which has to be replaced from the top.  That’s part of today’s plan.

So instead of doing anything significant in the rain, we added a few LED lights in strategic places for future boondocking episodes, including this one in the porch light.  The standard incandescent bulb that comes with the light (an 1156) generates too much heat and eventually melts the plastic lens.  I don’t know why the OEM puts that bulb in there.  Ours had started to melt but was still usable, so to prevent further damage we swapped it with this plug-in replacement 24-LED array from a fine Airstream Life advertiser, LED4RV.  It works great.

There’s one other job for today while we’re on the roof.  The rain revealed a roof leak somewhere.  Water was dripping through one of the ceiling-mounted JVC speakers.  Now, we’ve had rain several times before on this trip and not noticed a leak, which provides a lesson.  Sometimes leaks aren’t noticeable until the trailer is parked a particular way.  This is another example of how using your Airstream regularly is the best way to keep it in good shape. A leak like this one could have gone unnoticed for months while in storage, until an expensive floor repair became necessary.

In this case, we are very slightly nose high and very slightly lower on the street side.  This suggests that the leak is coming through the Fan-Tastic Vent in the center of the trailer.  I re-caulked that vent last year and was not happy with the caulk I ended up having to use, so I’m going to remove all of the caulk and do it over with something better.  While I’m up there, I’ll probably do a few other spots as a preventative measure.  I’ll have more to say about that issue in the next blog.

Those who are wondering about E&E: they spent the day in the trailer just puttering.  Both of them have a cold and will be running at low speed for a few days, but in the gloomy fall sprinkles it wasn’t a bad way to spend Saturday.