‘Amputation’ Successful

Friday, 6 April

We’re back at Bull Run Regional Park (for Russ and Donna — that’s BRRP) for another weekend stay through Sunday with a late check-out on Monday.  Once again, we’re in site 109 on the FHU loop.  Yes, Paul — we snagged your favorite site for the second time in a row, but we stacked the deck in our favor by making reservations several weeks in advance of our stay ;-).

It doesn’t look all too different from the picture I took last week.

My recent posts have been filled with all the prep-work we’ve been doing for full-timing — our upgrades and changes, and the fun we’ve been having working on these projects.  Lest you think life is always rosy at our condo on wheels, during set up this week we ran into a snag.  One that could have been a major headache.  You see, the rear driver-side leveler leg overextended itself and then refused to budge despite all of our efforts to retract it.

Some of you might recall that we had electrical issues in November 2010 that ended up frying the controller board.  That problem was actually preceded by the same leg that was acting up today being uncooperative at times.  Once the controller board was replaced, we were back to business as usual with the levelers extending and retracting normally.  At the time, the tech did tell us that the leg in question looked slightly bent and cautioned us that it might present a problem again someday.

Well that someday turned out to be today.  Now bear in mind that we’re in the same site we were last week.  We have no idea why the leg decided to overextend itself this time and worked perfectly well last time.  Anyway, there the Phaeton sat, it’s rear driver-side tires off the ground by nearly two inches, and the leveler leg refusing to retract.  We tried all the emergency recommendations in the manual and some of the tips we’d gleaned from the internet last time.  No luck.

So we called Coach-Net for assistance.  I have to say that we were very impressed with the service.  After we spoke with a tech, he contacted a mobile service on our behalf.  But before dispatching the guy, he notified us of the hourly rate and how long it would take for the repairman to get to BRRP (one hour).  At the end of the hour, we received a status-check call from Coach-Net.  When we told the operator that the repair guy had not yet arrived, she called for an update and advised us of that conversation.  The guy was stuck in traffic, which came as no surprise to us as rush-hour traffic is notoriously bad on I-66.  At the end of the second allotted time for arrival, Coach-Net called back … just as the tech was pulling in.  Great customer service.

The tech guy had us try a couple of things — which we had already done on our own, but this time he was under the vehicle banging away at the leg, hoping to jiggle it back into alignment.  Nothing, nada, zip.  That leg wasn’t going anywhere.  So, Mui gave him the go ahead to jack us up a bit more so he could remove the leg.  I have to say, seeing the Phaeton at what looked like a precarious angle sent my stress level sky high.  But it worked out OK, and the amputated leg was soon lying on the ground next to the coach.

Too frustrated to take pictures of the removal process, but here’s the problematic leg.

Our gimpy leveling system (they are Atwood electric levelers, by the way) means that we won’t be using it until we get a replacement leg.  That was on the punch list anyway for when we go to Red Bay next year as we start out our full-timing life, so we’re going to just stick to that plan.  In the meantime, Mui will continue to research electric vs hydraulic levelers and we’ll make a decision to either do a full-blown system replacement or just get a new leg to replace the amputated one on our existing system.

With a sigh of relief that we were at least operational again, we paid the $178 for the two-hours the repair guy was here and sent him on his way.  Finishing up the rest of our set-up procedures, we had a quick dinner and settled in for a quiet evening to decompress from the stress of dealing with the levelers.  Now to enjoy the weekend.