The Wheels Aren't Rolling

(Athens, TX) Hi 101 Lo 73 -- We were getting ready to move out to go to Austin this morning. When we left our last park on Monday we had a little trouble getting our doorside (small) slide in, so today Jim wanted to bring  in that slide before disconnecting the hoses to make sure it worked ok. Well, guess what? It didn't come in, and no amount of Jim pushing on it helped. It was jumping the gears really bad. Our regular readers will remember a couple of months ago we had the same problem, and we (supposedly) had it repaired at an RV dealer in Wyoming. At the time the repairman tightened two loose slide motor mount bolts and readjusted the slide. The main drive gear on the motor was a little worn, but he thought it would last quite a while longer so he didn't replace it. Well, it lasted two months. So Jim went to the office to get some advice for a local repair service and they recommended a local independent repairman, Robert Bruce of Robert's RV Service. They called him and he agreed to come out in a couple of hours. So we added another day on our stay and waited for him to arrive.

Robert arrived around 11:30am and got to work diagnosing the problem. He removed the slide motor and determined that the drive gear was indeed worn, but not bad enough to cause a serious problem. However, the 48-tooth gear that it meshed with on the long drive shaft was in bad shape, with some broken teeth. He recommended replacement of the whole gear set, and I agreed. He had a local source for the parts so he left for an hour or so to get them. When he returned it took him about two more hours to get all the new gears in and the motor re-installed. The slide now works great, with a much smoother and faster action. Not having the repair done properly two months ago is partly our fault. We didn't want to wait around for the several days it would have taken to get the parts, and they were confident that the adjustments they made would last. But it's nice to know that we have all new parts now, and we shouldn't have any more problems (knock on wood!). And the good part is, our extended warranty service is paying for the whole thing, minus our $50.00 deductible. They gave Robert a little push back at first, thinking the current problem might have been caused by the previous "adjustments." (We had made a claim with them back then, but they disapproved it because it was an adjustment and not a repair.) But Robert convinced them that the failure would have happened eventually anyway. He was a wonderful advocate for us, and we are really happy with his service.

While all this was going on Jim and I decided to skip our trip to Austin and stay here for a few more days. Going to Austin would be backtracking some from the next stop where we're going to see some friends. We balanced the cost of the move, the increased cost of the campground in Austin vs. here, and if there was really any "can't miss" things we wanted to see, and decided to stay put for awhile. Jim went to the office to ask about staying longer. There's a small rally coming in this weekend, but they have plenty of sites left so we're ok to stay for the rest of the week. They even switched us to a weekly rate, which saved us a little money. They're good folks here at the Texan RV Park, full of that wonderful Texas hospitality.

It wasn't long ago when today's activities would have freaked us out. But we've learned to "go with the flow" and keep our plans "in jello."  :)