Going for the record

We are still/again on the street in front of Los Angeles Freightliner.

I had really hoped they would be finished yesterday, and, indeed, they had "completed" all the work. However, they failed to activate the locking mechanism when they checked the tag axle alignment. Since the lock cylinders may well be trying to push the tags out of alignment, I don't consider the alignment complete, and I was very clear with them about this.

Unfortunately, it was past 4 when everything else was completed, so the alignment re-check will have to wait until Monday. I really, really hope they are done Monday afternoon -- if we are still here on Tuesday, that will make three full weeks that we have been in this area getting mechanical work done. I think that's the longest we've ever been "down" for mechanical work. Of course, if you count the fact that three Mondays ago we had the A-frame replaced in Escondido, we'll actually have been at this more than three weeks by end-of-day Monday.

In the meantime, we've "missed out" on any number of things we might have done here at the end of March, including seeing friends in Mexico, a bus rally in Arizona, and SXSW in Austin. Having come to this point, we are now completely re-evaluating our options moving forward.

Given our commitment in Salt Lake starting June 24th, our need to be in Washington sometime before the start of hurricane season, and wanting to get some work done at Infinity Coach, I've asked them if we can arrive at the shop basically on Memorial Day, which gives them plenty of time to work, while still allowing for a very leisurely trip to SLC with plenty of stops. That gives us about eight weeks to work our way to Sumner.

We're thinking it's still too cold to start heading north directly from here, so we are toying with heading east to the desert for some agenda-less downtime for a couple weeks. It has been a while since we had the opportunity to just do nothing for a while, which is what we had basically planned to do in Mexico, had we made it there.

Just to recap what's been done over the last three weeks, we've had the bent tag axle A-frame replaced, fixed a bunch of oil leaks in the engine, transmission, and differential, inspected the liners, re-packed the wheel bearings, replaced a worn tie-rod end, changed and sampled the engine oil, changed and sampled the differential lube (to synthetic), put six new tires on, balanced the front wheels, and aligned the wheels. We also discovered an air leak in the emergency brake release circuit, and had that air line replaced.

In addition to discovering the air leak, which was likely caused by trauma to the exposed line while entering a steep driveway, we found the threads on the differential fluid drain plug to be nearly completely destroyed.



I can only guess the plug stood proud of the drain hole by a little bit, and some under-trained tire jockey once jacked the drive axle up by the pumpkin. 20,000 lbs of force on the little drain plug would certainly cause this sort of damage. We had to use the fill plug for the drain hole, and re-tap the fill hole for a larger plug.

The air leak discovery reminded me of just how important the pre-drive inspection is, but also that such an inspection just can not catch everything. It was a pinhole leak, invisible to the naked eye. I heard it while walking past the coach when they had the front wheels on stands, greasing the bearings. It was a very distinct and audible hissing, and my first thought was that I had never heard it before, and it certainly was not leaking that way before we came to the shop.

Not necessarily so, as it turns out. The leak is in a circuit that is only pressurized when the emergency/parking brakes are released. Of course, when I do my inspections, the brakes are applied, and so I had never noticed it, either on walk-around or just while we were parked (not sure if I would even hear it on the walk-around, with the engine running). It was only by virtue of the fact that the brakes need to be released to work on the bearings (the coach was chocked) that the leak was evident. It never showed up as any kind of pressure drop, because the engine-driven air compressor easily overcame the tiny amount leaking from the parking circuit.

In other news, I apparently made someone in Bakersfield quite cranky with my post on sanitation Thursday. I guess the years I spent as Director of Operations for a public utility, or the nearly two decades I spent in the facilities business do not qualify me to know my, err, "stuff" about, umm, sanitation. I left the comment up (often I delete such diatribes), even though it comes perilously close to violating our decency standards here. But that suggests I need to mention those:

I am not easily offended. It is hard to imagine that there is any sort of vulgarity which will shock me (or that I have not heard before). But this is a family blog -- we have little kids reading here. We even have nieces and nephews that are just now coming into their reading years and will be following along as they become able. So no foul language of any kind will be tolerated in the comments, period. That includes words where one or more letters have been omitted or replaced with punctuation such as underscores or asterisks -- if it's clear enough for a reader to understand, and it is a word that would be flagged if written in plain text, then it is not appropriate in the comments. If you feel moved to swear at me, then send me an email -- our addresses are easily found at the "Who we are" link in the sidebar.

Separately, if you are going to tell me how "little" I know about a subject, you had best be prepared to educate me. I am not above being told I am wrong about something, if that's the case. But don't just yell "you're wrong" -- provide links to the correct information, or cite your sources, or at least display your credentials. The internet is full of self-proclaimed experts, and I'd be the first to say don't believe anything you read here without checking it out for yourself.

Thursday night we again had dinner with readers and fellow bus owners Tom and Donna, at BJ's in the mall nearby. Yesterday, readers Flo and Dan from La Quinta were passing through, and stopped by to see us. They found us, of course, in the Freightliner waiting room, surprising Tom who stopped in to check on us shortly thereafter. I think the conversation among the five of us annoyed the truck driver who was stuck in there with us.

In a few minutes, we'll be taking the scooters to dinner. We've pretty much exhausted all the dining opportunities within four or five miles; last night, we returned to the Olive Garden in Whittier (around eight miles), and tonight I think we'll head back to Charley Browns. We'll certainly be glad when we finally leave this neighborhood, although we are quite thankful for the free parking and the quiet, and the weather's been great, too.