On Fridays I write about our pets
The ladder may be optional, but apparently the complaining is mandatory.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Going down to the River of Jordan
Time for just a very quick update here...
We are at the Salt Lake City KOA (map), a quick scooter ride from the Salt Palace Convention Center, and theoretically right on the Jordan (although I haven't seen it). Long time readers know that we detest KOA, and when I have more time, I will post why this one is no exception (in the meantime -- if you come here, stay out of the pool). However, this is literally the closest legal RV parking to the convention center, and so we just had to suck it up for the duration. At least we have 50 amps of power, which has been handy in the 90+ temperatures here to run the air conditioning.
Wednesday evening, shortly after we got registered for our conference, we had a visit from Ara and Spirit, who actually stayed until Thursday morning, only the second time ever that we've had an adult sleep on our guest bed. Spirit and Opal managed to work things out after several tempestuous moments, finally enjoying a peaceful coexistence as members of the exclusive dogs-with-goggles (and helmets) club.
I'm afraid that's all I have time for -- we are seriously overbooked while we are here. It did not help the schedule that last night's farewell party for outgoing President Bill Sinkford included a surprise (to him as well as us) appearance by The Persuasions -- I was out way later than I planned; they may be old, but they've still got it.
We are at the Salt Lake City KOA (map), a quick scooter ride from the Salt Palace Convention Center, and theoretically right on the Jordan (although I haven't seen it). Long time readers know that we detest KOA, and when I have more time, I will post why this one is no exception (in the meantime -- if you come here, stay out of the pool). However, this is literally the closest legal RV parking to the convention center, and so we just had to suck it up for the duration. At least we have 50 amps of power, which has been handy in the 90+ temperatures here to run the air conditioning.
Wednesday evening, shortly after we got registered for our conference, we had a visit from Ara and Spirit, who actually stayed until Thursday morning, only the second time ever that we've had an adult sleep on our guest bed. Spirit and Opal managed to work things out after several tempestuous moments, finally enjoying a peaceful coexistence as members of the exclusive dogs-with-goggles (and helmets) club.
I'm afraid that's all I have time for -- we are seriously overbooked while we are here. It did not help the schedule that last night's farewell party for outgoing President Bill Sinkford included a surprise (to him as well as us) appearance by The Persuasions -- I was out way later than I planned; they may be old, but they've still got it.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Bearing good tidings
We are at the Wal-Mart in West Valley (map), just outside Salt Lake. Careful readers might recognize that this is actually ten miles beyond where we need to be, which is the Salt Lake KOA just down the street from the Salt Palace Convention Center.
There's a good reason for that -- we rolled in to the greater Salt Lake area on the dregs of our fuel tank, which we last filled over a month ago back in St. Helens, Oregon. The gas station attached to the Smith's Grocery store in this town, just another couple blocks south, had diesel for an incredible $2.459, less with purchase in the store on your rewards card. Even Flying-J here in Utah is running upwards of $2.65, and the nearest local competitor came in at $2.57 or so. We jumped on it, driving straight to Smith's after pulling into town, and putting 225 gallons in. The clerk in the booth was incredulous.
That made this Wal-Mart the nearest overnight spot, and we had a nice dinner across the street at Copper Creek Pub, for which Louise was able to dig up a $25-off coupon on Restaurant.com. Given our general distaste for KOA (this will be only our fifth KOA stay in as many years), we had no desire to show up there a day early. We'll roll up there around mid day today, in time to get squared away before we need to show up at the Salt Palace.
Our original plan had not been to arrive in the area until this morning, but once I found out about the cheap fuel I wanted to get it out of the way, and also did not want to take the chance that the generally rising fuel prices would make the deal disappear before we got there. Also, we've been nervous enough about the fan drive that we wanted to have a safety margin.
Speaking of the fan drive, I got up extra early yesterday to start making calls around Twin Falls. No one answered my 7:37am call at Kaman, the bearing distributor, even though their posted hours ran from 7:30 to 5. Fortunately, the first truck shop I called, Van Dyk Truck Repair, had a pair of 6503's in stock for $14.50 apiece, and agreed to pull the cantankerous race off the spindle for me. I asked them to set the bearings aside for me, finished my breakfast, and pulled a scooter out.
All the repair shops were at the other end of town from us, so it ended up being about a 15-minute ride each way. They had the right bearings, but two different brands, which seemed fine to me. The trouble started, though, when they tried to get the old race off -- something I had failed to do with an engineer hammer and a pry bar.
It turns out that the race had spin-welded itself to the spindle. The guy from Van Dyk tried three different bearing pullers (driven with an impact wrench) to no avail. Then he tried to break it off with a cold chisel -- also ineffective. Finally, the acetylene torch had to come out, and the combination of torching it and chiseling at it finaly got it off. That left some additional metal on the spindle that had to be removed with a grinder, and the whole spindle had to be sanded and polished up. It's a good thing I had made no further effort (such as buying a bearing puller) to remove it myself, as clearly it was beyond my capacity to do so -- it took a professionally equipped shop over 40 minutes to do the job.
So choosing to go straight to the truck repair was the right move; in addition to the $29 for the bearings, it cost me $49 in labor (at $70 per hour) to have the old race removed and the new bearings pressed in. Money well spent, and $80 and a full hour later I was ready to put the fan back together.
That proved something of a challenge in itself. Getting the pulley assembly back in and the belts on was the easy part; much harder, however, was adjusting the belt tension. First off, I have no specification for the tension, so I am just guessing at it. Secondly, the single pulley which we just repaired serves as the sole tensioning mechanism for both belts. Getting the tension right for both belts simultaneously is nearly impossible -- one needs to first adjust an offset angle for the pulley carriage, then tension the whole assembly with a jack screw.
If the tension between the belts is not even, the jack screw needs to be backed off completely, the offset angle re-adjusted, and the jack screw tensioned again. Since the jack nut is recessed in a channel and can only be moved about 60° at at time, this is a tedious process. I probably spent half an hour just trying to get the belt tension to an acceptable setting for travel, and I remembered the last shop to have adjusted the belts complaining about the same thing.
All this got me thinking that perhaps the difficulty in tensioning the belts is what led to the bearing failure in the first place, and the lack of proper adjustment information had me nervous about the setup for the rest of the day. When we finally got rolling, we stopped every hour to check belt tension and bearing temperatures, and I loosened the adjustment at the first such stop.
By the time we got everything back together and buttoned up, and the tools put away, it was lunch time. We had our lunch there with the Snake gorge as a backdrop, and were back on the road just past noon. Given our concerns about the fans, we decided to stay close to the Interstate, although we did make the scenic detour to old highway 81 across the state line.
Now that we are safely in Salt Lake, I'm researching proper belt tension, starting with a call to good friend Jim Shepherd, of RV Safety Systems. Jim used to work for Gates, the belt company, and I knew he could give me an answer. As I suspected, it's not a simple matter, and he will have to do some engineering analysis based on my pulley and belt sizes and expected fan HP. We'll try to get that done before we leave town, so I can re-adjust the belts before we get back on the road.
In a few minutes, we should be rolling over to the KOA. This evening we will begin our conference, the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I expect that we will not blog here much during the conference; for one thing, we'll be pretty busy, and for another, this is a secular blog (whatever that means). However, as part of our commitment as official voting delegates for our congregation, we keep a separate blog for that purpose, and you can follow us over there if you are interested. Also, I will likely be tweeting from my BlackBerry during the event.
I should resume a normal posting schedule next week, when we are done with General Assembly.
There's a good reason for that -- we rolled in to the greater Salt Lake area on the dregs of our fuel tank, which we last filled over a month ago back in St. Helens, Oregon. The gas station attached to the Smith's Grocery store in this town, just another couple blocks south, had diesel for an incredible $2.459, less with purchase in the store on your rewards card. Even Flying-J here in Utah is running upwards of $2.65, and the nearest local competitor came in at $2.57 or so. We jumped on it, driving straight to Smith's after pulling into town, and putting 225 gallons in. The clerk in the booth was incredulous.
That made this Wal-Mart the nearest overnight spot, and we had a nice dinner across the street at Copper Creek Pub, for which Louise was able to dig up a $25-off coupon on Restaurant.com. Given our general distaste for KOA (this will be only our fifth KOA stay in as many years), we had no desire to show up there a day early. We'll roll up there around mid day today, in time to get squared away before we need to show up at the Salt Palace.
Our original plan had not been to arrive in the area until this morning, but once I found out about the cheap fuel I wanted to get it out of the way, and also did not want to take the chance that the generally rising fuel prices would make the deal disappear before we got there. Also, we've been nervous enough about the fan drive that we wanted to have a safety margin.
Speaking of the fan drive, I got up extra early yesterday to start making calls around Twin Falls. No one answered my 7:37am call at Kaman, the bearing distributor, even though their posted hours ran from 7:30 to 5. Fortunately, the first truck shop I called, Van Dyk Truck Repair, had a pair of 6503's in stock for $14.50 apiece, and agreed to pull the cantankerous race off the spindle for me. I asked them to set the bearings aside for me, finished my breakfast, and pulled a scooter out.
All the repair shops were at the other end of town from us, so it ended up being about a 15-minute ride each way. They had the right bearings, but two different brands, which seemed fine to me. The trouble started, though, when they tried to get the old race off -- something I had failed to do with an engineer hammer and a pry bar.
It turns out that the race had spin-welded itself to the spindle. The guy from Van Dyk tried three different bearing pullers (driven with an impact wrench) to no avail. Then he tried to break it off with a cold chisel -- also ineffective. Finally, the acetylene torch had to come out, and the combination of torching it and chiseling at it finaly got it off. That left some additional metal on the spindle that had to be removed with a grinder, and the whole spindle had to be sanded and polished up. It's a good thing I had made no further effort (such as buying a bearing puller) to remove it myself, as clearly it was beyond my capacity to do so -- it took a professionally equipped shop over 40 minutes to do the job.
So choosing to go straight to the truck repair was the right move; in addition to the $29 for the bearings, it cost me $49 in labor (at $70 per hour) to have the old race removed and the new bearings pressed in. Money well spent, and $80 and a full hour later I was ready to put the fan back together.
That proved something of a challenge in itself. Getting the pulley assembly back in and the belts on was the easy part; much harder, however, was adjusting the belt tension. First off, I have no specification for the tension, so I am just guessing at it. Secondly, the single pulley which we just repaired serves as the sole tensioning mechanism for both belts. Getting the tension right for both belts simultaneously is nearly impossible -- one needs to first adjust an offset angle for the pulley carriage, then tension the whole assembly with a jack screw.
If the tension between the belts is not even, the jack screw needs to be backed off completely, the offset angle re-adjusted, and the jack screw tensioned again. Since the jack nut is recessed in a channel and can only be moved about 60° at at time, this is a tedious process. I probably spent half an hour just trying to get the belt tension to an acceptable setting for travel, and I remembered the last shop to have adjusted the belts complaining about the same thing.
All this got me thinking that perhaps the difficulty in tensioning the belts is what led to the bearing failure in the first place, and the lack of proper adjustment information had me nervous about the setup for the rest of the day. When we finally got rolling, we stopped every hour to check belt tension and bearing temperatures, and I loosened the adjustment at the first such stop.
By the time we got everything back together and buttoned up, and the tools put away, it was lunch time. We had our lunch there with the Snake gorge as a backdrop, and were back on the road just past noon. Given our concerns about the fans, we decided to stay close to the Interstate, although we did make the scenic detour to old highway 81 across the state line.
Now that we are safely in Salt Lake, I'm researching proper belt tension, starting with a call to good friend Jim Shepherd, of RV Safety Systems. Jim used to work for Gates, the belt company, and I knew he could give me an answer. As I suspected, it's not a simple matter, and he will have to do some engineering analysis based on my pulley and belt sizes and expected fan HP. We'll try to get that done before we leave town, so I can re-adjust the belts before we get back on the road.
In a few minutes, we should be rolling over to the KOA. This evening we will begin our conference, the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I expect that we will not blog here much during the conference; for one thing, we'll be pretty busy, and for another, this is a secular blog (whatever that means). However, as part of our commitment as official voting delegates for our congregation, we keep a separate blog for that purpose, and you can follow us over there if you are interested. Also, I will likely be tweeting from my BlackBerry during the event.
I should resume a normal posting schedule next week, when we are done with General Assembly.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Losing our bearings
We are at the scenic overlook and visitor center south of the Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho, with a view of the spectacular Snake River gorge (map).
Our directory indicated that overnight parking was allowed here at the overlook, and a quick stop in the visitor center confirmed that. In addition to free parking for the night, there is an Outback restaurant right next door, a Johnny Carino's next door to that, and a shopping mall across the street. We had a nice meal at Carino's, with a full carafe of wine to wash away our troubles.
Those would involve bearings. As we pulled in to the overlook after a long run, we noticed quite a mechanical racket. At first I thought it was construction machinery -- there is a construction site a couple doors down, and the road south of here was also down to one lane for some kind of maintenance. But when we shut the engine down, the noise went away, replaced instead by a sinking feeling in the pits of our stomachs.
Back at the engine bay, we quickly determined that the noise was coming from somewhere in the neighborhood of the radiator fans, which was a big relief to me, because that meant it was unlikely to be a problem with the engine itself, such as a bad lifter or a problem with the cam gear train. But it sure sounded like we were not going to make it to Salt Lake with whatever was causing the noise.
On the bright side, we're in Twin Falls, which is what passes for a major city in these parts. Earlier in the day, we had contemplated stopping for the night along the 1000 Springs Scenic Byway, which we visited on our last pass through this area, and that would likely have meant a catastrophic breakdown somewhere a long way from help -- either on the byway itself, or well past Twin Falls, depending on when we noticed the problem.
In fact, we had made several stops today, the last one being just 90 minutes or so before pulling into Twin, and we had noticed no unusual noises (the racket was quite noticeable as we pulled into the overlook, once we came down from road-level noise to idle speed). So the failure happened within the last hour or so of driving.
Once everything had cooled down, I was able to get the fan belts off, and the origin of the noise became completely evident -- the intermediate drive pulley that transfers power from the engine, on one belt, to the two fans, on a different belt, was quite loose. When I removed the hub nut, I discovered that both ball bearings had completely disintegrated -- about half of the balls were reduced to powdered metal, and the retainers and seals were just so much twisted metal. The damage was so extensive that there is no way to put the hub back together -- we are stuck right here until I can get some bearings.
The good news is that these seem to be a pretty standard bearing (a 6305-LL for anyone who cares), and I am hopeful that the lone bearing shop here in Twin will have some in stock (it was too late to call today by the time we stopped, around 5:30 MDT). If not, I am pretty sure that I can get a pair overnighted to us, which would get us back on the road Wednesday, likely in time to make our conference in Salt Lake Wednesday afternoon -- it's about four hours by freeway from here.
I can't free the inner race of the inboard bearing from the shaft, and I suspect I won't be able to press the new bearings (assuming I find some) in, either, so I will likely have to take the pulley and shaft in to a machine shop to get this done, or else hunt around town for a bearing puller and rummage through the parts bay to find some scrap to use as a drift.
I'm just thankful that we discovered this problem before it morphed into catastrophic damage elsewhere in the engine bay. The bearings are probably easy to find, but replacing one of the weird fans or even a Neoplan-specific fan belt would be a challenge, and likely mean a stay of several days here.
We did have a lovely drive today, departing the Interstate just over the state line for US-95 south, which took us to Idaho 78, bypassing Boise and some 110 miles of freeway, and reconnecting with I-84 in Hammett. Our decision, after much rumination, not to divert onto US-30 at Hagerman for the scenic route past the 1000 springs proved to be prescient, and we instead remained on I-84 to Jerome, where a wreck on the eastbound side had the freeway nearly stopped, and we bailed off onto local streets the rest of the way to Twin.
I expect to be too busy in the morning to post again, as I will be scrambling to find my bearings, so to speak. (Although I am hoping Louise, who took several photos of the damage, will add them to this post then.) With any luck, we should have the bearing issue resolved by the middle of the day, and either be on our way to Salt Lake at a leisurely pace, or begging the visitor center for another night (and an address to give FedEx) while we await bearings from afar. In either case, I will try to post an update here tomorrow evening.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Dirty lowdown rotten scooter thieves
Update: The scooter has been found and 2 juveniles arrested. That's the good news. The bad news is that it is totally trashed. They ripped off all the custom painted panels, crashed the bike, bent the frame and it is a total loss. What a waste.
A friend had her Vino 125 scooter stolen last night in Vermont. She is absolutely devastated, since she spent many hours customizing it. Since we have readers all over the country, maybe one of you will spot this eye-catching yellow and pink paint job.
Sorry, folks. That link produced a photo for me, but apparently creates problems for others. You'll have to make do with the tiny photo.
Update: A real photo is here.
If you see this bike, please call the local police and report it.
Grrrrr! I HATE thieves!
Ontario, without the fireworks
We are at the Wal-Mart in Ontario, Oregon (map), just shy of the Idaho state line. We are parked right on the Snake River.
Yesterday's travel plan called for us to stop somewhere in this area, and, when we looked it up, we found that Ontario had both a Wal-Mart and an Elks lodge. It's been over a month since we last stocked up at a Wal-Mart, and we knew this would be the last chance in tax-free Oregon, so we decided to come here first, and go over to the Elks if this was not suitable for an overnight stop.
Some time in the middle of the day, we started to get that eerie feeling of déjà vu -- a few quick checks of the map refreshed our memory a bit, and our arrival confirmed it: we were here almost exactly four years ago. That visit happened to be on July 4th, and we spent the evening up on our deck watching the fireworks in the distance.
Unfortunately, the nice quiet parking lot in the back, with a slightly better view of the river, has since been posted as delivery truck parking only (even though part of the lot is still striped for cars), and so we had to park in the main lot this time, in the "RV ghetto." We were one of only two rigs here when we arrived, but there were half a dozen or more over night. Still, it was fairly quiet, and we really needed the stock-up visit.
We were able to get off the freeway occasionally yesterday, passing through Hermiston on US-395, and Haines and Huntington on US-30. For most of the day, though, we were on I-84. Today we will likely divert onto Idaho-78 for a good part of the day, but I-84 is still our only real option for the majority of our route to Salt Lake.
Yesterday's travel plan called for us to stop somewhere in this area, and, when we looked it up, we found that Ontario had both a Wal-Mart and an Elks lodge. It's been over a month since we last stocked up at a Wal-Mart, and we knew this would be the last chance in tax-free Oregon, so we decided to come here first, and go over to the Elks if this was not suitable for an overnight stop.
Some time in the middle of the day, we started to get that eerie feeling of déjà vu -- a few quick checks of the map refreshed our memory a bit, and our arrival confirmed it: we were here almost exactly four years ago. That visit happened to be on July 4th, and we spent the evening up on our deck watching the fireworks in the distance.
Unfortunately, the nice quiet parking lot in the back, with a slightly better view of the river, has since been posted as delivery truck parking only (even though part of the lot is still striped for cars), and so we had to park in the main lot this time, in the "RV ghetto." We were one of only two rigs here when we arrived, but there were half a dozen or more over night. Still, it was fairly quiet, and we really needed the stock-up visit.
We were able to get off the freeway occasionally yesterday, passing through Hermiston on US-395, and Haines and Huntington on US-30. For most of the day, though, we were on I-84. Today we will likely divert onto Idaho-78 for a good part of the day, but I-84 is still our only real option for the majority of our route to Salt Lake.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Beyond Infinity
We are at our "home" Elks Lodge, in Kennewick, Washington (map). Although we are technically members of this lodge, this is only the second time ever that we have visited, and the lodge is closed on the weekends, so we'll not go inside on this stop. That does mean, though, that we've had the parking lot to ourselves. Last night we walked to Chico's Tacos just down the street, a local favorite, with excellent burritos and a license for beer and wine.
Yesterday morning found us at the Snoqualmie Casino (map), on the west side of the eponymous pass, in North Bend. The casino itself is fairly new, and not listed in any of our printed or online directories, and word around the 'net was they were RV-unfriendly. I called them before we left Infinity Friday evening, and they were very enthusiastic about telling us they "now" had RV parking, with a one-night limit. We later learned that the specially-striped RV spaces opened just a week ago.
We had dinner at their nice sit-down restaurant overlooking the mountains. The view was spectacular and the food was decent, although they were serving only a limited menu Friday. Apparently, on nights with scheduled concerts (Friday was Rick Derringer, of "Rock 'n' Roll Hoochie Coo" fame, along with Pat Travers, and the casino seems to have a fairly regular schedule of headliners), the restaurant sticks to a limited menu to speed things along a bit in the kitchen.
Yesterday morning our friend Patrick drove out from Kirkland to meet us for brunch -- they have a great weekend brunch spread in the buffet restaurant. We had a great visit for a couple of hours, though his other half Carol was unable to join us. Patrick and Carol live aboard their boat, something to which we aspire as the next phase of our traveling life, and I tend to pick his brain a lot when we get together. Patrick is also the creator of our wonderful YachTub portable hot tub.
We finally wrapped up at Infinity late Friday afternoon. Most of our to-do list got tackled, with only minor exceptions. The paint and bodywork on the rear corner from the tractor-bucket strike came out great -- to my eye, the repair can't even be seen, so kudos are also due Kevin at K&D Autowerks in the Infinity Industrial Park for that work, along with his painter Jeff.
Of course, our night at Snoqualmie had to involve a torrential downpour, and we discovered to our extreme disappointment that the leak remediation was only partly successful. We still have water coming in at several locations, including some that passed our "sprinkler test" while we were at the shop. In fact, it was so bad that we strongly considered canceling our conference in Salt Lake and returning to the shop tomorrow to continue to work on leaks; Friday night when we returned from dinner to a leaky bus, we were certain of it. By Saturday morning, with the weather pleasant and the bus dried out, we decided instead to continue with our plans, and work on the individual leaks one by one as we are able. I have a much better understanding of the mechanisms now, so I think there are some things I can try myself.
Yesterday afternoon we stopped by our little plot of land in Desert Aire, along the Columbia on Priest Rapids Lake. It looks just the same as always, although more of the formerly vacant lots in the development now have structures on them -- I think the popularity of the place is actually increasing. Lots of folks out at the pool and along the lake as we drove by, a good sign.
One of the very tame "wild" rabbits at the Tri-Cities Elks Lodge
In a few minutes, we we continue south into Oregon and connect to I-84, which will take us into Idaho tonight and then all the way to Utah.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Abusing my bully pulpit... Scam Alert: Longwood/Auto Marketing Systems
One of the great things about having a blog is that, when I am truly annoyed about something, I can use it as a place to vent. And while you may wish to simply skip the rest of this post if you don't want to hear me whine, you might also find value in reading, to avoid the same situation...
As I wrote here yesterday, we replaced the sleeper sofa here at Infinity. The sofa we removed, while it had some problems, specifically, the cushion foam was no longer comfortable, still had a lot of life left in it, and we knew someone else could get some good use out of it. Also, we abhor sending things to the landfill if there is any alternative. Of course, we don't have room to haul around an extra couch until we can get rid of it, so finding someone to take it within a few days (so that it also did not become an annoyance in the Infinity shop) was a priority.
We offered the sofa up to other folks converting buses, a notably parsimonious crowd, on two bulletin boards dedicated to that activity. But I also posted a for-sale ad on the Tacoma "Craigs List", on the theory that few bus nuts would be close enough to just come pick the thing up, and we really needed to move it. For the uninitiated, "Craigslist" is a free on-line want ad service, organized by geographic region and, as most want ad services, by category.
There are perhaps 30 categories on craigslist under "for sale," but "RV furniture" is not one of them. I could choose just plain "furniture," or "household," or even "auto parts," but to me the best fit was to just list it under "RVs." The ad very explicitly listed what it was that I was selling, had an asking price of $50, and included a photo of the sofa, so it was pretty clear to anyone who actually read the ad that I was not selling an "RV."
Craigslist is a searchable site, so anyone looking for a Flexsteel sleeper sofa would find this ad no matter where I listed it. But I did not want to get calls from people just looking for a household sleeper sofa, because I did not want to have to explain (likely many times over) how this one won't work unless it is bolted to the floor. As it turned out, I did ultimately get two legitimate calls from people in the Tacoma area interested in it, but after I had already promised it to a bus nut.
For the last week, my phone has been ringing every business day at about the same time each morning with a call from an "unknown number." When I answer, the line is dead. So this morning, when the call came, I let it roll to voice mail.
The message that was left was from someone named "Brad" from "Longwood, Inc." calling to tell me that his company could definitely help me sell my RV (huh?). There would be a small fee involved but it would be much more effective than traditional classified ads. He left a call-back number of 866-326-0949.
Of course, I called these folks back -- "Brad" was on another line (I don't think there is a "Brad" -- most likely this scam/sham/spam artist uses made-up first names to "code" their leads when/if the calls are returned). I read them the Riot Act, and I hope they have now removed my phone number from their database.
Clearly, this company, which also goes by "Auto Marketing Systems," "Longwood Industries," and perhaps several other names, and is operated by a Ms. Renee Fisher and Mr. Paul Russell from Bedford, Virginia, is using software to automatically harvest telephone numbers (and probably other salient details) from Craigslist ads in the Car and RV categories (and perhaps others), then making cold calls to those people to try to solicit business.
Now, Craigslist very clearly spells out in its terms of use for the web site that commercial enterprises are NOT permitted to call want-ad posters to solicit business unless invited, and every ad (mine included) by default includes this disclaimer: "it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests." But based on the huge number of complaints I could find on the 'net about this firm, they clearly do not care about this in the least. They apparently also cold-call sellers of vehicles in more traditional print-media want ads.
In addition to automatic harvesting of phone numbers from these web sites, Ms. Fisher, Mr. Russell and their minions clearly are scouring the internet for any signs of complaints against their company and its shady business practices. Mr. Russell has posted to myriad forums around the internet defending their business after complaints are posted. Since Google indexes this very blog fairly quickly, I fully expect Mr. Russell's robots to be reading this in short order, and I will not be the least bit surprised if (1) he comments here repudiating my account or defending their practices or (2) he or his army of underpaid boiler-room drones or software robots starts a spam or DoS attack here.
So, in hindsight, I have learned a valuable lesson, which is that phone numbers must be disguised in much the same way as email addresses when posted to on-line forums, lest they be harvested by spam-bots for nefarious purposes. I've also learned that Longwood Industries, AKA Auto Marketing Services, employs a lot of idiots who can't tell a sofa apart from an RV. And, lastly, the next time I want to sell an RV accessory or furnishing, I'll list it in a category that does not include vehicles for sale.
Photo by TarikB, used under a Creative Commons license.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Progress report
We are still at Infinity Coach in Sumner, today marking the end of three full weeks. At this writing, it appears we will be here through the end of this week, which is our absolute deadline to depart in time to make our conference in Salt Lake.
I had estimated two weeks for all the work, with the idea that a third week would be no problem if it was needed. I did not anticipate having to go beyond that, however, and so we have had to re-think our route plans for Salt Lake -- we now will need to travel via the most direct route, most of which is on the freeway. Some of the delay has been due to unanticipated problems finding all the leaks, and some of it has been due to the shop being overbooked -- the guys keep getting pulled away to work on other projects.
That said, we've gotten quite a bit done. For starters, we've identified perhaps a dozen places where water has been getting in, and many of those have been sealed up. Howver, the most recent testing revealed we did not get them all, and so more trim has had to come off to access the rest.
We've replaced the living room sleeper sofa. After five years of nearly daily use, the old one, while cosmetically in good shape, was suffering from break-down of the seat cushion foam, and had become uncomfortable for more than one person to sit on at a time.
We got an estimate on replacing the foam, which, due to the way the cushions are all tied together as part of the "mattress," turned out to be prohibitively expensive. By sheer coincidence, Infinity had an identical model sofa in inventory, ordered for another project four years ago. While the fabric pattern was not something we would have chosen ourselves, the colors at least matched our decor, and we made a deal on it for far less than refurbishing our existing one would cost.
It was more or less a plug-and-play replacement, although for some strange reason Flexsteel had moved all the bolt holes back about an inch, and shortened the legs by a fraction. We had to make some plywood stringers to attach the now offset bolt holes to our existing floor holes, and at the same time raise the unit half an inch to clear the folding ladder we store underneath it. The old sofa went to a good home, as another bus aficionado came and picked it up yesterday.
We also got a quote on re-covering the love seat, which the cats had damaged and the ensuing attempt to repair had destroyed. That, too, was unacceptably high, and we decided to hold off until we can get to Mexico. Instead, we had Infinity re-cover just the rather simple front and side panels in some leftover contrasting Sunbrella, which will keep the cats mostly at bay, and had constituted the worst part of the damage.
The last remaining wallpaper in the bedroom and kitchen, which had always been iffy and was now irreparably damaged by the water intrusion, was also replaced with glued-on Sunbrella to match the other walls. Those had been re-done in Sunbrella at the outset, after we could not get the wallpaper glue to hold properly.
While all the interior trim is off to repair the leaks and redo the wall coverings, I took the opportunity to dig out all the water-damaged wall underlayment, treat it with wood hardener, and fill the resulting gap with "plastic wood." So there is now no rot in the walls and we have good structure under the finish -- one of the big concerns that I had since we've had so much water coming in. A handful of the maple window trim pieces were too badly damaged to salvage, and Infinity has made replacements for those, which we will reinstall when we are certain we are done with the leak repairs (the trim needs to stay off during testing, so we can see all the possible leak areas).
The body shop next door repaired and repainted the damaged section of the nose fiberglass that we cracked on our way into San Bernardino for the wild fires nearly two years ago. We are still hopeful that we can also have them touch up at least the spot where someone hit us with a front-end loader while trying to be helpful when we got stuck last year. That will hinge on whether all the leaks are handled by tomorrow evening at the latest.
While I had the 'roo bars off for the front end bodywork, I cleaned and polished the headlights (and replaced a bulb, whose low-beam filament must have broken as we removed the assembly for the bodywork), and also polished up the Lexan headlight protectors with some plastic polish. As long as I had the polish out, I also buffed out five years of oxidation on the porch light (a Whelan emergency vehicle "scene light") and on the sole rear turn signal (of four) that did not get replaced two visits ago. I was surprised at what a difference that made -- the scene light had yellowed and crazed quite a bit, and now looks new, and the older turn signal is now indistinguishable from its three newer brethren.
The 'roo bars themselves and their mounting brackets had quite a few rust spots, where rock chips in the powder coat had let moisture in. One spot on the bracket had a big chunk of powder coat flake off, fortunately in a spot that does not really show. We applied rust converter to all those areas (as well as any rust damage to the tubes around the leaking windows), and I primed and painted as needed, which should keep things in good shape up there at least until some more rock chips come along (the 'roo bars, being low to the ground, take the brunt of anything kicked up by vehicles ahead, and the Lexan headlight covers mounted to them have clearly prevented the glass headlights from being broken on many occasions, judging from some serious divots in the plastic).
All our floor-to-wall joints have been re-caulked and the generator alternator has been fixed -- it turned out that one of the alternator mounting bolts, in a hard-to-reach spot, had sheared. The entry door was adjusted -- it would not seal properly unless you pushed it from the outside while closing it -- and the minor cold-weather coolant leak in the scooter bay has been located and addressed. Baseboard trim for the new vinyl floor in the bedroom has been made and will be installed this week, a full year after I installed the flooring.
In the course of repairing the leaks in one of the bedroom windows, a factory "emergency exit" type, we had to open it. This window has not opened properly since before we left five years ago -- the plastic release handle broke off back then right in Louise's hand (we have two emergency exit windows in the bedroom, so this did not concern us very much). As long as we had it open, we discovered that the original failure was, in part, due to one of the latch dogs having been moved over ever so slightly when someone (probably at Pegasus) broke one of the mounting screws in its hole. We drilled that out and relocated the dog, which reduced the pressure required on the operating handle. We also had a full set of replacement handles machined out of aluminum (once you pay to set up the CNC machine, you might as well make several copies), so we can replace the other three plastic release handles if/when they break over time.
Lastly, we had asked Infinity to quote replacement fabric for the Girard awnings. After five years of daily use, often running them in and out (at least part way) several times each day, holes had developed at the fabric seams in the outermost five inches or so of fabric. The fabric is standard Sunbrella, but it is seamed to length and has cordage sewn into it by Girard to fit the mounting tracks, and the quote came back much higher than we wanted to spend ($1,000 per side -- gulp). After noodling on this for a bit and discussing options, such as cutting the bad 5" off and re-sewing the cordage back on, we all realized that the entire fabric could be removed, turned around, and re-installed with the bad edge toward the roller. This worked great -- the bad part never even leaves the roll with the awning fully extended, and it looks more or less like a brand new awning, for just an hour or so of labor (which would be needed to install new fabric anyway). The curb side has been done, and they will do the driver side the same way later this week.
All of this has kept us incredibly busy -- I've been doing as much work myself as I can -- and left little time for blogging (although, apparently, it did not stop me from keeping up with a running argument on one of the bus conversion boards) and other pursuits. We tend to wrap up sometime around 7 each evening, then roll out to dinner someplace -- I think we've eaten at every restaurant in Sumner now at least twice.
Fortunately, we have had near-perfect weather since our arrival three weeks ago. No rain, which is good while the leaks are not fully addressed, sunny most days, yet not really hot enough to need the A/C except perhaps for a few hours on just a couple of days. Also good, since we don't have a single window blind -- all removed three weeks ago with the rest of the trim to find the leaks. We feel somewhat as if we are living in a fish bowl once the sun goes down -- thankfully quite late (9:30 or so). At least we have some reflective mylar covers to use in the bedroom, so we have a little privacy there.
We've also spent two Sundays up at Lake Tapps, where the Lewis family has a waterfront home, and have had several nice meals with various Infinity staffers who are now part of our extended family. A week ago we went to San Jose on the Coast Starlight to attend a memorial service for a friend who passed too soon. The folks here were gracious enough to watch the pets for us while we were gone. We reconnected with many people whom we had not seen in over five years -- I suppose funerals have a way of doing that.
With a little bit of luck, we should be done here no later than Friday, and on the road to Salt Lake by Saturday morning. We'll likely be missing some of our rubber trim below the rain gutters, which has disintegrated from age as we've removed it, and is now out of production. I'm trying to either find some left over someplace, or have it custom-extruded for us, but in either case we can't get it here before departure.
I expect my next post here will be this weekend, from the road.
I had estimated two weeks for all the work, with the idea that a third week would be no problem if it was needed. I did not anticipate having to go beyond that, however, and so we have had to re-think our route plans for Salt Lake -- we now will need to travel via the most direct route, most of which is on the freeway. Some of the delay has been due to unanticipated problems finding all the leaks, and some of it has been due to the shop being overbooked -- the guys keep getting pulled away to work on other projects.
That said, we've gotten quite a bit done. For starters, we've identified perhaps a dozen places where water has been getting in, and many of those have been sealed up. Howver, the most recent testing revealed we did not get them all, and so more trim has had to come off to access the rest.
We've replaced the living room sleeper sofa. After five years of nearly daily use, the old one, while cosmetically in good shape, was suffering from break-down of the seat cushion foam, and had become uncomfortable for more than one person to sit on at a time.
We got an estimate on replacing the foam, which, due to the way the cushions are all tied together as part of the "mattress," turned out to be prohibitively expensive. By sheer coincidence, Infinity had an identical model sofa in inventory, ordered for another project four years ago. While the fabric pattern was not something we would have chosen ourselves, the colors at least matched our decor, and we made a deal on it for far less than refurbishing our existing one would cost.
It was more or less a plug-and-play replacement, although for some strange reason Flexsteel had moved all the bolt holes back about an inch, and shortened the legs by a fraction. We had to make some plywood stringers to attach the now offset bolt holes to our existing floor holes, and at the same time raise the unit half an inch to clear the folding ladder we store underneath it. The old sofa went to a good home, as another bus aficionado came and picked it up yesterday.
We also got a quote on re-covering the love seat, which the cats had damaged and the ensuing attempt to repair had destroyed. That, too, was unacceptably high, and we decided to hold off until we can get to Mexico. Instead, we had Infinity re-cover just the rather simple front and side panels in some leftover contrasting Sunbrella, which will keep the cats mostly at bay, and had constituted the worst part of the damage.
The last remaining wallpaper in the bedroom and kitchen, which had always been iffy and was now irreparably damaged by the water intrusion, was also replaced with glued-on Sunbrella to match the other walls. Those had been re-done in Sunbrella at the outset, after we could not get the wallpaper glue to hold properly.
While all the interior trim is off to repair the leaks and redo the wall coverings, I took the opportunity to dig out all the water-damaged wall underlayment, treat it with wood hardener, and fill the resulting gap with "plastic wood." So there is now no rot in the walls and we have good structure under the finish -- one of the big concerns that I had since we've had so much water coming in. A handful of the maple window trim pieces were too badly damaged to salvage, and Infinity has made replacements for those, which we will reinstall when we are certain we are done with the leak repairs (the trim needs to stay off during testing, so we can see all the possible leak areas).
The body shop next door repaired and repainted the damaged section of the nose fiberglass that we cracked on our way into San Bernardino for the wild fires nearly two years ago. We are still hopeful that we can also have them touch up at least the spot where someone hit us with a front-end loader while trying to be helpful when we got stuck last year. That will hinge on whether all the leaks are handled by tomorrow evening at the latest.
While I had the 'roo bars off for the front end bodywork, I cleaned and polished the headlights (and replaced a bulb, whose low-beam filament must have broken as we removed the assembly for the bodywork), and also polished up the Lexan headlight protectors with some plastic polish. As long as I had the polish out, I also buffed out five years of oxidation on the porch light (a Whelan emergency vehicle "scene light") and on the sole rear turn signal (of four) that did not get replaced two visits ago. I was surprised at what a difference that made -- the scene light had yellowed and crazed quite a bit, and now looks new, and the older turn signal is now indistinguishable from its three newer brethren.
The 'roo bars themselves and their mounting brackets had quite a few rust spots, where rock chips in the powder coat had let moisture in. One spot on the bracket had a big chunk of powder coat flake off, fortunately in a spot that does not really show. We applied rust converter to all those areas (as well as any rust damage to the tubes around the leaking windows), and I primed and painted as needed, which should keep things in good shape up there at least until some more rock chips come along (the 'roo bars, being low to the ground, take the brunt of anything kicked up by vehicles ahead, and the Lexan headlight covers mounted to them have clearly prevented the glass headlights from being broken on many occasions, judging from some serious divots in the plastic).
All our floor-to-wall joints have been re-caulked and the generator alternator has been fixed -- it turned out that one of the alternator mounting bolts, in a hard-to-reach spot, had sheared. The entry door was adjusted -- it would not seal properly unless you pushed it from the outside while closing it -- and the minor cold-weather coolant leak in the scooter bay has been located and addressed. Baseboard trim for the new vinyl floor in the bedroom has been made and will be installed this week, a full year after I installed the flooring.
In the course of repairing the leaks in one of the bedroom windows, a factory "emergency exit" type, we had to open it. This window has not opened properly since before we left five years ago -- the plastic release handle broke off back then right in Louise's hand (we have two emergency exit windows in the bedroom, so this did not concern us very much). As long as we had it open, we discovered that the original failure was, in part, due to one of the latch dogs having been moved over ever so slightly when someone (probably at Pegasus) broke one of the mounting screws in its hole. We drilled that out and relocated the dog, which reduced the pressure required on the operating handle. We also had a full set of replacement handles machined out of aluminum (once you pay to set up the CNC machine, you might as well make several copies), so we can replace the other three plastic release handles if/when they break over time.
Lastly, we had asked Infinity to quote replacement fabric for the Girard awnings. After five years of daily use, often running them in and out (at least part way) several times each day, holes had developed at the fabric seams in the outermost five inches or so of fabric. The fabric is standard Sunbrella, but it is seamed to length and has cordage sewn into it by Girard to fit the mounting tracks, and the quote came back much higher than we wanted to spend ($1,000 per side -- gulp). After noodling on this for a bit and discussing options, such as cutting the bad 5" off and re-sewing the cordage back on, we all realized that the entire fabric could be removed, turned around, and re-installed with the bad edge toward the roller. This worked great -- the bad part never even leaves the roll with the awning fully extended, and it looks more or less like a brand new awning, for just an hour or so of labor (which would be needed to install new fabric anyway). The curb side has been done, and they will do the driver side the same way later this week.
All of this has kept us incredibly busy -- I've been doing as much work myself as I can -- and left little time for blogging (although, apparently, it did not stop me from keeping up with a running argument on one of the bus conversion boards) and other pursuits. We tend to wrap up sometime around 7 each evening, then roll out to dinner someplace -- I think we've eaten at every restaurant in Sumner now at least twice.
Fortunately, we have had near-perfect weather since our arrival three weeks ago. No rain, which is good while the leaks are not fully addressed, sunny most days, yet not really hot enough to need the A/C except perhaps for a few hours on just a couple of days. Also good, since we don't have a single window blind -- all removed three weeks ago with the rest of the trim to find the leaks. We feel somewhat as if we are living in a fish bowl once the sun goes down -- thankfully quite late (9:30 or so). At least we have some reflective mylar covers to use in the bedroom, so we have a little privacy there.
We've also spent two Sundays up at Lake Tapps, where the Lewis family has a waterfront home, and have had several nice meals with various Infinity staffers who are now part of our extended family. A week ago we went to San Jose on the Coast Starlight to attend a memorial service for a friend who passed too soon. The folks here were gracious enough to watch the pets for us while we were gone. We reconnected with many people whom we had not seen in over five years -- I suppose funerals have a way of doing that.
With a little bit of luck, we should be done here no later than Friday, and on the road to Salt Lake by Saturday morning. We'll likely be missing some of our rubber trim below the rain gutters, which has disintegrated from age as we've removed it, and is now out of production. I'm trying to either find some left over someplace, or have it custom-extruded for us, but in either case we can't get it here before departure.
I expect my next post here will be this weekend, from the road.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The Cottonwoods are Blooming
The weather has been absolutely perfect here in Sumner, WA. Blue skies, daytime temperatures in the high 70s, and most importantly, no rain. Which is good, because Danny removed the driver side upper front window today and the bus is completely open to the outside right now.
There are a couple of downsides to this arrangement. One is that we have to keep a close eye on the cats, who are fascinated with the window opening. The other is that the cottonwood trees are in full bloom, dropping a fine fluff that floats on the wind.
See for yourself.
Fortunately, neither one of us seems to be allergic to the fluff, and it is easy to clean up. And I'm much happier to have this stuff inside the bus than rain.
There are a couple of downsides to this arrangement. One is that we have to keep a close eye on the cats, who are fascinated with the window opening. The other is that the cottonwood trees are in full bloom, dropping a fine fluff that floats on the wind.
See for yourself.
Fortunately, neither one of us seems to be allergic to the fluff, and it is easy to clean up. And I'm much happier to have this stuff inside the bus than rain.
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