The short version: I replaced the U-bolts and springs that were damaged when the wheel fell off since I didn’t check the f*%#ing lug bolts before we left on a trip. Then I started repairing the other damage done by that event.

I did indeed go install the new springs and U-bolts as planned.

Even though it had rained during the week, the ground was dry, so I elected to work on it in the campsite. Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day, warm and sunny.

First thing was to get the camper elevated and supported by jackstands before rolling around under there.

With the wheel off, I was also able to better document some of the other damage done by the rogue wheel.

There is a lot in this one picture. You can see two side seams of the galvanized steel fender that are pulled apart, the crunched end that would normally be stapled to the bottom side of the floor, the wrecked piece of floor itself and underneath, the damaged gray water outlet.

One reason I wanted to replace the springs as well as the U-bolts was that this spring definitely lost some dimension to the roadway.

To get on with it, I put a jackstand under the axle so that I could remove the spring.

Using an electric 1/2″ impact wrench made short work of removing the old shank bolts. The splined design of the new bolts prevented me from using my torque wrench on the front mount. The splines bite into the mount and the bolt can only go in one way. There is not room to get a socket on the nut. They are plenty tight, though.

A little natural tension in the system fought with me, but with a little convincing leverage, I was able to get the axle to pop onto the alignment pin. Then it was trivial to put on the tie plate and U-bolts and torque to specification.

The wobbling wheel quickly chewed off the dust cap, so after readjusting the castle nut and installing another new cotter pin, I gave it a new dust cap, too.

I have found that removing and installing the wheel on this side of the camper is easier if you deflate the tire first. It is a very tight fit between the hub and the inside of the wheel well. So, here is the wheel reinstalled, with new lug bolts, being reinflated.

I didn’t take pictures of the process on the other side, as it was almost identical, with the exception that I had to remove the U-bolts on that side and to get the impact wrench over the ends of those bolts, I had to dig a shallow pit under the assembly. Also, since everything was still assembled, the components were under some tension, which complicated things at first.

We are not skipping this step. 85-95 ft/lbs.

It now sits as level as the ground it’s on!

We had decided before I even left the house that if it was 3:30 or later when I finished that I would just spend the night in the camper and tow it home in the morning. Not only did I just not want to tow it at night with all the new suspension under it and no spotter, it was discovered on the way into camp last time that we had brake and turn lights, but no tail lights. It is presumed since the wiring traverses the damaged region that something may have happened to the wiring.

In any case, it was a few minutes after 4:00PM by the time I got everything wrapped up and it would have been later than that by the time I got it hitched and ready to go. Besides, I had already been invited to join the proprietor’s family for dinner, which turned out to be an early Thanksgiving dinner with wonderful smoked turkey. We caravanned a trail ride through the woods and enjoyed a short campfire.

I enjoyed my pipe and a couple of beers as well. In all, it was a relaxing evening after a successful day’s work.

The tow home the next day was uneventful, for once!

It would be the Friday after Thanksgiving before I would start on the fender repair.

From the inside, the damage is no better or worse. This is the rear of the fender from the inside. The floor covering makes the floor look better but somehow, the fender looks worse. 🙂

I jacked the camper up in similar fashion as for the spring repair, removed the wheel and crawled under there to remove the 658 staples holding the fender in place. I didn’t actually count them, but it would not surprise me if there were at least 100.

Well, almost all of them. Apparently when this thing was built, the floor, complete with fenders, was completed and then attached to the frame. There was at least one staple hidden behind each spring mount, unreachable to remove. I was already going to cut the worst part of the splintered floor away for replacement, so I just cut a little more away and addressed these hidden staples.

I removed part of the floor tile and cut away the really shredded part of the plywood floor. I applied glue liberally and clamped it overnight to refurbish it.

The fender itself surprised me. I really expected to have to get it kinda close, then grind/sand the paint off and solder/braze/weld the seams back together, but using a set of basic auto body sheet metal repair tools that I picked up years ago for an unrelated project, I was able to carress the fender back into fender shape and reuse the existing seams. It is not in original condition, but it is in it’s original shape.

I was sure this seam was a gonner.

But this is how it turned out.

I didn’t know until I sat down to write this blog entry that this particular seam is called a Pittsburgh Lock or sometimes just Pittsburgh seam.

In this case, the curved top portion carries the lock folds, shown here in blue, and the flat sides have the simple edge fold. I used the sheet metal tools to reform the curved or flat piece. I folded the edge of the blue open, reintroduced the red fold into the lock and hammered the fold back down.

The crunched up section responded well to the sheet metal tools as well.

I didn’t really notice until I was working on the sheet metal that the fender rubbed enough on the tire to heat it up and heat it up enough to discolor the paint. I suspect this was after we had a new tire on and had continued down the road, with the trailer leaning heavily with no springs on this side.

Much later during reinstallation of the fender, I would also notice that there are some spots where this area has a couple of spots where light shines through.

For the floor repair, I cut a shape to fit the void I had cut out earlier. This required a little hand fitting since the cutout was done freehand with the oscillating tool.

I could not think of any better way to securely attach it other than glue and screws. It’s plywood, so of course it wanted to split out with such a narrow piece.

I didn’t get pix of the repair of the repair 🙂 but I did get one of the fix of the smaller piece at the front of the fender cutout.

I find it amazing how many voids are just naturally in this plywood anyway. The gap in teh middle is not a split, but a void in the plywood.

Here we are getting ready for the first staples reinstalling the fender. The repair is solid, but it could have been maybe 1/4″ wider. Still, it will hold just fine.

That turns out to be the last picture I took of the fender reinstallation process. I put the requisite 100ish staples back in, especially around the wheel well opening. There will be some sealing to do from the top and I need to put the floor tile back in, but the fender job is basically done.

There is a trim piece that runs along the bottom edge of the each side of the camper. This is a good opportunity to reinstall that.

In the wake of a successful debut of the Jayco, we had a new hitlist of perhaps less urgent things to get done for the following month’s trip.

Our 2004 RAM 2500 truck has been a workhorse. Wifey commuted to work with it until we moved out in the country. It has hauled horse trailers, several RVs, utility trailers, etc. I love that it runs essentially the same 0-60 time with or without a load attached.

However, in the last few years, it has developed some troubling transmission symptoms. If it sits unused for a long time, couple of weeks at least, it wont immediately move when put into gear. One has to shuttle back and forth between Reverse and Drive a few times to get it to roll. More recently, it developed a more worrisome issue wherein it would seem to be stuck in 2nd gear, especially if you were engaged in even modestly aggressive acceleration. You could often kind of force it to shift by manipulating the throttle, but it was not reliable. This made towing the Jayco trickier than it had to be and, surely, the extra weight of towing something can’t be helping whatever is wrong with the transmission. Store this note away for a few minutes.

We returned with the Jayco on Sunday, October 20. On Wednesday, October 23, me and about 25 of my IT Infrastructure Team coworkers were all laid off work. In a Teams call.

I spent most of the week reeling from that and starting the job hunting process, something that I am WOEFULLY out of practice with. I’d been with this company for 21 years, with the previous company 18 years and literally had a weekend off between those two jobs. I haven’t had to actually hunt for a job for nearly 40 years.

By the weekend, it was time to get on with the camper.

I replaced all the rear marker lights. The new wiring does not presume that the metal skin is grounded, so I wired the ground to each light.

I upgraded the light over the rear bed to an LED light/fan combo. It has a remote, which is obviously intended to be used from below. It throws a LOT of light and the light’s color temperature is adjustable. The fan is nice, though on high, it vibrates a little.

Speaking of fans, I manually wired 12V to the roof vent fan and verified my fears, that as mounted, it was going to pull the screen into the blades and sound like a chainsaw. I fabricated a simple bracket and flipped the fan over. I also flipped the fan blade on the motor so that it could run in the proper direction. The red sharpie arrow no longer applies. 🙂

Since I was playing with 12VDC stuff, I mounted the DC room light.

And the outdoor light, which doesn’t look very bright in full sun, but it is on.

With all these 12 volt devices installed, it was past time to install the massively oversized 12 volt converter, starting with adding a 110V outlet in The Hole.

It will one day be slightly taxed by charging a battery, but for today, 45 amps is about 42 amps more than necessary.

November 1 & 2 was a major IDPA match. It was fun, though I didn’t place or win anything. Coolest logo and match shirt ever, though.

Wifey went to visit friends in Oklahoma on that Saturday and I had plans to continue working on the Jayco and perhaps do some work in the workshop to get ready for some winter blacksmithing.

Trouble arose on the trip home from the match on Saturday. I was only 30 minutes from the range and still an hour from home when my car developed a leak. It leaked oil and connecting rods out of a hole in the side of the engine block.

Luckily for me, this spot on the road was only 20 minutes from where we camp with the Jayco and the incredible people there came to my rescue without hesitation. They loaned me one of their cars to get the rest of the way home. The next morning, I rented a U-Haul tow dolly, returned their car to them then picked up mine and towed it home. At this point, I am still not sure exactly what I am going to do about it, junk it or attempt to repair it.

With the next Love’s Way outing rapidly approaching, we are suddenly in a rush to get a bunch of stuff done in time for the weekend.

I replaced the kitchen faucet and the shower wand and finalized the installation of the water heater, bringing the last of the plumbing to a close.

The kitchen sink was a handy place to record the video of the shower wand in operation.

I added a terminal block specifically to distribute DC power, complete with its own fuse.

I added a light in the ceiling of The Hole.

I added the switch for the roof vent fan to the 12V ceiling light.

Importantly, I installed USB charging outlets by each of the beds!

You recall we had concerns about the transmission on the truck. I had been doing research into the issue and found two solutions, either or both of which could be our problem.

One is a hydraulic pressure regulator solenoid and/or pressure transducer. These are internal parts, but they can be reached by removing the pan on the bottom of the transmission and they are generally not very difficult to replace. There are commonly available parts kits that include the pan gasket and a replacement transmission oil filter, which you have to remove to get to the solenoid anyway, so you may as well replace it. In all, a couple of hours work and 7-8 quarts of fairly expensive automatic transmission fluid. It is unclear if this will directly address the 2nd gear slippage, but it definitely addresses the lack of motion after the truck sits unused for a while.

The other is a far simpler procedure. There is an externally adjustable tension setting for one of the tension bands. It is common for transmissions with 100K or more miles to need this band adjusted. The various YouTube videos describing it’s adjustment call it a 15 minute job, but most of them have the transmission out on a bench or the vehicle up on a lift. They are not being adjusted on the ground by an old fat guy crawling around under the truck. Still, it was not a bad experience overall and the difference is like night and day. The truck shifts like it is supposed to. We can defer the solenoid replacement for now, which is good since for the foreseeable future, the truck is going to be my daily driver.

With that particular thorn out of our toe, we continue working towards the next campout.

I cut and attached a top for the cabinet. It will eventually be painted, but I kind of like the woodgrain. Its just plain old plywood.

We applied this really inexpensive backsplash stuff from the dollar store to the walls around the kitchen. It took some extra effort to stabilize the actual material and to use better glue than it’s self adhesive stuff, but it turned out nice.

We got a nice big holding tank for sewage and I plumbed it for both black and grey water, but long term, we probably wont leave it this way. Our gray water output will be a lot higher than black water and we may be able to plumb a smaller black water tank directly into that outlet.

We got everything packed up and, while we didn’t leave as early as we had planned, we still got away reasonably early.

Then a new disaster struck.

You know how they tell you to always check your lug nuts before you go on a long trip. Yeah. Do that.

On the same highway where my car threw a rod, just two weeks and eight miles west of where that happened, the last lug bolt came out of one of the Jayco’s wheels.

I failed to get a picture of it before I pulled the wheel out, but it was laying at a weird forward angle, but it had been dragged on the pavement far enough to have a thumb sized hole in the sidewall. It didn’t look like the lug threads in the hub were damaged, so there was hope. I used one of the leveling jacks to jack it up enough to extract the wheel. The spring had obviously dragged as well and we found the gray water adapter half ground, but broken off a few feet behind where we had stopped.

Shortening the story from here greatly, we were able to replace the damaged tire at Walmart and use some standard bolts in order to get the trailer back on the road well enough to make it the rest of the way to Love’s Way, arriving five hours later than planned.

We used two lug bolts and two regular bolts in each wheel. As expected, we had to deflate the tire in order to convince it to fit into the wheelwell, so I am very happy that I threw my inflator in the truck before we left.

We stopped a couple of times on rest of the trip to recheck the lug bolts, especially since they were in an extra compromised configuration. At one stop, it was easy and comfortable to look around under there and investigate the totally not unexpected lean that the trailer was displaying.

The most obvious thing is that the spring is not connected to the axle, thus the lean. The axle is resting against the frame and the dangling Ubolt will later be found to literally just be hanging there. I am surprised that it stayed there for the whole bumpy trip.

Oh, and the tail lights stopped working. Brake and turn lights work, but no tail lights. The wiring for the lights passes right along the edge of that wall and over that fender, so it may have been damaged.

I did a lot of shopping online for replacement Ubolts and tie plates and later springs. It occurred to me that not only would it be wise to replace the spring because it would be prone to break where it got ground to smithereens, but the camper has always ridden really low and some new springs might lift it up a bit and help with the sewer connections and towing into driveways and all those kinds of things. Once I had some pretty good ideas on what to get, we also checked some local(ish) places and found what turned out to be arguably the best deal. I got two new springs that are a little heavier, new Ubolts and tie plates, all for $133, no waiting, no shipping. I did have to drive into Fort Worth to pick them up, but no biggie. I also procured 10 lug bolts, so it will get all new bolts and we will have 6 spares 🙂

We are planning to go install all this on Saturday and probably haul the camper back home for the rest of the work, like replacing the broken gray water fitting and other damage done in this excursion, besides the other pending work, such as installing a battery, replacing the seals in the toilet, finishing the interior trim.

So in just about exactly 30 days, I was laid off work, had my car blow up and nearly destroyed the camper. The one shining star is that just today, I got a really good bite on a job application, something similar to what I was doing and for similar pay. With a little luck, I will ace the interview and put a lot of this negative stuff behind us!