Maintenance Day Number Three.
The sun is shining. This is cause for celebration (short-lived). I asked Robert what time he wanted to leave for the Alignment Center. Remember yesterday when I said that everyone in Anchorage is a speciality? Well the RV service facility doesn’t do alignments - you have to go to the Alignment Center. We had noticed that one of the trailer tires was wearing too fast and thought that the axle was out of alignment. Our appointment was for 1:00 pm so we should have plenty of time. We discussed lunch – i.e. where should we prepare it. Robert’s idea was that we should show up early at the Alignment Center and make soup in the rig. Mmmm I’m getting hungry.
At 10:30 we were ready to set sail. We’d both had showers and we hoped to dump our tanks at the campground dump station. We started retracting the slides. Trouble. When we began the first slide an alarm sounded – “high pitch squeal”. We know that the squeal alarm means that the batteries are low. In fact the batteries were so low that we could not retract our stabilizer jacks. (That means we could not hook up or move.) We’re sure glad we allowed lots of extra time this morning. Robert got out one generator. We hooked up the generator to try to charge the batteries. This was our first attempt at self-sufficiency and it wasn’t working very quickly.
Next we turned the truck around so that we could try to “jump” the trailer batteries. It was now 11:00. After another 30 minutes we had success in retracting the stabilizing jacks and could hook-up. It was near noon when we were able to pull out. We didn’t have time to visit the dump station.
Our analysis is that our batteries will not hold a charge and need to be replaced. I noticed that the batteries have a 30 month warranty (but are only 14 months old). I called the 800 number on the batteries and got the Interstate Battery Center warranty store. They have the batteries in stock and will be open until 5:00 pm.
We arrived at the Alignment Center about 15 minutes before our 1:00 pm appointment time. Apparently the problem was difficult to fix because we spent the next 5 ½ hours at the Alignment Center. I did read an interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly about Obama’s funding-raising system. The real bummer is that the sun shone all day – and we spent the day in the waiting area of the Alignment Center. :-( Obviously we didn’t get to the Interstate Battery Center before closing time.
Our next challenge was where should we go for Tuesday night? We’re not confident that we’ll be able to run anything electric because, as I understand the system, the trailer systems don’t run off direct electric current, rather they run off the batteries that are charged off the electric current. Anyway, we need electric power. I had always thought that electric power was a nicety; now I understand that it is essential. We decided to go back to Eagle River Campground, without power, because we’re fairly sure we can camp there without unhooking. We drove back to Eagle River and were luckily to get the same level campsite we had last night. We are currently running both portable generators to charge the batteries so that we can extend and re-track the slides. We’re staying hooked-up to the truck – luckily this site is pretty level. Tomorrow we’ll find the battery place and begin the voyage again. Hopefully we haven’t seen the only sunshine of the summer. Our plan is to go to a National Forest campground near Portage Glacier. If we make it there we will not have any hook-ups for a few more days.
No comments:
Post a Comment