Squish

If you have been a follower of this blog you know that we have been in the sparsely populated semi-arid or desert southwest for almost two years.  Our return to the east coast was not only a culture shock in civilization (as in being near it) but also climate.  We saw rain while out west but it usually came in the form of fast moving storms or showers that were more mud than rain.  It seemed as though the moment we arrived in GA it rained for hours on end day after day.

Our 5th-wheel trailer has what we call an "upstairs".  Seen from the outside it is the front of the trailer that rides over the top of the bed of the truck.  This is typically where the bedroom is, as it is in our case.  One evening in the first 10 days of our time at Fort Frederica, after three days of continuous rain, we went upstairs to go to bed.  As Cyndee stepped around to her side of the bed, the farthest forward position, something went squish.  A large portion of the carpet was practically standing in water!!

It was nearly mid-night but we went into disaster recovery mode.  First we had to find the source of the leak and get it stopped.  Then water needed to be removed and all things wet had to be dried.  Our check showed us that the water was not getting in anywhere around the bed, the only place left it could be coming from was the closet.  The closet in our 5th-wheel is in the forward end-cap and runs the full width of the rig with two full-length sliding mirrored doors.  An attempt at opening the door on the wettest side was met with significant resistance.  The door guide on the floor is a grooved plank of oak and it had swelled and warped to the point that the door could barely be moved.  Once we got the door opened we started emptying that end of the closet first.  And as luck would have it, that was the end where we had all manner of things crammed in from floor to ceiling.

About three feet up from the floor on one end, the cedar lining of the closet has a hole drilled in it for a wiring conduit.  We could see water running out of this hole.  This means that water was standing three feet deep between interior and exterior walls.  Yikes!  And now that we had all the stuff out of the closet and strong lights shining in, we could see horizontal stain lines where water had been getting in and soaking through the cedar veneer, leaving a white residue stain.

Finding where the water was getting in from the outside was going to have to wait for the light of day.  If it took three solid days of pouring rain before there was enough water to make itself noticeable, then it would have to be small and based on its position of where it was coming through on the inside, it must be up high on the outside.  I'm not getting on a metal ladder in the middle of the night during a thunder and lightning storm to hunt for a leak that is probably too small to see without good light and dry surfaces.

At first light I was out and setting up my 12' ladder.  Luckily the rain had stopped but everything was soaking wet and not going to dry out any time soon.  The DIY gods must have been smiling down on me though because the very first place I looked I found the leak.  Caulking had pulled away from the joint that connects the end-cap to the side-walls.  It was at the very top, just below the roof-line and less than an inch in length.  It was too wet to try a repair so I got a tarp and draped it over the whole front end and fixed it place until things could dry out.

After using every sham-wow, chamois and towel we had, plus fans blowing at a hurricane's roar, carpet and walls began to dry.  From the horizontal stains on the wall we could only surmise that the leak had been going on for some time, months at best but more likely more than a year.  The cedar lining of our closet was ruined but we could have lived with that.  What scared us the most was the likelihood of thick carpets of black mold in the walls and sub-floors (plywood) beginning to rot.  It was time to call the factory in Kansas and schedule an overhaul.

Our long-range plans were to have about a six week break between our positions at Fort Frederica and Chattahoochee Bend.  Maybe a week or two on a Florida beach or a drive up I-95 to Washington DC, but now it looks like we'll be making a couple thousand mile round trip to Kansas.  Oh, and before we go, there are two sets of brakes that have catastrophically failed and apparently caused excessive tire wear.

Yep, we were literally pulling onto our RV pad at Fort Frederica and one of the maintenance people asked if we knew about "that bad tire".  I didn't have a bad tire when we left Stone Mountain two days earlier, how could one be bad now?  Believe me, it was.  There was nothing but cord left on one and the other one just forward of it was essentially a slick.  Yikes!, again.

After getting settled in I used the leveling system to jack up the rig and pull off the bad tires.  All the while scratching my head as to how perfectly good tires could be totally shot in less than 350 miles.  I looked for broken shock hangers, checked the wheel bearings for excessive movement; nothing.  At first look the brakes appeared to be okay, no grooving of the rotors.... but wait a minute, how come there is corrosion on the face of the rotor?  That thing should be polished to a high finish from the brake pad rubbing on it.  With flashlight in hand I crawled under the rig and behind the rear axle so I could get a look at both caliper pads.  To my shock there was only one of the two pads present.  The outboard pad was GONE on both rotors with bad tires.  When I say gone I don't mean worn away.  They were non-existent, no trace of a caliper pad ever being there.

For the gear-heads out there, you'll see the problem immediately in the photo.  On the left side of the rotor everything looks as it should, nice, thick brake pad and its backing plate.  But on the right there is no sign of a brake pad, just a backing plate that shows no sign of ever having a pad on it.  The wheel assembly in front of this one looked the same; outboard pad gone, inboard perfectly normal.

The other four wheels all looked normal and now I was scratching my head over how the loss of a caliper pad could cause rapid and severe tire wear as well as how the heck a whole caliper pad could just be gone.  No answer was forthcoming, repairs would have to begin without knowing why the damage occurred.

With none of the wheel or brake assemblies being a common manufacturer it was not a simple choice of going to the local NAPA or AutoZone for replacement parts.  It took a lengthy web search and two days of phone calls to finally find a distributor of Dexter products that would sell to an individual in Jacksonville, FL.  Then there was the ten day wait for the parts to come from the factory somewhere in the Midwest.  And finally, a day off to drive to Jacksonville (a little over an hour away) to pick up the parts.

Like every time I touch the truck or trailer, it is not cheap.  The brakes were about triple what it would cost for a car and the tires are ST's (special trailer) which means they can charge $180 a piece for them.  But the repair was easy except for the usual struggle to get all the air out of the brake lines.