Mechanical difficulties: too good (bad) to not blog about

So here I am today, driving north on I-10 about noon, cruising along at 55 mph toward Phoenix, heavy traffic flying by me at 75 mph, when a motorist honks to get my attention and gestures at me to pull off to the side of the road. (Thank you, thank you, whoever you are.)  I know this is not a good sign. I pay immediate attention, and manage to pull to a stop in the inverted V between the highway and an on-ramp that just happened to be directly in front of me.  Shaking, yes I was, flicked the emergency flashers on. As I pull to a stop, the tread of my right front tire mockingly rolls ahead of me and into the fortunately isolated on-ramp at Mile 211, near Casa Grande. 

Sooo not good. I wait for a break in the traffic to get out of the driver's side door to assess the damage and damage it is. Both Tracker toad front tires are completely shredded and resting on the rims. Heart sank to the soles of my shoes, yes it did. Both front wheel rims are scorched around the bolts. I realize I am extremely lucky that nothing caught on fire, and I thank the unknown motorist again. 

Its difficult to think straight in a situation like this. I force myself to  slow down, think, and make a plan, all the while every truck whizzing by at 75 mph gives the motorhome a violent buffet. Okay, first thing, call Coachnet roadside assistance. The rep on the phone was very sweet, and said a tow truck would be there in 30 minutes. Okay, that gives me time to cancel my appointment in Phoenix,  pull out my hazard warning triangles, and attempt to get them to stand up. They wouldn't, as they are also buffetted by the 75 mph traffic, just a few feet away. I gather up other tire debris attempting to weight them down. There is a lot of debris by the side of an interstate highway! Every time I got one triangle to stand up, another one would fall down, whap!  It was almost slapstick, although I was glad there was nobody around to laugh at me. 

I call Lisa, she who used to race trucks in Baja, Mexico and has the tools to prove it. She's sympathetic, and proceeds to help me make a plan. By the way, the canceled appointment in Phoenix was to replace the hanger holding up the generator exhaust pipe traversing the coach. The rubber strap portion of the hanger was rotted away, holding up the exhaust pipe by a mere thread. Lisa had suggested we do a crawl-around underneath my coach for the purpose of tightening any bolts we could find to tighten. (There were more than a few bolts that took several turns of the wrench.) Having spotted this problem, Lisa proceeded with a "weekend mechanic" fix of a couple of strands of wire to hold up the exhaust pipe, until I could get to having it properly replaced. Maybe Wednesday.

Meanwhile I realize that I'll need to unhitch the Tracker, and I'm in the middle of this process when the tow truck arrives. He pulls the Tracker onto the flatbed tow truck PDQ, terrorizing me slightly with tales of hit-and-run incidents when he's been out on similar towing jobs. We arrive at the closest tire store, a funky little place. They were very nice, but upon removing the left front rim, they discover that the brake line is completely broken, and they don't do this kind of work. 

Am tempted to cry at this point, but another call to Lisa, I take heart, and we have a further plan. A quick visit to Yelp, and I settle on Rich's Auto Repair in Casa Grande.  Another tow truck required, recommended by Rich. I ws glad to see it show up as I was getting a little tired of listening to the tire guy's understanding of the world domination conspiracies that are apparently afoot, unbeknownst to me, while Fox TV is blaring in the background.

Rich inspires confidence. In short order, he examines the situation, orders new brakes, calipers, brake lines, and a couple of other things that I've forgotten now. The rims are okay, he thinks. I run across to the tire place conveniently located across the street and order two new front tires. All will be installed tomorrow, and then we'll see if there's anything else wrong that wasn't apparent at today's first pass. We are not quite out of the woods just yet, but I am hopeful. Rich thinks that the most likely cause is that my auxiliary braking system was "on" just enough to drag the wheels a little bit, causing the tires to fail 50 miles later. I've been pleased with my braking system so far in this journey, but upon my first damage assessment I did notice an anomaly in the way the brake cable looked. However, I may not have had 100% of my wits about me at the time. I am going to add this particular brake cable configuration check to my pre-departure walk-around from now on. I'm eagerly awaiting the assessment of the Lazy Daze hive mind at Q in a few days. Also will stock up on fire extinguishers at Q.

And another thing, to add insult to injury, I go to wash my hands in the rig and the water pump won't run, deader than a doornail, no light on the Lazy Daze display panel. I check the fuse, its fine, even swapped the old one out. I call Lazy Daze and talked to Vince. In my skimpy arsenal of tools, I do have the small Radio Shack multimeter that Andy talked about on Eureka. Vince walks me through a continuity check, but the results are inconclusive, basically I don't know what I'm doing. I check with a couple of the local RV repair places, but they're booked solid for a week, it being the high snowbird season. I have lots of bottled water to drink, so this particular problem pales into insignificance for now. 

I am now cooling my heels at a local RV park, enjoying a well-deserved glass of wine as I write. However, gremlins are still haunting me. There are full hookups here, and my water pump isn't working anyway, so I hook up to city water. Great, got water. But while flushing the toilet I hear something that sounds suspiciously like the water pump is operating in addition to the flowing city water. This isn't right, both systems aren't supposed to be active at the same time!  The panel now shows the green pump light, huh?? Something is sticking. I turn the pump off, and think I'd better document this cluster of messes quick before I forget the details. 

So, my friends, that's been my day today, a severe blow to my confidence, not to mention my checkbook. Oh, and remind me to tell you about the leaking water filter I had the other day, wet carpet and everything. I have accumulated enough mechanical disaster stories in the last few day to last for quite awhile around the campfire. Why is it that disasters make for the best stories? 

So, I think I'll close this lengthy post, have another glass of wine instead, get a good night's sleep, and hope that tomorrow is a better, more boring day.