Great Sierra News

 Adventure Location: Rockport, Texas

Adventure Date: 10-23-2020

Click the pic to enlarge it.

It was a good start to a worrisome day of Sierra’s repair. After breakfast we hit up the marina area for about 30 minutes of fishing before we head to the repair shop. Nothing special was happening until the last cast. The large speckled trout hit the lure and the fight was on. It was a larger than usual trout.  After the OFM got the trout flopped onto the parking surface the trout looked even larger.

When things calmed down a bit and the fish was unhooked it turned out to be 18 inches long and fat. It was definitely a nice size fish but guess what Castle still had the camera in it.  So the fish went back into the water and we headed to the repair shop for some Sierra surgery.

We got to the shop a few minutes ahead of schedule and the repair bay opened up right on time and in Sierra went. Rex, a well proven mechanic from previous repairs, went right to work on the alignment planned. However he quickly found that the alignment was not the problem.

Both of the lower ball joints on Sierra were loose and worn. So the OFM approved replacing them. New joints quickly arrived. In the mean time Rex started the disassembly required of the front suspension parts.  The OFM asked how the brakes and rotors looked for wear. The disk pads showed more than 60% pad left. The rotors showed no significant wear. The other parts all passed with flying colors. The only trouble was the two lower suspension ball joints.

They were soon replaced. Rex did a careful alignment test and found the alignment still in specification, but just barely.  So a full fledged alignment was done on Sierra.

When Rex was finished, Sierra had had basically the entire front suspension assembly on both sides carefully examined and now was ready for another 100,000 miles of running and playing. WOW we like that. Total repairs cost was $403.

A big surprise awaited the OFM when we drove off to get some lunch.  Sierra drove a lot better than it had been driving. Sierra was a lot firmer to the road than it had been.  This was a real nice feeling for certain. Now we REALLY can feel comfortable that the brakes and front suspension is ready for more running and playing.

After lunch we went by the “fishing gear “ garage sale  that a couple of friends were helping at. We visited for a little while and headed to get some new lures. They were out of stock.

Later we went back to the old friends RV and visited for a couple of hours which put a wonderful end to a fantastic day of trying to have tooooo much fun