Maintenance

 

Adventure Location:

Decatur, Alabama

Date: July 25, 2024

What a misery today was! We started with rain squalls and finished this evening with strong rain storms. We were afraid more trees would be coming down.

The OFM stayed on leak patrol all day and we are happy to report that there were no new leak points. To clarify a bit, most all of the leak points are in wall penetration/joints not on the roof. On a rig that has spent a lot of time off pavement slowly and carefully riding around boon-docking areas, wall penetration/joint leaks are common. Especially one that has done it for 18 years. The twisting back and forth a rig gets off road is fairly significant. We deliberately chose Arctic Fox when we purchased it in Oregon in 2007 since it was built to handle that treatment better than most rigs and for 16 years and lots of miles off road it did with little trouble. But that same wear and tear does wear out things and need maintenance eventually. That reminded OFM of two hailstorms we rode out in Del Rio a few years ago where the hail stones coming down in the frenzy were slightly larger than the golf balls we had in a bucket next to the Castle. To our surprise, the Castle made it through both hail storms with no damage. The one RV repair facility in town was totally booked for nearly three months fixing a lot of pretty Rvs after each of those storms. We had no damage to the Castle from either storm.

In case you missed it last year we had the trailer suspension gone through for wear examination, new brake assemblies and of replacement of the wheel bearings. When you take your rig out into the rough stuff often but carefully, it will wear more significantly and quickly. Maintenance becomes much more critical. By the way saltwater beach or other near saltwater use will need more maintenance than normal use situations.

The Castle has been through all of that fun during its years since July 2007 when we moved into it, so we are a bit proud to see it still ready to play after all the fun we have had. But maintenance of ALL systems is critical. Now we need to get rolling September 15 to see if we can wear out the OFM.