We're fine and - at the moment - sitting at County Line RV in Summit, SD for the weekend. It's a little town just off I-29 about 2 hours north of Sioux Falls. We're surrounded by dirt roads, corn fields and cattle. The picture, above, is from Paul Bunyan Park in Bemidji, MN where we walked along the Lake Bemidji lake shore on Thursday.
The family next to us is changing a trailer tire on their boat trailer this morning as I write this. Not a good sign as we now have two leaky tires on the truck ourselves. One is on the front that I can reach to add air (and this is a leaky valve stem that Ford has a TSB (technical service bulletin) on, but we've learned - by experience - the TSB doesn't actually fix the leak.) The other air leak is on the rear dual wheels where Ford so conveniently located the valve stems that even a Ford dealer has had to dismount the rear tires just to add air to them. And the closest tire shop is in Sioux Falls - about a two hour drive south that would be closed by the time I could get there. Hopefully, I can get air into the tires today (on edit, I was successful), and we can get it looked at in Sioux Falls. Acts like it's a leaky valve stem on that rear dual, too.
As the trailer reaches it tenth year of use, we can't move without breaking or wearing out something on the trailer. To be fair, I've cracked a tooth, so I'm old & fragile, too, and have a dental appointment in Sioux Falls later this week. The rear sensor for the leveling system is providing erroneous readings. Yesterday morning it read the front of the trailer as too low to raise the rear leveling legs manually. So you have to raise the front high enough to fake the sensor so it allows you to raise the rear leveling legs. (We'll forego the discussion that you're not suppose to raise the front of the trailer with the rear leveling legs down as you may damage the rear leveling legs. We've done this with a travel trailer, so we speak from experience.)
The sensor's just worn out or the mount is broken...or both. Of course it's conveniently located a couple of feet behind the rear axle of the trailer where you have to remove the exterior bottom floor & insulation of the trailer to get to it. Good for protection, but a pain to replace. Once again, we're unable to head east without an unplanned stop at a Lippert Service Center for hydraulic system repairs. Of course we know there's stuff wrong with the trailer that we don't know about, too. There's always at least five things wrong with the trailer. That makes the sensor being one of them. We know of two maintenance items that need to be done. Won't it be fun to find the others? That's the adventure!
(As a side bar, yes, we have talked with families that have never had an issue with their RV or trailer. I eventually reached the conclusion they just weren't yet aware of their problems. What we typically see is someone in a brand new RV or trailer standing outside looking at their unit and scratching their heads. When you talk to them their answer is this. "Well, it worked at the dealer. It worked in the driveway. We can't figure out why it doesn't work now." Or I read on a brand's forum & this is common on DRV's forum, "We just bought this (insert floor plan here) brand new from (insert name of dealer here) and I'm trying hard to like this trailer...")
This all just re-enforces my opinion that durability & reliability are not core values of the RV industry. I'm at a loss for words about the wheels on 2017 to 2019 Ford F350 dual rear wheel trucks except to say the engineers knew better than to mix different metals (dissimilar metals that corrode) for the tire pressure monitoring system and alloy wheels. That had to be a corporate decision. I'm finding that lawsuits are already filed over it. I prefer it be fixed.
So here we sit. Wish us luck. Until next week, David
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