I don’t blame Super Terry, really.

He tried his best.  He spent hours replacing the burned out motor in our air conditioner, and it seemed to work in heat pump mode when we tested it.  But as he joked, it had the “taillight warranty” — when he can’t see my taillights anymore, the warranty is over.

We’re 489 miles from his view now, near Birmingham AL, and I just turned on the air conditioner to remove some of the intense humidity we are feeling tonight.  It blew warm for a few minutes, cooled down a little, and then started blowing very warm humid air.  … sigh…

We did a quick telephone consultation but the consensus is:  “He’s dead, Jim.”

(note to non-geeks and those under age 45: That’s a Star Trek joke)

The full post-mortem hasn’t been done but it doesn’t matter, because I’m out of cheap options.  We aren’t going to repair this air conditioner at shop rates. At six years old, it has gone Tango Uniform. Farewell, Dometic Penguin — you are already missed, on this humid night in an Alabama state park.

I would like to wait until later this winter to replace it, but we also use the Airstream as a guest apartment and we have people slated to arrive in October, which is still air conditioning season in Tucson.  Somewhere in the next 1,900 miles I’ll find a good deal on a replacement unit (probably a 15k BTU air conditioner without heat pump) and we’ll do a swap.  That’s a topic I’ll start researching in the next few days.

Believe it or not, a day spent on the roof of an Airstream can be kind of fun.  That is, as long as the news from roofside isn’t too bad.

We had left off yesterday with a few mysteries up above: a rain water leak and a non-functional air conditioner/heat pump.  With perfect fall weather and no rain, Sunday was the best opportunity for me to climb up onto the roof with Super Terry.

We had thought the AC problem was likely to be a control board, and in fact already had the spare part on hand.  But it wasn’t.  A few minutes after removing the shroud and firing up the unit, we noticed a burning smell and then the blower motor began to slow down.  It’s burned out.  That’s really bad news, since the motor is not designed to be replaced.  The typical “fix” is to replace the entire unit.  A quick check of prices for this combination AC/heat pump shows that it runs about $1200 plus shipping (nobody has it in stock locally).  An AC-only unit would cost about $850.  Not psyched.

Fortunately, he isn’t called Super Terry for nothing.  Just because the blower motor isn’t designed for easy replacement doesn’t mean it can’t be.  The job requires ripping up glued insulation and other bits, so it won’t be a pretty process but I expect the result will work out fine.  The real problem was that we didn’t have a spare blower motor and it was Sunday.  So, we set aside the problem until Monday and planned to extend our visit here so Super Terry can find one with his x-ray vision.

The other mystery was The Case of the Dripping Speaker.  The ceiling mounted speaker above the kitchen area was dripping rain water on Saturday.  I suspected the center Fan-Tastic Vent.  This vent has a bit of a history.  It’s original to the trailer, and I had re-caulked it 11 months ago in Florida.  At the time I couldn’t find the right caulk and eventually used some common “self-leveling RV caulk” that was sold by Camping World.  I was not happy with the stuff but it appeared to still be OK when I inspected yesterday (photo below).

Super Terry pointed me to a tube of Sikaflex 221, which is a very good polyurethane sealant, basically white Vulkem.  You know it’s great when a tiny smudge is absolutely impossible to remove from your clothing even after multiple washes. I have a pair of pants with a gray Vulkem smudge that is still pliable and sticky after several years.  For this reason I never start a caulk job without sacrificial clothing.

I took a few minutes to strip and re-seal some of the older caulk points on the roof (the FM antenna, the cellular antenna) but couldn’t find a smoking gun.  I was looking for an obvious caulk failure, which is indicated by the caulk peeling up, gapping, or starting to break down in the U.V.  Eventually S.T. found a small crack on the corner of the plastic flange that surrounds the Fan-Tastic Vent that wasn’t covered with caulk, and we had the culprit red-handed.  It doesn’t take much of a crack to let in a lot of rainwater.  The crack was in exactly the right spot to be allowing water to run to the ceiling speaker, given the tilt of the trailer.

Once we pulled off the caulk to inspect, we discovered that the entire flange surrounding the fan body was badly cracked.  The caulk was holding, but the multiple cracks were creating water entry points.  About half the screw heads were rusted underneath the caulk.  At this point there was not much hope for caulking our way out of the problem — the best solution was a replacement fan body.

We’ve got some time pressure, so although the warranty on the fan would allow us to request a replacement body from the company, I chose the more expedient option of going to the store and buying a basic model of the same fan to replace this one.  Super Terry transferred the advanced features of our old fan to the new one (rain sensor, power open/close, smoked cover), and so the $100 basic fan we bought became the equivalent of a $300 model, and we installed that with the Sikaflex.

It won’t be leaking again for quite a while.  From my personal observations, the OEM caulk will last 5-6 years under average conditions, but as little as 3-4 years if left full-time in a sunny environment like the desert southwest.  A good quality polyurethane caulk like Sikaflex or Vulkem stays good and pliable for a much longer time.  I’ve seen Vulkem on vintage trailers that is decades old and still holding tight.  It pays to use the good stuff, but you do have to hunt for it a bit.

Now that we knew we’d be spending at least another night here, waiting for the replacement blower motor, it was time to discuss our future plans.  Since we left Vermont we had expected this stop in North Carolina to be a literal fork in the road, and we’d have to make a choice:  go for an extended trip with several weeks in Florida, or hang a right and start west toward home.  The difference was basically $1,000 in camping and fuel, and 1,000 miles, which would get us three or four weeks of Florida fun.

But our decision has been made for us.  Late last night Emma’s orthodontic appliance failed again — for the third time — and after consulting with her home dentist we have come to the conclusion that the best choice is to head home.  The appliance will be disconnected by a local orthodontist in Winston-Salem today.  To avoid a major setback in her treatment, we will aim to get back to Tucson in less than two weeks, which means no long visit to Florida.

We knew this might happen, and even discussed the possibility months ago.  An orthodontic problem (or really any sort of medical problem) can easily derail a long trip.  Sometimes there’s no choice but to go back to home base.  The important thing is that everyone rolls with the punches and there be no recriminations.  Today it was Emma’s issue, but tomorrow it might be mine.  At least traveling by Airstream gives us the flexibility to re-arrange our plans without paying penalties for cancellation fees or last-minute airfares.

So, starting Tuesday we will be heading westward.  There are still several interesting stops to be made along the 2,000 mile journey back, so it won’t be a waste.  I’ve started mapping out possibilities and will work up a fairly definite plan as soon as we button up the air conditioner.

I have been paranoid about our disc brakes since about 5,000 miles after we got them, and our tires almost since we first started traveling with this particular Airstream — for good reason.  The brakes have had a long history of wearing unevenly and the tires … well, let’s just say we’ve had our share of problems with them.  (If you haven’t been a long-time reader of this blog and the prior Tour of America blog, just try searching the word “tires” in either of them.)

But after about five years of traveling and trying various solutions, we seem to have finally gotten it all worked out.  We installed Michelin LTX M/S LT235/75R15 tires (Load Range C) on the trailer in January of 2010 and replaced the ceramic brake pads with semi-metallics at the same time.

About a year ago, in October 2010, we met up with Super Terry to do a maintenance check and everything checked out perfectly.  Since then, we’ve put about 8,000 additional miles on the trailer, for a total of approximately 18,000 miles of towing on this set of brakes and tires, so I decided it was time to do another check.  And so here we are with Super Terry again, about one year later.

I figured that we’d probably need something at this point, so my other goal was to learn the full disc brake replacement procedure, along with best techniques for re-packing wheel bearings.  But when we pulled the wheels, everything was perfect.  Absolutely no service needed.  So I didn’t get a chance to observe much of anything.

The tires currently have 12/32″ of tread depth remaining (they started with 13/32″, so barely any wear so far).  If we eventually replace the tires when they reach 4/32″ of tread, we’d have over 160,000 miles on them.  That’s incredible.  Realistically, with uneven wear that usually occurs or just aging, we’ll replace them with about 75,000 miles on them — still incredible compared to the 30,000 mile life I would get if I could wear out an ST tire before it had a belt failure.

The disc brakes were similar.  I could not see any wear since last year.  (We didn’t measure the pads but they are still in excellent condition.)  I’ll continue to do annual brake and tire checks but that’s just good practice.  We finally have a really reliable running gear setup.

Given the excellent condition of everything we observed, we decided to skip wheel bearing service at this time.  We did notice slightly more wear on the rear tires, which is normal, so we rotated the tires front-to-back.  We also took the opportunity to replace the remaining original lug nuts, which were cheap-o type with fake chrome caps on them.  The chrome caps tend to come loose at inopportune moments, which makes them very hard to remove.  They also stretch so that fitting them into a socket can be difficult.

We found solid nuts at Autozone.  The replacements take a 13/16″ socket instead of 3/4″, which is slightly less convenient.  The Hensley hitch strut jacks take a 3/4″ socket and so do all the stabilizer jacks, so now I have to carry one more socket, but that’s no big deal.  In the photo, the solid nuts are pictured at right, and one of the original capped nuts is on the left.

I am still finding reminders of the summer of storage in Vermont.  It was sprinkling lightly this morning, so I opened up the awning to cover us while we were working on the curbside.  Rolled up inside the awning was a colony of very large ants.  They appeared to be dormant, and began to wander randomly around the awning.  I knocked them off easily enough, but it was not a pleasant surprise.  We’re still carrying quite a few spiders too.  They are slowly being captured and removed.   I am just hoping we haven’t picked up a load of stink bugs on the east coast like last year.

With the rain coming and going we didn’t feel like getting on the roof for the final scheduled repair, the air conditioner.  It started getting wonky a few weeks ago, spontaneously shutting off or blowing hot air.  We suspect a bad circuit board, which has to be replaced from the top.  That’s part of today’s plan.

So instead of doing anything significant in the rain, we added a few LED lights in strategic places for future boondocking episodes, including this one in the porch light.  The standard incandescent bulb that comes with the light (an 1156) generates too much heat and eventually melts the plastic lens.  I don’t know why the OEM puts that bulb in there.  Ours had started to melt but was still usable, so to prevent further damage we swapped it with this plug-in replacement 24-LED array from a fine Airstream Life advertiser, LED4RV.  It works great.

There’s one other job for today while we’re on the roof.  The rain revealed a roof leak somewhere.  Water was dripping through one of the ceiling-mounted JVC speakers.  Now, we’ve had rain several times before on this trip and not noticed a leak, which provides a lesson.  Sometimes leaks aren’t noticeable until the trailer is parked a particular way.  This is another example of how using your Airstream regularly is the best way to keep it in good shape. A leak like this one could have gone unnoticed for months while in storage, until an expensive floor repair became necessary.

In this case, we are very slightly nose high and very slightly lower on the street side.  This suggests that the leak is coming through the Fan-Tastic Vent in the center of the trailer.  I re-caulked that vent last year and was not happy with the caulk I ended up having to use, so I’m going to remove all of the caulk and do it over with something better.  While I’m up there, I’ll probably do a few other spots as a preventative measure.  I’ll have more to say about that issue in the next blog.

Those who are wondering about E&E: they spent the day in the trailer just puttering.  Both of them have a cold and will be running at low speed for a few days, but in the gloomy fall sprinkles it wasn’t a bad way to spend Saturday.

Our stopover in Falls Church turned out to be a working stop.  We had entertained thoughts of taking a day to go into Washington DC to tour some monuments and museums (Eleanor particularly wanted to see the new Martin Luther King Jr monument), but obligations took over.

Normally when I plan our travels I try to keep enough days open to get my work done, but this week I botched it and ended up with an obligation to drive all day Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.  That left just two full days for work, plus the little “fringe” times I find at the beginning and end of each driving day.  Things were complicated by our visit to Penn Wood on Monday, because I wanted to have a quick client meeting (the park advertises in Airstream Life) and I had forgotten that the park is a “no-Verizone”.

The end result was that we arrived in Falls Church at Bobby/Danine/Elise’s house with piles of work and household tasks which had to take priority. I set myself up on their dining room table while Emma did homeschooling and Eleanor shuttled back and forth to the laundry room and grocery.  We also visited Elise’s orthodontist to get a better fix to Emma’s braces.

The braces seem to be stable enough that we can continue our planned travel and won’t have to fly E&E back to Tucson early.  We did have to make a minor adjustment later, which involved a nail file to remove some sharp bits of glue that were cutting into Emma’s tongue.  This was done at a rest area somewhere along I-85 — redneck dentistry at its finest.

Having the braces issue resolved would be more exciting news if we actually had a firm plan. But we don’t.  Our only plan, after bidding a fond farewell to our friends in Falls Church, was to drive 300+ miles to Winston-Salem NC for a visit with Super Terry & Marie. After that, we have ideas and wishes, but no firm plans.

We are now parked in their back yard, beneath a canopy of mature maple trees (a few of which we had to trim in order to fit in here).  It was a long and tricky back-in, down a driveway, around a 90 degree bend, descending a slight grade and past a brick wall.  It took a few passes and lot of patience but we made it.

This weekend is dedicated to learning to do the brakes and bearings myself.  In the past I have relied on Super Terry, chasing him across the country from Florida to California to North Carolina in order to get a decent and trustworthy repair.  This time, I’m asking him to teach me all the tips & tricks so that I can be completely capable & equipped of doing a 4-wheel disc brake job and bearing service in my own driveway annually.  Self-reliance is really a key to survival when you travel a lot, and I’m overdue to get competent at these simple jobs. I’ll be taking notes and photos as we go.

In the meantime, E&E will be convalescing and perhaps going to an apple festival with Marie.  The weather has changed and it’s now a damp gray fall day (where it was a scorching humid summer a few days ago).  It’s the kind of weather that makes you want to bundle up and watch old movies with a cup of soup.  They might just do that, but hopefully the colds won’t keep them from also getting out a little to breathe the fall air.