Big news! My parents hired contractors to complete our new parking space at the farm and it looks GREAT!
 |
| Freshly poured concrete |
With this in place, we will finally be able to come and go from the farm regardless of any recent rain saturating the ground! Thanks Mom & Dad!!
Knowing we had solid ground to come back to, we finally took the RV in for its annual preventative maintenance and to get the air system examined. Conveniently there was a Freightliner service shop just up the road in Beckley - Matheny Motors. These guys were great! They were happy to talk to Aaron at length on the phone and in person about his concerns and to explain their findings. The preventative maintenance was straightforward of course. They were also able to fix the air ride system. We had noticed quite some time ago that when the air bags in the air ride system were inflated, the RV would lean toward the passenger side (when the air bags were not inflated, the RV sat flat). After investigation, the mechanics determined that two suspension valve connectors were broken, which was preventing the air system from automatically compensating for changes in loading and terrain. They replaced these connectors and now the RV rides level! It also responds much better going around curves - Aaron used to worry we would roll with the lean when we turned.
We also asked them to look at the air dump, which hasn't ever worked. The mechanics concluded on this that the wrong valves were installed for the air dump, and also that the switch from the air dump button to the solenoid for the air valves wasn't hooked up. Because all of the valves were wrong and looked OLD, the mechanic's professional opinion was that they never hooked up the air dump at the factory! This is crazy to us - why have an air dump button on the driver's console if it doesn't work?? - but we have no reason to doubt his opinion. It would be pretty expensive to replace the valves with the correct ones, AND the mechanic advised that Aaron could actually do that repair himself, so we decided not to complete that at the service center. This also really impressed us - not only did they tell us we could do the work ourselves, but when we picked the RV up they actually walked Aaron through the process before we drove away.
 |
| Learning about valves at Matheny Motors (that's Aaron in the Hokie Maroon and the head mechanic in the dark blue). |
When we came back to the farm, we got to use the new parking spot for the first time - beautiful!
 |
| Perfect fit! |
Now we're ready to come and go on some short trips! Stay tuned!
