My wife and I (and two GSD’s) drove for 11.5 hours to met the seller at the Manatee Hammock RV park. He showed me how to set it up and where everything was at and then away they went. We were along with our new motor home but exhaustion took over and we were asleep almost before it got dark.
The next morning we watched the sunrise, made notes on what we needed to repair/replace/and improve on, and got to enjoy a bit of the RV lifestyle.
Friday morning we broke camp, raised the leveling jacks, and brought in the slides. One jack refused to come all the way up and the main slide wouldn’t come in. Turned out to be operator error on both accounts but we felt kind of empty as we worked our way through the issues.
Got to the Interstate and the rig ran swell for the first 200 miles. During that time I learned how to counter the effect of an 18-wheeler as they came screaming by.
I found myself quite comfortable at 60-62 and everything was going swell.
But somewhere into the 5 hour mark the coach started acting squerly, kind of like the wind was blowing it around, except the wind wasn’t blowing. Now when the diesel trucks went by I was basically unable to control the coach at speeds any faster than 45mph. Luckily we were only 50 miles from that nights scheduled RV Park, so we limped on in for the night.
This morning I found a place and got the rig aligned. Toe was out 21* on one side, 23* on the other. Also found out that (although both the front tires were new) one was a Firestone and the other was a Goodyear. Not sure if that contributed to my problem but to be safe, they pulled a couple of tires off the back, and moved them up to the front so that I would have the same tires on both sides up front. What confuses me most is why the coach ran so smooth for the first 200 miles and then changed so abruptly.
On the way back to the RV Park the couch seemed to drive better but it was still a bit squerly. But the big difference between yesterday and today is the wind really was blowing today! I’d estimate about 10-15 mph. I don’t know if that would be enough to influence the coach or not, but I remember my boating days and that much wind could certainly affect how the boat handled. Well, when docking, anyway.
So here we sit, wondering what awaits us tomorrow. If I don’t get better control of the handling, then I’m going to be limited to about 50mph and I’m 400 miles from home. Yipes! That’s gonna make for a couple of very long days!
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