Big Wheels Keep On Turning

I am beginning this post with an awesome picture taken out the windshield while driving in Montana yesterday.




I began with this picture, because some of you are not much interested in information about the bus. I want to give you a reason to keep coming back. I am looking at you, Mother Dear, down there in Mississippi.😀

Big Wheels Keep On Turning We have been rolling on down the highway this week. Running this many miles every week would kill us young (Too Late), but sometimes it is necessary. When it is necessary, it is also fun. We do enjoy the traveling part of what we do. Kelly Jo has been sitting in her buddy seat with her feet propped up and enjoying the view out the window.

Keeping the bus rolling takes some time, diligence and effort. Some things can be put off a while and other things can not. Some things need to be stressed over now, stressed over later and others need no stressing at all. The trick is knowing the difference.

 🤔 

When we left London, Kentucky, we pointed the BoggsMobile south to Vonore, Tennessee for a short visit. Those of you that have been reading a while know that East Tennessee Luxury Coach is a familiar stopping place for us. We usually need to swing through there at least a couple times each year.

It is safe to say that keeping the bus on the road the last several years would have been a bigger challenge without Jeff Rowe in our lives. He has endeared himself to us as he shares his time and his talent with us. Jeff Rowe has become a great friend.

I had a couple of semi-urgent things for Jeff and a couple of nagging gremlins that I wanted to put behind us too.

The first thing can be traced all the way back to our breakdown in the Houston area back in January. In order to tow the bus...

One of the axles had to be removed along the side of the road. It is normal procedure and pretty straight forward.

The axle has to be put back in once the tow is finished. The removal was done by the tow truck driver and then he reinstalled the axle when he left us at the shop. Since we have been back on the road, there has been a very small amount of differential fluid escaping and gathering on the wheel.

Long term, that would create a major problem and could result in the hubs overheating and fire. We do not even want to go there, so I wanted Jeff to look at it.

His guys removed the axle, reinstalled it properly, replaced the gasket and cleaned it all up. Jeff told me that the bolts need to be tightened in a cross pattern with a hand ratchet, not an air ratchet and then torqued to specs. The torque spec is 150.

When the axle was reinstalled in Houston, the gasket was not replaced and the bolts were tightened with an air ratchet.

I also had a tag axle wheel that was leaking a dab of gear oil on the road side of the wheel. That was a simple fix for them too. They removed the hub cap and replaced the cap the holds in the oil and it was done.

I have driven many miles since then and there is no evidence of any leaking. Yay!

Jeff spent most of his time chasing a couple of electrical gremlins.

Back in the summer, my high house voltage light came on with the engine running and I had not been able to get to the bottom of it. The is a disconnect switch between the alternator and the house batteries and I turned that off. 

That prevented the overcharging, but it also meant the house batteries were not being charged as we are going down the road unless the generator is running. That is not a show stopper, but a big inconvenience.

I had this same problem in 2015 and Jeff helped me diagnose it from a distance and I replaced the multi-battery isolator in Wichita, KS. Jeff sent the isolator and I put it in. That solved the problem in 2015, but we could not believe it was the same problem.

You know what happened, right? After Jeff spent quite a bit of time looking and checking and reading, he deduced, it was probably the same problem. Jeff ordered the part.

The second problem was the generator was throwing my #1 Invertor into error under certain conditions. That could cause a multitude of problems. He diagnosed that as a faulty voltage regulator and ordered that too.

While working on the bus, one of Jeff's guys washed the filthy mess off the back of the BoggsMobile. Sweet! Thank you!

The bus pulled out of Jeff's on Tuesday and went to Elkton, Virginia. We detoured back by Jeff's on Saturday so he could install the isolator and the voltage regulator. 

After many miles, it seems that both problems may be solved. I love that! Thank you again, Jeff, for making time for us. We love you like family.

The weather has definitely taken a turn for the cool side of things. That became more and more apparent as we made our way toward western Montana. While in Ohio, we stopped at Rural King and purchased several bottles of the fuel treatment that I use in cold weather.

One bottle will treat 320 gallons. Our tank is 208 gallons.

I paid about $10 a bottle at Rural King. I have paid as little as $8 a bottle there. The reason I made a special stop in Ohio is because they price this stuff like liquid gold at truck stops. I saw this advertisement at Love's recently.

Wow! You get 600 points added to your Love's Reward card IF you by two bottles at $22 each. I bought four bottles for that price and had money left over for tacos!

I added a full bottle the next time I filled up and I add about a 1/2 bottle each fillup until the warm weather comes back.

The bus is running good, making the wheels turn and carrying us across the country this week. Later I will post a travel log type post describing our trip west, but here are the bare facts.

We have rolled
160 miles Friday night
241 miles Saturday morning
127 miles Saturday evening
204 miles Sunday morning
561 miles Monday
573 miles Tuesday
407 miles Wednesday
329 miles Thursday ending in our destination of Sun Valley Church, Florence, Montana.

Thank you for joining us today.

Davy