More Adventure Than We Expected

We are on the road and in Portland Oregon for a few days. A few problems materialized during our travel. On the way down the grapevine my trailer brakes failed. They would work about half way (according to the controller read-out) and then give up completely. Fortunately the brakes on the truck and a downshift kept speed under control. I was thinking the body shop removed the bed to do some body work where I crunched the cab, and perhaps didn't get some wiring hooked up solidly. I switched to the other connector socket on the truck and the problem seemed to clean up. Then, after leaving Dennis and Cathy the same thing happened again, only this time I got a SH on the readout, which I took to mean "short." I lost all braking on the trailer at that point. After two hours in a rest area troubleshooting and realizing the problem wasn't in the truck wiring I isolated the short on one axle and disconnected those two brakes. We proceeded to Portland on the remaining four trailer brakes. We took Hwy 97 to 58 to avoid all the up and down of the mountains on I-5. We did fine with four trailer brakes. Now I need to troubleshoot which wheel has the short and fix the problem (I now suspect a worn magnet?) before we head north again. Quite a bit of rain in Portland so I will wait a day or two and see if conditions improve before pulling the wheel apart. I am grateful it happened here instead of in the wilds of Canada where no parts are apt be available. I'd hate to be on any of those 10% grades without every brake working.

When we pulled into D&C's near Sacramento Dennis told me he thought a rear tire looked paunchy. I pulled out a gauge and sure enough, it was well down in pressure. I found a screw in the tread. We plugged it and saved that tire. Otherwise I might not have noticed until the tire came apart. Chinese trailer tires are junk, but the only one available today, so I walk around the truck and trailer at every stop to check for tread separation. I guess I should start kicking tires too.

When I reached up to adjust my glasses an ear piece fell off. I bought these frames at Costco so I could get them fixed anywere there is a Costco. I'm thinking the frame is unfixable. No screws came out. Looks like a joint where the ear piece glues together failed. I tried some JB weld at Dennis and Cathy's but it didn't hold.

I rolled across two different truck scales in Oregon. The first result showed 23,200 lbs.; The second 23,000. In spite of all my weight preparation we are about 800 lbs heavier than my home calculations. That means I have to leave some things behind in Portland because I need to pick up 700 lbs of windows here. Therefore 685 lbs of doors, soffit, and water softener went under the shed at E's.

Suffice it to say the trip so far has been an adventure of the unexpected. Gratefully I'm handy at fixing most things myself.

I ordered new tires for pick up here in Portland. The original equipment tires on the truck now have 95,000 miles on them (!) and probably have enough tread to make the round trip, but I don't want to risk tire problems on the Alaskan Hwy where towns can be 350 miles apart.