Here we go again!

Summer 2021 here we come

Well, almost. There are a few more things to check off the list before we venture out this summer. Mother Nature decided to tease us with a few spring days, so we are on a mission to accomplish some tasks.  We spent the cold winter accumulating  stuff that began to overtake Lucas' family room.  Slowly we found places for most of our Christmas camping related items. Last fall we focused on the inside and making things pretty, this Spring is all about the function.  Which roughly translates to Lucas ordering and working on projects, while I try to be helpful but mostly ask a bunch of questions to try and grasp what exactly he is doing. Things on the spring list include a water system, solar panels, new shocks and brakes.  

First up were the shocks. Lucas ordered these a while back and just had to wait patiently for warmer weather. Last weekend he made his first attempt.  Now keep in mind the Campulance is a 2001 and best he could tell the shocks were original.  First attempt ended with a bolt breaking off and all the other parts not moving, so Lucas spent the week spraying PB Blaster on everything in hopes that weekend #2 he could try again.  

Tim offered to assist which was great. These two together seem to accomplish all the hard things, but they also come up with some creative solutions along the way.  For example idea 1 was to use some kind of torch to heat things and loosen the parts, glad that idea was short lived and they decided flames and a week worth of penetrating oil were not a good combination.  Amazon delivered this fancy "Hot Rod" induction tool that accomplished the same task without setting our summer home on fire. 

The "Hot Rod" 

Sunday they worked for about 6 hours I think, I only witnessed the last couple hours. From my perspective all I really could see were feet sticking out from under 10,000 lbs of metal.  


My view 


What was actually happening was ......

Finally getting some movement using the induction tool on the lower bolts. The driver side top was trickier and had to be cut off because it was too corroded.  3 side bolts came off easy and the back bolt was tough.  They heated it up and it made a squeaking noise that sounded a bit like a dying animal, which sent the poor neighbor dog over the edge. Squeak, bark, squeak, bark - poor guy. Once they finally got that out came the problem of lining things up perfectly to get the bolts back in.  This required using a second jack and Tim's somehow using his feet to push the tire.  

Before 
After


After hours of work, they had the shocks in and had replaced the bushings (I still don't really know what those are but google says they improve efficiency and reduce noise and vibrations- which seems helpful) 

Time for a test drive, nope battery is dead. Jump the battery and off we went.  The mechanics  seemed pleased and it honestly did feel smoother. Spring project #1 - check √


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