NOT HAPPY ABOUT THIS 'LIVE WRITER' PROBLEM & OH-OH A PROBLEM WITH THE BIG EEE:((

Not knowing what is going on with Live Writer I am posting this tonight using the Blogger format.  It looks like the great Google God has made another one of their questionable sweeping technical moves & put a hex on Microsoft's Live Writer program.  I hope they haven't knocked out Live Writer forever so that everyone is now forced to use only Google gizmos.  Many of us out here much prefer Microsoft's writing platform as opposed to the Blogger writing platform.  What a total PITA it is inserting photos so if my blog looks out of whack tonight (pics too big, print to small etc.) blame it all on Google's messing with things again.  Anyway, I hope either Google or Microsoft can & will step up to the plate & resolve this problem for we the people shortly & get their focus off their bottom lines for a change.  In the meantime I & many other folks are not happy campers with all this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Anxious to know if & how our new toad towing set-up was going to work I wasn't long this morning in lining up the Libbygator behind the Big EEE.  With our Sterling Roadmaster hitch fitted with 2 Blue Ox adaptors I easily connected the Jeep to the rig.  Our towing set up is actually better now than it was before.  Went over my check list for getting the auto transmission & transfer case positions right, fired up the rig, checked to make sure signal & brake lights were working correctly then had Kelly stand beside the Jeep listening for any bad sounds as I slowly moved the rig & Jeep ahead about a foot.  Everything seemed good so moved another 10 feet with everything still good.  From there Pheebs & took the rig with Jeep in tow for a drive & all was well.  Or was it........well yes it was but something else happened:((

ALL HOOKED UP & READY FOR A TEST DRIVE

OK ENOUGH PICS LET'S JUST GET HER GOING & TAKE ER FOR A TEST DRIVE
 

YEP THERE COMES LITTLE LIBBY ALONG BEHIND JUST AS GOOD AS CAN BE & OMG I THINK THE RIG'S DASH NEEDS A GOOD DUSTING BY THE LOOKS OF IT

Back home again I had just disconnected the Jeep from the rig when my good friend Richard happened to come by & as usual we got ourselves into a conversation for a bit.  Just as Richard was about to leave he noticed about the same time I did something strange hanging down underneath the motorhome just ahead of the driver's side front wheel.  A closer inspection revealed it to be a coiled piece of copper looking much like a bent out of shape mini slinky toy.  On the ground & sprayed around the wheel well & hubcap was a red fluid.  Definitely something bad news alright!!  And this is where I caught a big break.  Richard is a car guy & jack of all trades kind of fella.  Knows his way around just about anything & any kind of mechanical problem is generally right up his alley.  He right away set to work looking for the source of t that red viscous liquid.  A power steering pump problem was eliminated as well as a brake line problem.  After a lot of sliding around under the rig & forays into the tight engine compartment he finally determined the problem to be with the hydraulic pump which is used in lowering or raising the rig's hydraulic jacks.  He was able to remove the part that had blown apart & said he had never seen anything like that before.  Below is a picture of that part which he thinks could be a type of heating coil used for keeping hydraulic fluid pliable in very cold weather.  He had no idea why this part would have come apart like that. 


DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS PART IS OR WHAT IT'S FOR BUT IT'S WHAT WE FOUND

How fortunate it was this morning to have that part fail right here at home in Bayfield & not on some interstate or remote boondocking site out in the southwest somewhere.  Also so fortunate to have someone like Richard standing right there who was able to diagnose the problem or I would probably have had to call Coachnet & have our rig towed to a garage where they may or may not have been able to fix the problem anyway.  Regardless, Richard saved us some money for sure.

BEING AN OLD CAR GUY AT HEART IT DIDN'T TAKE RICHARD LONG TO GET AT THE PROBLEM & FIGURE IT OUT

Kelly phoned the manufacturer of our hydraulic leveling system which happens to be a company called HWH located in Moscow Iowa.  Would you believe you have to be put on a week long waiting list just to talk to a tech.  Yep it's true.  However Kelly did manage to find a listing of Canadian dealers/garages who service HWH equipment & coincidentally there is an RV dealer in London which just so happens to be the same RV dealership we traded in our Class C Chevy Sunseeker for a bigger Class C Ford Winnebago Access Premier 2 years ago.  And the fellow Kelly talked to remembered us.  I emailed him a couple photos of that slinky toy part so we'll now wait for his assessment.  If push comes to shove & we have to take the rig to the manufacturer who builds those hydraulic leveling systems we could do that in October.  HWH luckily is located west of Davenport Iowa which in turn is luckily located right alongside I-80 which just happens to be right along our October route to the southwest again.  We were there once before in 08 when we had a problem with a sticking hydraulic jack. 

KELLY SPENT A GOOD HOUR IF NOT MORE TRYING TO SOLVE THE LOG-IN PROBLEM WITH LIVE WRITER TUESDAY NIGHT

GROANER'S CORNER:(( A young lawyer, just out of Law School, was pleading his first case in South Carolina.  A train had killed twenty-four pigs, and the young attorney was trying to impress the jury with the magnitude of the injury.  "Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, twenty-four pigs. Imagine, twenty-four pigs. Twice the number there are in the jury box."