Wednesday, April 14, 2010

The big day of repairs!

I shut the alarm off at 5:30 and tried to get out of bed.  ZZzzzzzzz    Then I awoke in a start at 6:15!  Wow we have 45 minutes to be in front of door 8!  But we really didn’t have too much to do in order to get under way.

We were all packed except for the slides and the hoses.  Loyce got up and dressed quickly.  I was outside draining the hoses and winding up the heavy 50 amp cord.  With the engine running the slides were brought in and the jacks were retracted.

My neighbor had started his engine at 6:30 so starting ours at 6:45 barley made additional noise.    We rolled at 6:50 and since it is just down to the end of the block and then back to the middle, we were parked before the door was open.  Barely!

The mechanic opened the door, and waved me in.  They let you negotiate the garage door, so if you dent it you fix it.  After all its your rig.  They went over the list with us again, doing hands on questions of the broken stuff.  I added both of our power visors to the list as they have failed to come down at some point.  Loyce reminded me just yesterday.

With all the strength I could muster, I managed to walk away and let them work without me standing over them.  That took the lure of fresh breakfast, so we drove into town and went to another old gas station turned into a flower shop, that serves breakfast.  Katie Kakes. Boy we needed some coffee!

I had scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns and biscuits and gravy.  I wallered it all over my face, even making some of it into the pie hole.  LOL.  It was recommended as quite good, but perhaps it is quite good for Red Bay, and we were very hungry, so we paid and topped off our coffee.

Back at the garage, we checked in as they had decided to completely replace the electric visors.  They were locked up, and beyond the ability to be repaired.

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Were down there at number 8, and the customer service lounge is beyond 10.  Looking straight down the center aisle, how long is this place?

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We used every bit of our three hours allotted as an express visit without an appointment.  We couldn’t get an appointment because they are booked up for months.  I couldn’t get one last fall either.  But they got all our stuff completed except for work at the paint shop.

Next we needed our windshield sealed up, and they said the shop foreman would contact us when he had a break.  We wondered how long that would take, and went back to our campsite.

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From the back of our rig, the big building is right across the road.  But looking at the length of the building it seems even bigger outside.

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The campground is the full length of the building and has three rows of folks waiting for every service bay. 

After setting back up and hooking up the utilities, we got a knock at the door, questioning if we were staying the rest of the day.  It was the tech from the windshield shop.  Seems he planned to stay after his 3 PM quitting time and would finish us if we were game.  Well heck yes we’re game!

So we scrambled into town for a Mickey D’s lunch and broke camp again in order to be at door 46 by 3PM.

This time the manager of the windshield shop worked by himself removing the old sealer and replacing the the rubber after it was cleaned.  He never did lift the glass out of the fiberglass front end.  Rather he pried it forward enough to clean in between.  Using a piece of oak hardwood as a pry bar, he reseated the glass from the outside and then inside the coach.

After he was sure the glass was properly in place, the new sealant was pumped in under the rubber.  All this took about an hour and a half, and we were back on our site by 5 PM. 

Our list is now complete except for some paint issues.  Tomorrow will tell how that is to play out.

Tonight we are really tired, as we are not used to a 7 to 3 work schedule, let alone the overtime schedule late in the day. Sleep will come very easy.

Retired Rod

2 comments:

  1. Great shots of Red Bay. One of our favorite places! Is it real crowded? Did you have an appt or go to the 3 hour service bay?

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is one huge repair facility. Glad to see you got all of your repairs attended to - except for the paint. Quite a place!

    ReplyDelete

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