I’m On Fire

As a visitor,  Salmon, Idaho is a nice place for fishing, rafting and 4 wheeling and just hanging around. None of which are on my bucket list.

Sunset lighting on a Hay Field outside of Salmon

Granted, my bucket list is pretty short. It currently has 0 things on it. Mostly because I pretty much do what I feel like doing when the opportunity presents itself. Plus, I would lose the list about 5 minutes after I wrote it all down.

Don’t get me wrong, Salmon, Idaho is a perfectly fine little town but the Montana Border was just 60 miles North and I like Montana. So I decided to head to Missoula in the morning. That is my travel philosophy for this and most of my trips.

I still had the running light wiring to fix before I could get on the road. I spent the morning digging around the power distribution box in the galley. I was getting a bit worried after an hour of troubleshooting hadn’t revealed the problem. Then I jiggled a common wire and although connected, it didn’t seem to be making a connection.  Retightening the wire fixed everything.  I reattached everything I pulled out, packed up and headed North for all of 1 mile before I heard a scraping sound.

 

I pulled over to the side and noticed that the axle had slipped again. I hobbled back to the campground and spent the rest of the day resetting the axle into place. Although it still sucked, it was a much better experience at the campground than on the side of the road. Since I had to lift both wheels again, I put the bottle jack in the center of the back of the frame like I had done the day before. I took the wheels off to make it easier to move the axle back and forth and the trailer immediately tipped over. It is really light and I was able to catch it before I had an embarrassing Instagram photo to post.   No damage other than my pride.

About this time, the campground’s maintenance guy came over to offer tools that I may need.  He ended up doing all the work. It took all afternoon but that axle is now tightened down for good now(?). It was too late to head out again by this time so I just strolled the main street of Salmon, had dinner on a deck at a Mexican restaurant sitting peacefully over the banks of the Salmon river at sunset.  A much deserved relaxing break from the previous two days turmoils

I got up early, double checked the lights and started to Montana again. I stopped to check the wheel hubs about 10 miles and they were warm. I don’t know what operating temperature is for trailer wheel hubs so I stopped again at a RV park 20 more miles ahead and they were hot.

The park owner confirmed my suspicion that hot wheel hubs are a very bad thing.  I still had 100 miles of nothingness ahead of me, not to mention both sides of the Continental Divide to get up and down. He said that I should drive back to Salmon and go to the Bird’s Les Schwab tire shop and get it looked at.

I wisely turned the car around and drove back to Salmon annoyingly slow for the speedy Montana drivers stuck behind me, watching the rear view mirrors for smoke the whole way. Estimating a quick turnaround to get the hubs repacked with grease, it turned into a 4 hour repair. the heat burned away the grease lubricating the bearings which caused the whole assembly to pretty much roast itself. With the barrings gone, the heat got worse and the brake assembly melted.  Additionally, where the axle slipped, the ire was rubbing against the trailer all. The inside tire wall was rubbed raw and had a bulge. I had to get a new hub assembly, disk brake drum and 2 new tires.

 

 

 

 

the wheel should be 4″ to the right.

The Melted Parts

Phillip at Les Schwab

 

In case you find your self in Salmon, Idaho with tire problems or worse, I recommend the folks at the Bird’s Les Schawb tire store in Salmon. They were great.

I was on the road to Missoula finally.  All my issues behind me.  Or at least the ones I know of. Just in case, I put a Fire extinguisher on my Lowes shopping list. Which I seem to have misplaced.