A Few Hickups But It Was All Fixed

 

If you have ever got a new RV without there being a thing you needed to get fixed, just let me know, because we haven’t. We had spent the night at a noisy Truckstop vis-a-vis Cheynne Camping Center. Bea had already told me that one of the kitchen drawers fell out when she opened it. So there…  Next thing we noticed was the sliding door between bed room and bath room. The door was going past the guide in the bottom and was dangling freely. Next thing really puzzled me. The coupler on the trailer didn’t want to go down on our hitch ball, even though the hitch ball was of correct size. The guys from the shop came over with their truck and had no problem getting the trailer on their hitch ball, which was of the very same size.     Now our hitch ball sits on a specialty bracket where the angle is adjustable. So the guys found out that a slight adjustment could be necessary. As thought-so done and voila….the coupler went straight on. This trailer was also equipped with KENDA tires, which are either from Korea or China, probably China. We have had a major problem with this tire brand 7 years earlier when they all blew up on our 5th wheel and almost caused a serious accident. At the same time (2005) kenda tires blew up all over the States. We forwarded a claim to Kenda for replacement of tires and reimbursement of substantial damage to the trailer. Kenda picked up the tap but we wowed never to drive on Kenda tires again. I contacted Kevin Frazer at Cheyenne about this and uttered my concerns. He immediately started a search for tires of a different brand where wheels and tires were of the same size. Moments later a Grey Wolf trailer was brought into the shop. All 4 tires flew off this trailer and onto ours. Again Cheyenne had fixed the problem.                    If you ever should buy a Forest River Product, be aware of Kenda tires. All F.R. products Cheyenne Camping Center has in stock are equipped with Kenda tires. I do not say that the problem with faulty tires are persisting. It should and might have been taken care of, but a kid with burnt fingers will avoid the hot stove..right? With all this behind us, we were eager to finally hit the road again. It was 10am when we were rolling out of town. Now comes the exciting part. Our van has a 6l. V8 engine and as a one-ton vehicle should be very well equipped to pull this trailer which has a GVWR of 7500lb. It also has a Tow/Haul-function which makes the tranny adjust to the different load. I guess we were both two concerned campers when we finally were running up I-80 towards Des Moines. The van seemed to labour very hard with his load and both transmission and engine were having a hard time. Yet the engine temperature kept within the normal range. We also had a strong wind from the side which might have contributed to the situation, anyway, once we had turned onto I-35 (Des Moines-Kansas City) the van came into its own. keeping the speed around 50-55mph seemed to help a lot too. Of course I was aware of that this combination wouldn’t be like driving a Diesel Pusher down the highway, it rather reminded me a lot of driving our 37ft. fiver pulled by our F-350 Dually. Anyway, we stopped for the night just north of the IA-MO State line and had ourselves a relaxing meal. We’re hoping for a quiet night, I might pull the thing from the truck parking up to where the cars are supposed to park. A much quieter area- for sure. Thanks for stopping by!