Butte, MT to Spokane, WA

As we were leaving Butte this morning, we noticed a muffler shop and went in to have a sagging exhaust pipe fixed. This was a souvenir from tope #867. They welded the broken joint and added a hanger to prevent it from happening again. After putting the spare on the rear aluminum duals last night the now empty rim would not fit in the hanger under the MH as it has to have a tire attached. The muffler shop is also a tire store and happened to have a used Michelin the same size as ours. It was in good shape and since it will only serve as a spare so we had it mounted and tucked away under the rig. Another $107 and the job jar is getting empty.

Back on I-90 we came to a construction zone where they had closed one side of the highway and turned the other side into two way traffic. As we were driving along an overloaded dump truck came towards us and shed part of it’s load just as it passed. We are now the proud owners of two big new cracks in the windshield! We will need a new windshield and what do we do about the ten year Mexico permit stuck to the inside of the windshield? Will this never end?

There are a couple of problems with the motorhome that have to be fixed. The toilet valve leaks the odd time and has to be replaced and the slide needs adjusting and the seals checked. In the downpour in Dodge City the slide leaked badly and we had to bring it in. We did not bring it in however before the “wood” inside trim (particle board) got damp and swelled up. This will have to be replaced with real wood when we get home. It is a pretty simple job with the fancy new saw my son bought me last year. I suspect we might be packing too much weight in the bins under the slide. It will make Norma happy when they tell her this. Not! We arrived in Spokane too late to talk to one of the repair places in town so we pulled into the Wal Mart for the night and will phone some places at 8:00 to see if we can get in.

We found an RV repair place in the morning that took us right in. The leak problem in the slide dated back to the manufacturing process. They cut the upper rubber seal an inch too short so rather that cutting a new one, they simply left a half inch at each end with no seal. The rig has never been subjected to such a downpour with the slide open so it has not leaked until now. They fixed it with the addition of a couple of pieces of rubber. This repair has yet to be put to a serious test but I have noticed a breeze that came from the slide when I am driving is no longer there. Maybe this is a positive sign...

The toilet problem is also fixed. It was a bad valve and the cost to fix it would have been $235 USA and the cost to replace the entire toilet was only $279 so for the extra $40 we got a new toilet.