Me and Joe

Meet Joe Btfspik, the Lil' Abner character who walked around with the perpetual cloud over his head. Well, on this trip I am doing a pretty good imitation of Joe.

We took the dolly into Les Schwab for tires this morning and were pleased that they had the exact pair we wanted, the same Towmasters that gave us almost seven years of good service and still had plenty of tread left. As the guy was putting the passenger side tire back on he noticed excessive play in the wheel and recommended that the alignment shop re-pack or replace the bearings. They pulled the bearing, or rather caught it when it fell off and showed me some very excessive wear on the axle spindle! They could do nothing with it but told me I might be able to get a new spindle welded on by a trailer speciality shop but other than that I needed a new axle which includes the car platform. He said to be careful because the cost of buying, shipping and replacing the axle might be almost as much as the trailer is worth which I recall as being $1800 US.

So! It being Saturday morning there is nothing open until Monday. We want to get where it is a bit warmer and everyone is convinced the damage occurred when we had the brake problems on that wheel and burned up the brake drum in Florida back in 2012 (see here).

So the bottom line is since the damage happened in 2012 and has not caused a failure after tens of thousands of miles, I feel confident to proceed to Redding or Anderson, CA where there are many trailer repair places where hopefully I will be able to get a new spindle welded on. This sounds scary but if you Google "trailer spindle replacement" it is a common repair. Whether or not it can be done on our dolly remains to be seen. The next step is to carry on carefully to Fresno, CA where there is a MasterTow dealer.