Plan: IN to KY – Change of Plan: RV Issue – Indy

See update from 30-May at bottom of this blog post.

We left Elkhart Campground around 10:30 am today. Our plan was to push to Bardstown, KY and stay at White Acres RV Park and spend the next day on the Bourbon Trail.

But….. I noticed much of this afternoon, the RV seemed to be dog-tracking right. I couldn’t feel it but in my mirror, it looked off. During a pit stop on the north side of Indianapolis, I looked under the RV at the suspension. Uh-oh! The off-door-side rear-most Correct Track Adjuster and Bolt are MIA.

I decided that to push on any great distance like this was not a good idea. We limped 10 miles to the east side of Indy to the Greenfield KOA. I’d hoped to get parts from and maybe a repair made by Mount Comfort RV, a dealership on the edge of the KOA. But, they didn’t have the part and Service told me they had no time to even look at the coach if they had the part. Fine 🙂

The Plan:

1. Obtain correct part and have it shipped to my home (in process)
2. Measure required bolt length and diameter and go buy a grade 8 bolt, washers and nut for a temp. repair
3. Using the LevelUp, some ratchet straps and a screw driver as a drift tool, try to align the spring eye with the spring hanger bracket and install the bolt
4. Next week at home in my RV garage, install new Correct Track Adjuster and Bolt

Here’s what this adjuster “should” look like:

Correct Track – Spring Bolt and Adjuster – Normal

Here’s what my missing one looks like:

Correct Track – Spring Bolt and Adjuster – Missing

From the looks of it, I’d guess it was not torqued right at the factory. I will check the others too.
I’ll add a picture of my temp fix tomorrow (Thursday).

Here’s where we are tonight at the Indy KOA in Greenfield, IN on site 37:

Indianapolis KOA in Greenfield, IN

After we got setup at the KOA, the rain really came down hard. Must have received a couple inches in a half hour. The phone was going nuts with Flash Flood alerts.

Around 5:00 pm, we headed over to Home Depot where I grabbed the parts needed for the temp RV repair. They did not have grade 8 bolts 🙁 Oh well – I’ll make due.

Nancy’s cousin Steve lives in Indy. We saw him a couple weeks ago when we passed through here. Nancy got hold of him today after I decided to stay in Indy to make repairs. We ended up going over to Steve and Janice’s home for dinner. Nice meal and nice visit.

30-May-2014 Update
Got the RV repaired today. Heartland and Dexter sent me what I needed to make permanent repair to the Correct Track suspension component that went missing on our RV. George G, one of my neighbors, came by today to assist me with the repair. Took us about an hour.

We first measured the axle spacing on the door side of the coach. Then we removed the ungraded bolt I used to make the temporary repair. Take a look at it. Doesn’t look like it would have held much longer.

We used the LevelUp system and brute force to get the spring eye aligned with the spring hanger to insert the correct track bolt. Got the bolt in, cams put in place and nut snugged up. We lowered the coach and took an axle spacing measurement on this, the off door side of the coach. Oops – we were way off. We realized we needed to rotate the front and backside cam to bring this side of the axle in better alignment. But we couldn’t muscle it into place. We ended up using a ratchet strap to pull the axles together. This pulled the spring eye forward in the spring hanger bracket and allowed us to rotate the cams forward by one lobe. Bolted it all up, removed the ratchet strap, lowered the coach and remeasured. Perfect! Nearly 🙂 We were within an 1/8th inch of being the same on both sides of the coach. Close enough for a shop without a laser alignment checking system.

Thanks George G for your help today!