One more blog for 2014. Where has the year gone?
Like the title says, we have been here in Lake Havasu City, Arizona sitting still for the past month. Our original intent was to spend December with Judy’s sister, Sonja. We had no idea how important that month of sitting would be. First of all Sonja was in a bad car wreck in October. She spent over two months in the skilled nursing facility here in Lake Havasu City. We have been helping her when she came home in mid December. By some minor miracle we were able to rent the lot right next door to Sonja for the month of December.

Besides that back in November I discovered that the hydraulic system on our Alpine Motor Home had a wee tiny leak in its section of the radiator assembly. It was bad enough to get everything oily but it was not draining the tank yet. I looked into having it replaced in Phoenix. The Cummins repair facility has RV stalls and could accommodate us while we waited for the parts to be manufactured and shipped. Expected cost would be about $1500. I decided we could make it to Lake Havasu City and picked up a spare gallon of Dexron II just in case. I studied the situation thoroughly and decided I could remove the radiator myself and I had a shop back in Portland that would replace the core for $1000. Once set up on our lot at the Beachcomber Resort I pulled the hydraulic radiator out. Some neighbors were “shade tree mechanics” for the project and looked up a list of recommended repair facilities here in Lake Havasu City that might be able to do the rebuild for me. Upon contacting Mike at All Radiators I was pleasantly surprised with an OEM radiator that was delivered for $780. Another $200 for filters and four gallons of Dexron II and I am back in business. It took two weeks, but at least we were not sitting in the back yard of some repair facility the whole time. There was no way to move the coach with the hydraulics out for steering and brakes.
Tomorrow, Christmas day, we will join Sonja and about a hundred people here at the resort for a Christmas Dinner. There will be no snow for Christmas here in Lake Havasu City, Arizona but we will somehow get along without that bit.
Check out my website to see some of the photos of the radiator-dectomy. Some of you we will see around the Bluegrass circuit. Others we will see in the spring; until then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Gary and Judy