I admit, I have been a little slack on the blogs recently. Not because of a lack of interesting topics, just so busy and yet we get nothing done. I don’t understand. California hasn’t been all that good to us this trip through. Yet we had some delightful times. We visited Lynn and Doug Johnson on our way up 101. Then on our way over the hills into Gilroy we started to develop an unusual vibration; especially when we started pulling hard on the hills. Judy was driving when it started to sink in that something was changing in the sound of the coach.
I fired up the digital recorder and taped a good segment of the rumble as we topped a hill. I have a spectrum analyzer as part of the digital recorder and I plotted the frequency spectrum. (I know, you all do this kind of thing all the time, get on with the story!) This is cool, you can pick out the spike at 78 and 156 Hz representing the firing of the individual cylinders at 1500 RPM. The really interesting one is at 26 Hz. This is the speed of the engine. In 6th gear it should be the same as the transmission and the drive line….O Oh.

By the time we got to the flatlands around Gilroy I was seriously thinking of stopping and disconnecting the Sprinter to reduce the load. Long -story-short and about $800 later we have bran new universal joints in our driveline and Arcturus sounds his normal healthy self again.

Once again we helped out at the Wings of History Air Museum and had some good fun visiting Glen and his family in Gilroy. Wednesday we pulled out to head up I-5 to Oregon. Tonight we are in Redding. This is perhaps our favorite Elks lodge to stay at. It is right on the Sacramento River Walk that goes for miles up and down the river. I set up our recumbent tandem bicycle, Golanth, for a ride along the river. As we rode out of the parking lot, Golanth staggered under our weight, and nearly went down. About two hours later after a complete disassembly of the rear suspension I discovered that the ball bearings that I designed into the suspension were not adequate. The bearings had actually shed their bearing balls and the races were grinding together with lots of flop. That is what dropped the seat out from under Judy as we started to ride away. Fortunately I have a lifetime warranty and service contract with the builder. It’s back to the drawing board and I already have a plan for a stronger suspension bearing. The bicycle ride became a sunset walk along the river. We even got to watch a train cross the river on the high trestle.
Stay tuned for our Oregon adventures. We have appointments to do some remodeling on the coach this month. First to Bend to have all of the windows cleaned inside and inside and inside and outside. That is, the windows have developed fog between the double panes. A company in Bend will take them out, completely clean the glass and rebuild the windows. After that we head for Eugene where we will have the carpet and ceramic tile flooring removed and replaced with a completely new vinyl floor. This could be interesting. We may wind up sleeping in the Sprinter for a few nights while the coach is messed up. There is sure to be some fodder for the blog machine there. Stay tuned.
Gary and Judy