When we planned this trip, and planned the camper build, part of the planning was modifications the truck would need. Tom and mechanics in Belize did most of the work, and did it well, but some of it was slightly experimental and the really good thing about Tom doing, or at least helping with, the modifications is that he’s able to monitor how things are working. We are now a little more than 25,000 miles into this trip, and we’ve driven through mountains, driven in the cold, driven in the heat, and driven over all sorts of roads from very slow single lane rutted tracks to very fast 6-lanes in each direction superhighways. Any time the truck is running, Tom is listening and feeling and evaluating how all of the systems are working.
The suspension system has been an ongoing challenge. When we bought the truck, it had already been modified with air bags instead of springs in the rear. Tom and Rig Parts in Belize made some modifications to that system, like swapping out computer controls for simple mechanical controls. We’d also put more heavy duty shocks on when we first pulled into the US last August. All that helped, but over the past nine months things have become a little softer, so when we were in Albuquerque Tom found a shop that specializes in big RVs, and started talking to them. This is Garber Diesel in Versailles, MO, and the past couple of weeks have been spent tweaking our schedule to get to Versailles by last Monday. They were ready to take the rig into the shop on Tuesday morning, and make the change to the suspension system. Tom asked if they could also replace some rubber brake hose that he had purchased since arriving in the USA as well, which they also said they could do, and did. And then Tom started talking to their service manager, a truly wonderful man named Bruce.
Tom has had a few other ongoing concerns with how the truck is running, but hasn’t had anyone who understands the issues well enough to talk to about his concerns. He haunts the on-line forums, but they’re not really that much help when they can’t hear the specific noise Tom tries to explain, or feel the exact vibration. Bruce and the mechanics at Garber had the truck, and the experience with Fords, and the experience with RVs. So, they did some test drives. One of the concerns Tom had is a really loud noise the truck makes when climbing a mountain. Tom read online that it’s “only” a fan that kicks on when the coolant, oil, or transmission fluids reach a certain temperature, but it sounds like such a horrible noise that the simple explanation was hard to believe. But, in this case it was true. It sounds like a jet engine under the hood!
However, the bad news is that another noise in the background when we’re running under a load, really was a bad noise. Ford Diesel 6.4 engines are known for a problem with their turbo, and the other more subtle strange noise is actually a very bad noise. The turbo could run for another 50,000 miles, or it could crap out in a few thousand miles. In a few thousand miles we plan to be heading through Canada to the wilds of Alaska, so we’re not really interested in being dead in the water in the middle of nowhere. Bruce said he would call around and see how long it would take to get a replacement unit, and Tom started calling around to see if he could find anything that we could have installed farther along our path in order to get on the road if it was going to take a while to get to the shop. Bruce was the first to get the bad news on replacement units; there are none to be had anywhere in the US right now, and they won’t even give an expected delivery date. If were were going to be touring around the US and weekending in our camper, this wouldn’t be too bad, and we’d just run with what we have and hope for the best. But, that’s not what we’re doing, and we’d really like to prevent a big problem. So, Bruce looked more into modifications already made to our truck and found that a non-stock unit would work, which was shipped to arrive at the shop early this week. We pulled the trigger on ordering it and are planning to stay in the area for the next week so Garber can install it.
In the meantime, Tom had also mentioned that the passenger side air ride system was losing pressure, and asked if they could take a look at that. They did, and found that three of the four airbags were showing signs of rubber decay. When we got the truck, which at that point had only 30,000 miles on it but which had been sitting in Belize for almost 10 years, we had almost everything rubber replaced because rubber decays over time. But, the air ride system parts weren’t available in Belize, so we left the old airbags. So, it wasn’t a big surprise that the bags on the truck had reached their end of service limit. Garber ordered four new airbags, and took the truck back into the shop to install them. However, they found that they had to remove the rear wheel hubs in order to remove the air bags. This was great, except it meant that the truck was in the shop overnight, which meant we had to find someplace else to sleep. The local Versailles hotel doesn’t allow dogs, so we found a room at a Motel 8 in Eldon, which is about 15 miles from Versailles. Garber was kind enough to loan us a car, which the owner calls “the beater,” so we could get ourselves to and from the motel. This was our first night out of the camper in 10 months, so we were a little stressed. We were also stressed because the hotel owner lied when we made the reservation and assured us that the total was the total even with the dogs, then tacked on another $25 when we got there. Tom was pissed, so when we checked out the next morning he asked the assistant manager to inspect the room so we wouldn’t have any other bogus charges added to our bill, and when he explained why he wanted the inspection, she refunded the $25 and apologized.
The suspension system has been an ongoing challenge. When we bought the truck, it had already been modified with air bags instead of springs in the rear. Tom and Rig Parts in Belize made some modifications to that system, like swapping out computer controls for simple mechanical controls. We’d also put more heavy duty shocks on when we first pulled into the US last August. All that helped, but over the past nine months things have become a little softer, so when we were in Albuquerque Tom found a shop that specializes in big RVs, and started talking to them. This is Garber Diesel in Versailles, MO, and the past couple of weeks have been spent tweaking our schedule to get to Versailles by last Monday. They were ready to take the rig into the shop on Tuesday morning, and make the change to the suspension system. Tom asked if they could also replace some rubber brake hose that he had purchased since arriving in the USA as well, which they also said they could do, and did. And then Tom started talking to their service manager, a truly wonderful man named Bruce.
Tom has had a few other ongoing concerns with how the truck is running, but hasn’t had anyone who understands the issues well enough to talk to about his concerns. He haunts the on-line forums, but they’re not really that much help when they can’t hear the specific noise Tom tries to explain, or feel the exact vibration. Bruce and the mechanics at Garber had the truck, and the experience with Fords, and the experience with RVs. So, they did some test drives. One of the concerns Tom had is a really loud noise the truck makes when climbing a mountain. Tom read online that it’s “only” a fan that kicks on when the coolant, oil, or transmission fluids reach a certain temperature, but it sounds like such a horrible noise that the simple explanation was hard to believe. But, in this case it was true. It sounds like a jet engine under the hood!
However, the bad news is that another noise in the background when we’re running under a load, really was a bad noise. Ford Diesel 6.4 engines are known for a problem with their turbo, and the other more subtle strange noise is actually a very bad noise. The turbo could run for another 50,000 miles, or it could crap out in a few thousand miles. In a few thousand miles we plan to be heading through Canada to the wilds of Alaska, so we’re not really interested in being dead in the water in the middle of nowhere. Bruce said he would call around and see how long it would take to get a replacement unit, and Tom started calling around to see if he could find anything that we could have installed farther along our path in order to get on the road if it was going to take a while to get to the shop. Bruce was the first to get the bad news on replacement units; there are none to be had anywhere in the US right now, and they won’t even give an expected delivery date. If were were going to be touring around the US and weekending in our camper, this wouldn’t be too bad, and we’d just run with what we have and hope for the best. But, that’s not what we’re doing, and we’d really like to prevent a big problem. So, Bruce looked more into modifications already made to our truck and found that a non-stock unit would work, which was shipped to arrive at the shop early this week. We pulled the trigger on ordering it and are planning to stay in the area for the next week so Garber can install it.
In the meantime, Tom had also mentioned that the passenger side air ride system was losing pressure, and asked if they could take a look at that. They did, and found that three of the four airbags were showing signs of rubber decay. When we got the truck, which at that point had only 30,000 miles on it but which had been sitting in Belize for almost 10 years, we had almost everything rubber replaced because rubber decays over time. But, the air ride system parts weren’t available in Belize, so we left the old airbags. So, it wasn’t a big surprise that the bags on the truck had reached their end of service limit. Garber ordered four new airbags, and took the truck back into the shop to install them. However, they found that they had to remove the rear wheel hubs in order to remove the air bags. This was great, except it meant that the truck was in the shop overnight, which meant we had to find someplace else to sleep. The local Versailles hotel doesn’t allow dogs, so we found a room at a Motel 8 in Eldon, which is about 15 miles from Versailles. Garber was kind enough to loan us a car, which the owner calls “the beater,” so we could get ourselves to and from the motel. This was our first night out of the camper in 10 months, so we were a little stressed. We were also stressed because the hotel owner lied when we made the reservation and assured us that the total was the total even with the dogs, then tacked on another $25 when we got there. Tom was pissed, so when we checked out the next morning he asked the assistant manager to inspect the room so we wouldn’t have any other bogus charges added to our bill, and when he explained why he wanted the inspection, she refunded the $25 and apologized.
That was Thursday night. On Friday morning, we scoped out the local Lake of the Ozarks State Park, and booked a campsite for the weekend, which we occupied after we picked the truck up on Friday until Monday morning when we had to drop it off for the turbo replacement. We thought we would have a great weekend hiking the many trails, but we took one hike on Friday and we and the dogs had thousands of ticks which we will probably be picking off for the next week. The dogs are all treated with NexGard, so the ticks die when they bite them, but some ticks got directly on me and Tom, and some jumped from the dogs to us before biting the dogs, so we really don’t want any more. But, the campground is very large, so we were able to walk on the roads. We also booked an AirBnB house about 45 minutes from Versailles on the other end of the Lake of the Ozarks, which we moved into on Monday afternoon. The owner of the house is really nice and assured us that the dogs and cat are fine, and the house has a washer and dryer. So what else really matters? Funny how what matters changes when you’ve been living in a camper for almost a year…
The trails in the Lake of the Ozarks State Park are beautiful, but that grass is filled with ticks.
The campground in the park is big and has about 150 campsites so there are a lot of people, and Saturday night was pretty noisy until the 10PM quiet hour. But, it’s right on the lake so it seems spacious.
And the sunsets…
We’ve now been in the house for two days, and are actually enjoying having room to spread out. The first day, the dogs still stayed very physically close to us, but once they realized we weren’t going anywhere, everybody is taking up a little more room. The cat seems to like having a whole house to explore, although she seems to have settled on under the bed as her primary hangout, which is something she can’t do in the camper. The town of Warsaw, which is only about 5 minutes away, has a really nice city park with paved and graveled trails so we can walk the dogs there and not worry about ticks. The house has great 5G wifi, so we’re catching up on all the computer stuff we haven’t been able to do easily from our cell phones in the camper. We’re eager to get back on the road and continue heading north to Alaska, but we are finding that taking a few days off is a little bit of a relief, especially since we’re someplace comfortable and convenient.
This is the little AirBnB house where we’re staying. It’s primarily a fishing camp, and the driveway is big enough to fit a boat trailer, and the boat ramp into the lake is at the bottom of the hill. If anyone ever wants to go fishing in the Ozarks, let me know and I’ll send you the AirBnB link.
The city park where we’ve been walking has trails on both sides of the lake, connected by this pedestrian bridge across the lake. That’s an osprey nest on top of the standard. We saw an adult and a juvenile in it this morning.
One of the trails we walked runs to the Truman dam. The lake is much wider on the other side of this dam.