Wednesday, June 15, 2011

A day off???


Well, it's Wednesday and... we have functioning landing gear! The part I was most concerned about turned out to be a snap: jacking up the front of the trailer. I paid a guy who has pneumatic jacks that are tied together - the right tool for the job.


The directions that came with the "kit" were pretty straightforward, but the access to the tops of the legs is tight...


There is a spray-on foam around the jack housing that has to come out - you can see some of that debris in the photo above. I have the feeling that only one jack leg was binding, but I replaced both. Even though the kit came with new extensions, I used the old ones - already had my brackets set for my Plug-It-Right stabilizers.

And here is the culprit...


The mfg calls this "composite"... looks and feels like plastic to me. The break caused the gears to bind, making it impossible to move up or down, even with the emergency crank.

Once it was all back together, I hit the extend button... it sounded like it was moving slow (something I noticed before it broke)... and, then it quit. angry I could tell it wasn't binding. A quick check of the fuse - yep, it was blown. When I went to put a new fuse in, the wiring came unconnected in my hand. cry It was pulling out of the crimp connectors. WELL, that could certainly be why it was running slow. I double checked the batteries (fine), opened up a bit more wiring, and crimped it hard.

It runs fast and strong, up and down - even on this slope. We are good to go!

On the boat front - we have a cruise boat in the water! I went down to the marina after dealing with the landing gear to check on it. Yep, it's floating. We can't put it at the normal dock, our fuel dock isn't operational, we need to get crew trained, and we start cruises on Friday. One piece of equipment we couldn't check while on land was the depth finder - and that's going to be REAL important with the low water level. It's not working, but I think the fix will be pretty simple. Tomorrow is another day off for me, but I'll be going in first thing in the morning to work on getting crew trained.


No meal cruises until we get more water; we still need to take the dock out to the island where the meals are. I'm really looking forward to the new chef crew and that island dining experience.

Joan went to Jackson without me today, to get groceries. We kinda crossed paths a couple times; when she got back from Jackson, I went down to check on the boat. The folks in the store needed a manager decision on some stuff, so when I got back, she went to work for an hour or three.

Our daughter and son-in-law are coming to visit next week - we'll be taking our days off, in full. ;-)

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