Repairs in Oregon..... Glad we have no schedule!

For the last couple weeks we have noticed a drip coming from the driver side rear. It was red, transmission fluid or hydraulic fluid. We kept a pan under it so we didn't make a mess.

We diverted our trip a bit to the East to go to Central Point RV Center in Central Point, OR. Glen checked out the leak and I learned something that amazed me. The fluid leaking was from the system that has a reservoir in the engine compartment that holds about 3 gallons of ATF Dextron III fluid. We assumed it was for the slide out system and the hydraulic jack system. Well it wasn't. This reservoir and the leak was at the fan drive which is inline with the power steering system. Our coach relies on hydraulic oil to operate the power steering system and when it has a side radiator as we do it also has a hydraulic fan motor that is driven off the same hydraulic pump, cooler and reservoir as the power steering. Also one fan blade had a chunk out of it, probably from a stone kicking up. This POSSIBLY created a wobble that ended up causing the shaft to wear and leak fluid. We'll never know that for sure.

The highlighted area is what we need to replace.

 Broken Fan Blade

Leak area on Fan Drive Shaft

On an unrelated topic, we have not had automotive air conditioning in the cab for weeks now but didn't need it this time of year so we put off getting it checked. I did check the Freon level and pressure and it was fine. The guys here found the A/C compressor to be discolored from heating and loose and it's belt in very poor condition with a few chunks taken out. I had been noticing a little squealing after starting the engine. I though it was from the leaking fluid getting on the belt but it wasn't. It was just shot. We'll get a new compressor, dryer and belt while here.

 While at this facility, Pacific Truck Center in Medford, OR, we had access to electric power to keep the batteries charged which is good since our solar panels are not getting much sun. We are parked halfway underneath a covered area and it's been cloudy and rainy lately. There were 2 outlets available so I got out our tester to see if the outlets are wired correctly. One was OK and one was NOT. It showed the HOT and NUETRAL were reversed when the outlet was installed. It still works but is not as safe

The tester let us make sure nothing in the RV would be harmed by an unsafe power supply.  We needed to use a couple adapters to connect and we had to watch our usage but it made our stay here very comfortable. We set our power to 15 AMPs on our control panel so it would not try to draw more than that.

So all in all we will have some new parts that should last a long time and we have the secure feeling that the RV was checked over before we headed up to Alaska where service is available but harder to find and, I imagine, more expensive.