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Published: March 9th 2017
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The sun rose on Fred this AM amid the trash, mud, and dust of the third world-like expanse of White's City. We were certainly ready to make this place a memory. While I noodled around on my laptop, Cathy fired up the Dodge and ran it around to hook it up. She said later that the brakes felt "weird" but she said nothing to me. I backed up the last few feet to align with the hitch, and I noticed nothing amiss. As soon as we headed out on the road though, I noticed a low pedal, and a feeling like the brakes were not being boosted at all. There was not much for it though, we were over 30 miles to the city of Carlsbad, and nothing between here and there. So we proceeded slowly and cautiously on our way. The road was flat, had 4 lanes, and there was almost no traffic. I turned up the electric trailer brake controller, reasoning that the four good electric brakes on Fred could take up the slack for the lazy hydraulic ones on Moby.
We covered the distance to Carlsbad without incident, and pulled into a Lowes parking lot to chase
down a few items. For the last few days, we have also had a small fuel drip from the truck. I am tempted to say that "it's not a BAD fuel leak" but then that presupposes that there is such thing as a GOOD FUEL LEAK -- and there is not. I had used my last small hose clamp to tighten the supply hose connection at the fuel filter, where I could see it weeping. That had helped, but had not entirely stopped it. So I went into Lowes and bought a handful more of them, just in case. When I went back outside and restarted the truck, the brake pedal went right to the floor, and the "low brake fluid" light came on; uh-oh....
Looking under the left rear wheel, I could see a large and spreading puddle of fluid. I got out my "work mat" (which is actually an old yoga mat of Cathy's), and slid under to see what was up. It was not hard to find, the rubber/steel transition hose connected to the left rear caliper had come apart. Funny thing was, the rubber hose could be slipped back over the tubing about an inch
-- but how to hold it there? Well, with a little hose clamp of course, just like the ones I had just bought. I made the connection, put on the clamp and tightened the beejeezus out of it -- got back in and started it up. Now, the brake peddle felt just fine. That was not a fix that I would trust going down 5 miles of 6% grade, but it would get me to the nearest Dodge dealer. I Googled it, and there was one less than 2 miles away -- I called, and sure enough "I've got one right in my hot little hand" said the jolly parts man. Our luck continues to hold -- this town is on the edge of an area of new energy development. That means oil and gas field workers, and that also means that every other vehicle on the road is a diesel dually -- so of course they would have it.
We drove to the dealer, paid out $22, then headed to the nearest Walmart. Cathy would do re-supply shopping, while I would take advantage of their large parking lot as my open-air garage. Cathy came back in time to assist me in bleeding the brakes -- she has earned her coveted "Apprentice grease monkey" status now. In a couple of hours we were ready to roll again -- sorry about that new oil spot, Waltons. Then it was back on the road, a little further north to Artesia (now a booming energy town) then east toward Alamogordo. It had been a long day though, and the helmsman/mechanic was pooped. We began to climb into some green hills -- yes -- green! It was wonderful to see after so much desert. So when we saw a sign for a little RV park called "The Camp @ Cloudcroft" we swung in. This place is a find, everything that last nights' dump wasn't. Nice folks, clean and neat as a pin, beautiful bathrooms, wandering mule deer, wild turkeys, even a trout stream -- heaven! Top that off with wifi THAT ACTUALLY WORKS! I am beside myself with joy.
Not sure where we're off to tomorrow, but it won't be skiing. The recent warm weather around here has killed the skiing in southern NM, but maybe we'll find some up around Santa Fe later -- we'll see.
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