Cayo/ Watervliet Here We Come!

Monday--Oct 6, 2008
A lot of Sunday early AM was spent on the internet seeing if we could find a replacement door or finding someone to repair the damaged one. We also drove to Seymour to look at used trailers. We found a 1989 32ft Avion that we might keep in mind if worse comes to worst. The rest of Sunday was spent watching the Colt’s and the race at Talledaga. I did finally pry my butt out of the recliner and went out to the trailer and re-oiled all the woodwork.
Today my first call was to Chuck Cayo in Watervliet, MI. Chucks grandfather started the Avion Co., and Chuck and his dad still have a repair shop that caters to Avion owners. I told him what had happened and he said he wasn’t surprised—apparently the door locks on some of the early models are not that great. Luckily he doesn’t have anything pressing at this time so he has agreed to do the work tomorrow. He’s rebuilt a couple of doors in his lifetime and anticipates that it should take about 5 or 6 hours. So the plan is to head to his shop today, spend the night next to the shop, and then have the work done. Betsy and Tipper are with me since it didn’t make sense to drive all the way back to Columbus. We’ll just head to Tucson by way of Michigan!! Isn’t that the way everyone does it?
“Houston, we have a problem.” Are you kidding me? Enough already!!! We were driving on US 31 around Carmel and I heard a clunk from the passenger front wheel well.
We drove to a gas station and I checked under the hood, in the wheel well, rechecked all the trailer connections but found nothing. So off we go again. We’re tooling along and now we hear a scraping sound as the wheel rotates, but then it quits. The brakes aren’t affected nor the steering. To find out what’s going on we’ve stopped at a Dodge dealer in Kokomo. We’ve detached the trailer and we’re waiting in the trailer in the back lot. Of course we get here just before noon so nothing will happen for the next hour or so.
Does Comfort Inn and Southwest Airlines offer some sort of program where you buy a lifetime deal? Oh, I about forget. We’ve seen a couple old Airstreams going south. One rather large Airstream was being pulled by a 1980’s era Jaguar! I didn’t know that was even possible. Wonder what auto service center he’s in.
According to our new best friend, Mike the service tech, our left side wheel bearing is shot. From prior experience I already knew that you couldn’t just buy a wheel bearing.
It’s now a wheel bearing assembly, as in more dollars. We were just thankful that they had the parts needed. This is the second time we’ve been on the road with the trailer when we’ve had a mechanical issue. It’s really sort of nice to be able to spend the 4 to 7 hours it takes to complete the repair in your trailer instead of the waiting room. We finally arrived at Watervliet at about 7:30 PM.
No pictures today!