Breaking down on the road

Thank goodness, in almost eight years of RVing, I've never broken down on the road.

I have the Good Sams Roadside Assistance insurance just in case I ever need to be towed, but so far I've never needed to be towed.

Two ways to prevent breakdowns

#1. Do preventive maintenance. Replace belts, hoses, tires, etc. before they wear out.

#2. Fix things at the first sign of trouble. Problems don't fix themselves. Putting off making repairs can make the repair a lot more expensive, and sometimes, putting off making repairs can be dangerous.

I don't mind too much paying to have things fixed or replaced that are expected to wear out sooner or later anyway (like tires, windshield wiper blades, belts, hoses, brake pads, water pumps, etc.). I hate to have to pay to fix something that shouldn't have needed to be fixed.

For example

My entrance steps are broken. I have to put some blocks of wood under the bottom step on one side to keep it from going way down and doing more damage. I had it welded one time, but it didn't hold. I'm going to try to weld it again before I spend $512 for new steps.

I wouldn't have minded so much if the electric motor that makes the steps go in and out went bad. I expect that I will have to replace that sooner or later, but if I replace the metal steps, I'm no better off than before they broke. The new steps are not going to last any longer than the ones that are on there now.

Here's another example. A few years ago I spent almost $1,800 to replace the leaf springs on the right side of my motorhome. Leaf springs don't normally wear out, but for some reason, the right side of my motorhome was sitting about two inches lower than the left side. Replacing the springs fixed the problem. I know I could have raised the right side by adding spacers, but since the springs were weak for some reason, I wanted to replace them and have the problem fixed right.

A repair that was worth the money

Recently coming down the North Carolina Mountains to get to Florida, I heard my left front brakes making a noise that sounded like metal against metal when I applied the brakes very hard. I took it easy and didn't make any fast stops and made it to Florida.

This week I had a mechanic that I knew and trusted take a look at my brakes, and as expected, the front ones needed pads. Since the brake pads were not wearing equally, I had him replace the calipers too.

The total cost of parts and labor was $469. I didn't mind spending that money because now I have new brakes, and this was something that was going to have to be done sooner or later.

By the way, the picture at the top of the page is a stock photo and is not a picture of the brake assembly on my motorhome. I forgot to take a picture when the work was being done.

If you can't stop

I saw a sign on the window of a brake repair shop recently that said, "If you can't stop, don't worry. We fix wrecks too."

Bottom line: As my grandmother used to tell me, "A stitch in time saves nine." That's true in the case of my brakes. If I had gone much longer, the metal against metal would have damaged the rotors, and the repair work would have been a lot more expensive.