Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:26:55 -0700
Reply-To: Tom Buese <tombuese@COMCAST.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Tom Buese <tombuese@COMCAST.NET>
Subject: Re: A Pleasant Trip up California's Highway 1
In-Reply-To: <45AD619B.3010806@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
Rocket J,
Are you out of escuela at the moment? Welcome back, even if only for
a short break. Hope all is well w/ you & Mrs. Squirrel. Spring will
be here before we all know it.
Tom B.-all my nuts for the winter are gone?
On Jan 16, 2007, at 4:36 PM, Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott wrote:
> ...were it not for the record low temperatures, my solo camping trip
> from San Diego to Fort Bragg and back last week would have been
> excellent. Mellow Yellow performed admirably. The "OXS" lamp came on
> somewhere around Bodega Bay. I thought about it and thought about
> it . .
> . finally recalled that it was pretty much a 30,000 mile indicator.
> Mileage had been 15.4 mpg and it stayed that way so I stopped worrying
> about it. Two days later, somewhere around Caspar, the engine
> hesitated
> for a moment. "Uh oh," I thought, "that bucking behavior that I
> thought
> I had fixed when I sealed the air manifold leak is back!" But no, it
> never happened again.
>
> On the return trip, I had breakfast in Mendocino and when I came
> back to
> the van, I noticed that both front tires were worn past the tread on
> their outer edges. Visions of hurtling to my death hundreds of feet
> off
> the edge of the road when a tire blew on a turn got me thinking that I
> better do something, like maybe swap the front and rear tires to
> give me
> fresh rubber. I asked the next flagman that stopped traffic (when you
> drive on Highway 1 on the West Coast you get stopped a lot for road
> work) where I might find a service shop. He suggested the shop 1/2
> mile
> further along, in Elk Grove. The Elk Grove garage (1901) is America's
> second-oldest continuously-operating auto repair shop (has
> horseshoeing
> equipment, too). Former Studebaker dealership, too, from when the
> locals
> had plenty of money to spend. Scott, the very nice new owner, put
> Mellow
> Yellow up on the lift and poked around. "Well, there's your
> problem," he
> said. The upper ball joints were no longer happy campers. So he
> swapped
> the front and rear wheels. Checked my tire pressure, took a look
> underneath, declared it pretty clean.
>
> "Tire rotation," he said. "Ten dollars."
>
> I made him take a twenty.
>
> --
>
> Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
> 71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
> 84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
> 74 Utility Trailer. Ladybug Trailer, Inc., San Juan Capistrano
> KG6RCR
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