I Made a Mistake, Part 1

As Kelly mentioned in this day’s post, I pulled off into a closed weigh station so we could switch drivers. I pulled almost completely through the scale lane and came to a stop to check whether we could see any info about our weight in the window. Before I started moving again, I noticed a large pothole lined up with the left wheels, so I turned the wheel sharply right. Well, I hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t past the curb on the right side yet, so the exhaust pipe (which sits low on the right side, just ahead of the rear wheels) ran into the curb.

Running the exhaust pipe into the curb shouldn’t be a huge problem; it has some flexibility. Unfortunately, a few things conspired to make it a lot worse. One, I turned pretty hard to the right to avoid the pothole, so it was more than just a scrape. Also, the end of the pipe was already somewhat smashed by the previous owners (in fact, there’s a new one waiting for us at the RV dealership back home). Lastly, there was a big crack in the curb. This all meant that the end of the pipe was firmly embedded in the crack.

I kept the steering full right and put it in reverse, but with the pipe lodged in, it just pulled the pipe way forward before it dislodged. Once we were free from the curb, the pipe was dragging on the ground about a foot forward of where it should be. I was able to pull it up to give us an inch or so of clearance so we could get out of the way, but it was clear we had a big problem.

I saw the pipe off one of the hangers and bent at one of the joints. We had signed up for roadside assistance, so I called them up. Unfortunately, it was Sunday, so it was going to be a few hours before someone showed up. As Kelly mentioned in the other post, the kids were awesome.

The mechanics finally showed up. They had to “adjust” (with a hammer) the pipe and get it back in the hanger. An hour and $200 later, we were back on the road. Kelly and I may have been able to take care of it ourselves, but we really didn’t want to make it worse. We were just relieved to move on (I more than anyone, I think).