Posted by Tim Holloway [69.54.28.229] on Wednesday, October 15, 2014 at 22:05:01 :
First a big call out to Dave Horvath for pulling off yet another awesome West Virginia Rally! That is about the high point of my year. Its great to see and hang with some really fine folks, and sad to leave them.
I stayed Monday with the Folmans and we had an awesome time touring Falling water, the famous Frank Lloyd Wright house in Pa. I highly reccomend seeing it if you are in the area. Afterwards we went back to their house for some R@R before meeting up for dinner with some of the local PW diehards. I had a couple of hours, so I decided to load Blueberry onto the trailer. Like most of that area, a piece of flat ground is a rather foreign concept, thought of as unnatural and something to be avoided. Joels driveway is a distinct slope. I parked the truck facing downhill, and the tilt-bad of my trailer was pretty flat as the trailer was also aiming downhill. As I drove onto the bed of the trailer, the weight of Blueberry pushing down on the rear of the trailer was enough to pick the front of the trailer up enough to take some weight off the rear wheels of my truck. Thats when it got exciting. The whole rig began to slide down the driveway, traveling 50-60 feet before the truck jackknifed and came to a stop. The corner of the trailer crunched in the drivers side rear fender and kinked the rear bumper pretty well, but all in all that isnt too bad. Note to self, chock those trailer wheels!
The trip home (700 miles) was uneventful. When I got home, and was walking arounf taking off the chains, I noticed the passenger side front trailer spring was no longer attached to the equalizer. The steel links that connect the equalizer to the rear of the spring were both wallered out and broken at the pin holes. I just replaced these, the pins and bushings a couple of years ago, I wish there was something that was a bit higher quality. I am glad it wasnt the links to the front of the rear spring, I would probably have had the axle rip out from underneath. I dont want to go there! So, lots of trailer work coming up in the near future.
Tim
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