What! Another wheel came off the trailer!

Earlier this year near Benson, AZ we had a wheel come off the trailer.  Not a tire, the whole wheel.  Turns out a bearing failed and caused the metal that connects the axle to the wheel assembly heated up and broke off.  We spent 3 days in a motel while a repair shop got the axle repaired.

Now, barely 2 months later the other wheel on the brand new axle did the same thing!  We were driving down the freeway with not a care when a motorist pulled alongside and gestured at us.  Jeff looked in the rearview mirror just in time to see the wheel separate from the trailer and roll along the road.  We pulled to the shoulder and braked and I got to watch the wheel pass us up and roll into the bushes at the side of the road.  YIPES!

From the freeway we couldn’t see anything but cornfields, trees and an occasional farmhouse, but luckily we were on an exit with a town just on the other side of the freeway.  The tow truck driver called the repair shop in that little town of Lewisburg, OH and was told they could do the repairs for us.  So, we chained up the dangling axle again and limped through town to the repair shop.  It’s a very busy shop and we had to park on the street, luckily it wasn’t a busy street!

We found a nearby motel that wouldn’t break the bank and Moon at the shop did a great job of calling around to find a new (another new!) axle that could be ready the next day.  Several places gave him an estimate of 2 weeks to get a new axle!  This place, about 90 minutes away, cut one down and had it ready the next day and we drove up to get it.  Two days at the motel and we were back on the road!

The place that cut down the axle for us gave us the most probably explanation of why we had this happen twice.  Each of our two axles is rated at 5,200 lbs.  Our trailer, especially loaded with all our belongings, is right at the max that the two axles can handle.  Our new axle is rated at 6,000 lbs and is a heavier duty axle, so hopefully this won’t happen again.

The folks at the motel were very friendly and pleasant, and the repair shop did a fabulous job of getting us fixed asap!

But, we had to eliminate our stop in Canton, OH to see the NFL Hall of Fame Museum in order to get back on schedule and not forfeit deposits at 3 different RV parks.  But, we may get back this way again later.

Here are pictures of the damaged axle:

St. Louis – the Gateway Arch

We visited St. Louis, MO to visit the Gateway Arch.  It is the tallest man-made monument in the U.S., taller than the Washington Monument.  It is a beautiful and simple design arch, very visible from miles around and as the skin is stainless steel, very shiny and pretty.  We rode to the top (and back down) in a small ‘capsule’ about 5 feet in diameter and round.  Five people can fit inside but it’s quite cramped  if you get five adults in there!  It’s designed to stay upright as it rides first vertically and then slants more horizontal as it gets to the top.

The view from the top is breathtaking!  The viewing area up top is quite small and has small windows to see out of that are angled oddly because of the shape of the arch.  The walls below the window are carpeted and designed so you can lean/rest your body against them in order to see out the windows.  But, it was definitely worth it!

The arch was built in the 1960s and was designed by a famous architect, Eero Saarinen.  He wanted it to be very simplistic in design rather than ‘fancy’.  But, that simple design made it very complicated to build.  They show a movie at the visitor center that explains the process of building each triangular section and how they mounted them.  The arch took over 3 years to built and while the estimate was that 13 men would lose their lives during construction, no one did!  The footage during the movie of the men at the top of the arch, walking along, hanging by one rope while guiding huge pieces of metal etc. was scary – no one had a safety harness on!

The arch at the top is 630 feet high.  There are some skyscrapers in the city that are reaching that height, but as the arch is right along the river at the edge of the city, it still stands out.

Here are some pictures we took: