Rigging The New Truck For Tow

Late Monday afternoon, July 20, we drove to Buddy Gregg RV in Knoxville which is about 60 miles east of Crossville, Tennessee on I-40. Wayne drove Endie and I drove the truck. We'll get the new truck rigged for towing.

Larry (the truck) will be outfitted with a towing base plate and safety cables. The truck is much heavier than Blackie (the Edge), so we we'll need a heavy duty Aventa LX Blue Ox tow bar too. These two items and the necessary wiring kit should do the trick. Buddy Gregg RV has a small pleasant campground area for customers who are being serviced. They have a small apartment-sized building in the center of the campground for customers to relax, have meals and do laundry. It's the nicest customer lounge we've seen. Our site is #2 which, fortunately, faces north so we have afternoon shade on the patio. Unfortunately, summer temperatures make the asphalt and concrete hot so we're pretty much stuck indoors during mid-day -- but it's giving me more hours for computer work.

The Buddy Gregg RV techs came for the truck around 9 Tuesday morning and returned it around 4:45 with about 85% of the work completed. They came back for the truck again Wednesday morning at 8:15 but ran into some issues with wiring to the LED tail lights causing installation to take a couple hours longer than expected.

Larry with his big red LED taillights loosened. 

By in early afternoon, the truck's wiring was finished and the new tow bar and rock screen were installed onto Endie's receiver hitch.

Base plate installed with receiver brackets in place.
The small tab above the front tag is the emergency brake connection device. 

Tow bar with the 8' rock screen.

The rock screen pulls across the hitching equipment between the coach and the towed vehicle to keep rocks from coming up behind the coach and onto the front of the truck. In all honesty, I'll be glad when the first "ding" happens so we can stop worrying about it.

Pal is our service advisor

While we're here, we'll have the front air conditioner checked. It has started a loud  motor moaning sound and an there is an occasional leak -- mostly in times of heavy rain. At first look, they thought the air conditioner's seal might need to be replaced but after in depth inspection, it appears the unit's compressor is failing, although it does continue to run and cool the coach.

Thank goodness we have a good zero deductible extended warranty. Never leave home without one.

Pal will order the necessary air conditioning equipment and we will return early next week for the repair.

All of our hitch work was finished before 4 but because of the late hour we stayed on another night at and pulled out Thursday morning around 10 a.m.

Hopefully we will be just one day in the repair bay when we return next week.

All things considered, we experienced little aggravation in this transaction and that's good. Seems I'm always complaining about service, attitudes of employees or outrageous expenses these days.

Our expense total was this tow project was just over $5,000. Labor was almost $1,700 -- parts were $3,200. Installation of the base plate wiring and tow bar ran $1,080 and labor to set up our existing Roadmaster brake system was $480. They charged us $120 to intall the rock screen. For anyone feeling the urge to criticize the expense or tell us what we "should have done" please resist the temptation. This paragraph is for our information and reader interest alone.  For further explanation, please refer to the "Advice" section of this blog tab titled "Things I Notice" ---