Altoona, IA - Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog

Well, our Winnebago Two-Step is done. Were they able to duplicate our problem? Did the slide fail to come in even once in the 16 times they tried it? Nope and nope. Of course, you knew that would happen. But our tech, Dave, gave us some hints about what might be causing it and how to get the slide in should the motor fail. We knew about manually moving it and Gary has worked with the motor slide wiring to get it in. But, now we have another hint or two. Then, of course, if all else fails, I can get outside and throw myself against it to try to force it in.

However, it didn’t fail and we will soon be on our way, back to Griffs RV in Altoona and happy to be going back. But, first we’ve got to dump and hook up the Jeep. The dumping went fine but the hook-up did not. We had bought a new tow bar at the Rally and it was a different brand than our old tow bar. Gary had struggled with it trying to get our Tow Defender (a vinyl cloth which covers the tow bar to prevent small rocks from hitting the Jeep and pitting the paint) to fit and finally bought a 1’ extension (would you believe this cost $100?) to get it to all fit. Part of the problem is that we’ve got a Roadmaster Tow Defender, a Blue OX base plate on the Jeep and now a Demco tow bar. Never a good practice to mix and match parts from different companies.

Today, we tried to hook it all up together and, sure enough, the Tow Defender now fits but the safety cables on the new tow bar were way too tight with the 1’ extender. No go. We puzzled it out for a bit but just decided that I’d drive the Jeep back and Gary would drive the RV back, separately and we’d solve this problem when we got back to Ankeny. We’re tired of dealing with problems:

        the tow bar

        the slide and

        2 FAN-TASTIC fans and 2 FAN-TASTIC fan covers. Yep, the fan cover adventure is ahead of us.

We wrapped up the unused tow bar so it would not get damaged or paint chipped and tooled on down the highway.

The next day, he called Winnebago which will take the tow bar back, Demco about getting our Blue Ox tow bar back (we had given it to them to dispose of) and Blue Ox about a new tow bar and the $150 rebate for turning in our old Blue Ox. Whew. Looks like everything will turn our ok but it has been a long saga.