Our First Repair (It's Not Rocket Science)

Moving from Albany, Georgia to St. Joseph Peninsula State Park in Florida was supposed to be a cakewalk. It mostly was. There was one small hitch, involving our hitch. At one point in our travel, due to some confusing road layout and signage, we made a wrong turn. Being the excellent navigator I am, I plotted for a course correction a mere 5 miles away taking us a short 10 miles out of our way. Our captain had a different idea and pulled a U-ey using a gated driveway.

As we were about to re-enter the road way, we quickly noticed something was amiss. It felt, to me, like we were stuck in the sand. Brian popped it into 4WD, but that didn’t immediately solve our problem, nor did rocking the rig a bit. It seemed the brakes were locked. Brian went out to inspect. He pulled the pin on the break-away brake and replaced it. That yielded no results. I googled the manual and suggested turning the truck off and back on again (’cause I do computers better than vehicles). Nothing. He went out to look again and noticed, somehow, we managed to cut the trailering cable.

As I’m trying to decide between On*Star and calling AAA, Brian jiggled the cable until the brakes released. Ever the cautious one, I questioned the safety of continuing, but by that time we were moving again.

I made a quick call to my mother because my data had literally just been throttled. She was nice enough to get us on the path to a repair shop. That shop, as well as 3 others we stopped at, were unable to help us.

So this morning, Monday, Brian decided to fix the problem himself. I was skeptical, but after googling the process, I see that it’s not rocket science. I took pictures, held important things and went to go get necessary materials and tools, therefore procuring exactly half the credit. Here is what we did:

Disconnected the battery and turned off the breaker for shore power.

We did the first, and realized the second when Brian cut the cable and it made that sparky spark sound

Stripped each wire, all 14, 7 on each side

Connected matching color wires to each other using butt connectors

Crimped the butt connectors

Wrapped each connection with electrical tape

Reconnected the battery

Checked to see if everything was working

And it works!

This experience has taught me several things, don’t rush to call for assistance, google stuff even more and marrying a handy man was a real good choice. Also, blogging about something sometimes takes longer than the thing itself.

Now, for the next.