Art parked alongside the office while Gillian went into the office to book in for two days. Last year when we were here the wheels left ruts a few inches deep in the sod so this time Art approached slowly and carefully. He realised that the grass was much firmer than last year so proceeded carefully another vehicle length, then another, then anoth.....and the rig slowed as the front wheels sank into the sod to be followed immediately by the rears. Reverse gear only sank the rear duals deeper and in seconds we were. . .
. . . . stuck in the sod up to the hubs! Especially on the left side.
A few plywood blocks were no help at all, but a couple of young men from the hotel showed up to watch the proceedings.
They were off shift soon, we tried a bit more with no more luck. At the end of their working day they offered to stay to help us dig out. They couldn't do it tomorrow, they had to work for the hotel.
They took off for a while and soon returned in working clothes. Making a long story short, with much digging and several trips to the junk pile for pieceds of timber, plywood and scraps, we were finally free.
Above is the Left Rear, here are pics of the Right Rear and Right Front.
We dug out eventually, but not before managing to knock one of the springs off the left rear stabilizer jack base which caused the piston to bury itself in six inches of mud. This required opening a hydraulic valve and using an 8 foot length of 3X3 timber as a lever to retract the piston.
Here are a few more:
The extraction was a three hour effort. Then we all needed a glass of wine to recover from all the stress.
Once we were finally parked on solid ground at 6:30! We quickly realised that the rig was not sitting level on the wheels. The left rear was at least 4 inches lower than the other corners! Seems like a suspension problem. A call for help on RV.NET soon received some helpful replies; part of the air suspension may be bent! Now we needed to find a mechanic to take a look. The good news was that somehow the satellite dish found the StarChoice satellite through the branches and leaves of the trees overhead so we watched the news from home as we all relaxed after our ordeal.
In the morning Art moved the rig forward a bit in order to get a little closer to level for the fridge. Of course this caused us to loose the satellite signal.
Since it was now Sunday and we would be unlikely to find a mechanic we set off in the car to San Miguel de Allende. We had been in e-mail contact with a friend of a friend finding information on the Saltillo RV Parks, they were now in the area somewhere. There aren't a lot of RV Parks in San Miguel so we went looking.
We found them at the first place we tried. We had simply put the coordinates into the Garmin GPS and followed the directions to the front gate of the park in the middle of town. It's a very nice small park but we would not be able to maneuver our rig through the narrow streets nor through their gate.
There were no North Americans in the park though one van sported BC plates--it was owned by a couple from Germany. The rest of the residents were Swiss and I think one other German rig. We had a great though short visit, exchanged blog info and returned to Queretaro via a stop at the supermarket.
Monday After breakfast Art headed to the office to get further directions to the mechanic. As he approached he noticed a semi tractor unit parked near the Pemex so went to speak to the driver about a local mechanic. He didn't know but told Art to ask the gentleman in the white car parked in front of him.
As Art explained the problem he pulled out his cell phone and made a call. In short, a mechanic would arrived in 30 to 40 minutes, have a look, and if work was needed would return on Tuesday with a helper and his tools.
Soon a small sedan arrived--the mechanic along with his wife and son. Art explained about being stuck in the sod and showed him the low corner where the top wheel well arch was down to the level of the top of the tire. The other three corners were several inches higher.
The mechanic crawled under the rig and had a good look, checking both sides. He said that everything looked fine and he thought that the difference in height was just the system trying the keep the coach level on uneven ground. He said that when we were on the level highway it would be OK. Art wasn't sure, since the low corner was on the lower part of the ground!
Art then showed him the disconnected spring with the base plate of the stabilizer jack hanging from it. The mechanic struggled for a few minutes and with out tools was able to stretch the spring and base back into place with hand and arm power alone! Art was very pleased and grateful to have the jacks working again, and to be told that the suspension was fine and safe to drive.
Next morning we pulled into the next door Pemex for fuel and to hookup the tow. Here on a flat and level surface we inspected the rear end and as Art had suspected, the left rear was still several inches lower than the rest. However we set off hoping for the best.
Today was Tuesday Nov 20th. By now our plans would have had us finished with a visit to the Tehotihuacan ruins (which we have seen twice before--impressive--a must see) and on our way to Oaxaca.
Well, we were on our way to Oaxaca, about 2 weeks behind our planned schedule so we decided to give the ruins a miss this time.This meant of course that we still haven't stayed overnight in the State of Mexico so are still missing that part of the map we have posted on the right rear of the rig.
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