My wife and I planned to leave first thing yesterday morning for a 3 day camping trip. I like to take at least two or three long weekends each month and yesterday was to be the start of another one. The motorhome was all packed the evening before and everything was ready to go.
When I started the motorhome yesterday morning, after a few seconds, there was a small noise and the electrical warning light came on. I immediately knew that we broke a belt. Our motorhome is on a truck chassis and even seeing the engine is difficult. I thought out trip was over before it started, but decided to see if I could at least find the alternator on this beast. I removed the engine cover and to my surprise the alternator was relatively easy to get to. The old alternator belt was shredded. I routed a string around the pulleys to get the length for the belt. Fortunately, our local auto parts store had one in stock and I was able to replace it relatively quickly. From start to finish, the entire delay was about 3 hours - not too bad.
Our adventure wan't quite over, however, as we encountered some small hail on our trip to Indiana. It might seem like we had some bad luck, but I think that we actually were very fortunate. If that alternator belt had broken while we were on the road, that could have been a MAJOR problem. Likewise, the hail that we encountered was small and didn't do any damage. Many places in Indiana yesterday had much larger hail and it was a blessing that we didn't enounter that. One inch hail would have almost certainly done a lot of damage to our motorhome and my motorcycle, which we tow on a trailer.
Anyway, we did safely make it to our destination and are having a good time. In fact, I've got to go! Time for my morning bike ride.
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