It's never easy......

 8:16 am - Wednesday - February 17th - Wittmann, AZ - 46° F, 34% humidity, wind - 7 mph out of the north......clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 65° F.  On this date in 2014 we met Tim, Laila and Meredith for lunch at the Salted Pig in Riverside, CA......↴

Removing nuts and bolts which have been in place, untouched, for almost 40 years is always an adventure.  There are four grade 8 bolts, washers and nuts affixing my driver seat to the floor in front of the steering wheel, just like TLE's old passenger chair.  The head of the bolt is inside the coach, and all four are easily accessible. In the case of her chair two of the nuts for the bolts were accessible in the battery compartment, which is/was below the space occupied by the passenger chair.  The other two were accessible in the right front wheel well.  Two people are required, in most cases, to remove the bolts.....one person inside unscrewing the bolt with a socket wrench, and another person outside using a socket wrench, or visegrips to keep the nut from spinning.....easy peasy....and it was.

Now fast forward to Tuesday, February 16th.....two of the nuts for the bolts for the driver seat are accessible in the left front wheel well, and one is accessible through the compartment under the driver seat which houses our 2000 watt inverter.....where is the 4th nut?  The compartment housing the inverter is not as deep as the battery compartment, which means the fourth nut should be accessible in the genset (generator) space, however, I could not find it.  I finally had to pull the genset out of its cubbyhole, then crawl under the coach, sit up in the space vacated by the genset, and then try and find the illusive nut.  Sitting there completely befuddled by the 'ghost' nut I suddenly realized there was a double wall.....one wall being the back wall of the inverter compartment with a hole in it allowing cables to enter the compartment.  Then there was a space of about 6", then another wall forming the side of the genset compartment.....the nut was in that space.....very hard to reach.  As it turns out I was able to put the vicegrips through the hole in the back wall of the inverter compartment and clamp it on the nut to keep it from spinning, and then unscrewed the 4th, and final bolt.....

The fourth nut was barely visible through that hole

......of course, pulling the genset out of its cubbyhole is no simple procedure. It entails removing the center portion of the front bumper, disconnecting the genset exhaust, which entails going under the coach to reach the disconnect, and blocking the coach so it would not inadvertently crush me if the air system should suddenly suffer a catastrophic loss of air pressure.  All of that takes the better part of an hour.  What should have taken me under 30 minutes to remove all for bolts, nuts and washers actually took 2.5 hours beginning to end to get one bolt, nut and washer out.....the Hockwald way rears is ugly head once again.  

Once the fourth bolt, nut and washer were removed.......

.....it was a matter of minutes until TLE and I had carried the 39 year old Flexsteel seat out of the coach.......

.....and now the space awaits the new Flexsteel seat.......

Isn't she purdy?

.....which will not be installed until I receive and install the new digital tachometer from Speed Hut.  Wednesday I will remove the old Stuart-Warner tachometer......

.....by the time I had put away my tools, slid the genset back into its cubbyhole, put the center piece of the bumper in place, and closed all the bins it was only 2 pm, but I was ready for a hot shower, and a nap.

TLE finished fixing the cover for her 'new' Ekhornes footstool, so after my nap I reinstalled the cushion to its wood base.....it looks great.....

On a side note, I received my shipment of new LED headlights (high and low beam) via FedEx Tuesday, and that will be my project for Wednesday.....install those new LED lights!  I was so disappointed in the lack of adequate brightness of the old, sealed beam Sylvannia headlights last Wednesday night as we drove to Oakridge, OR....even with high beams on it was difficult to see the road ahead clearly.  I've been toying with the idea of buying new headlights, and the nighttime drive to Oakridge put me over the edge.  They cost $136.

My final task of the day was to join National Tire Concierge, so I could order two new Michelin steer tires for the coach.  Typically Michelins cost about $675/tire, but through them I get them for $525 each.....a $150 dollar savings per tire.  NTC finds a dealer close to my location, then has them order the tires.  Once they arrive I drive to the shop and have them installed.  The last steer tires I purchased (7 years ago) were Firestones, and they cost me around $450 per tire, so it was easy to go with Michelins this time around.  They should arrive at the tire shop in about 2 weeks, which is when we will be, hopefully, leaving Wittmann to head back to Oregon.

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