Movin’ on

Tomorrow morning we will hook ‘em up and head ‘em out.  By the time we got to Regina Friday night I knew that we had a seal problem on the curbside tag axle.  I have never had much luck with Stemco seals and this time was no exception.  For whatever reason, Stemco seals seem to almost always leak and Scotseal or CR seals seem to always work.  It may be as simple as the CR seals ride in a different spot on the axle but whatever the cause I have bought my last Stemco seals.

I decided that I could likely change the seal myself.  It didn’t likely save me any money because I had to buy a few specialty tools but it certainly didn’t cost any more to do it myself than it would have to have hired it done.  Of course at the end of the day I have the tools for next time so I ultimately come out ahead.  I didn’t bother looking for parts on Saturday – maybe I could have found them but just as likely it would have turned into a gong show.   It was also still pissing rain on us most of the day Saturday but I guess that wouldn’t have stopped me from making phone calls.

Yesterday I made a few calls and a woman at NAPA said she could get the seals I wanted overnight.  So right after dinner today I went to NAPA and picked up a pair of CR 40086 seals.  I only needed one immediately but this way I have a spare if the other miserable Stemco decides to start leaking.  The tags are really easy to work on because I can lift them so they just barely clear the ground.  I had a bit of trouble getting the cap screws that hold the drum to the hub removed and eventually ended up buying a set of hex sockets which won’t go amiss in the future either. 

All in all the project went remarkably smoothly.  I don’t think I even shed any blood.  Usually I lubricate whatever I am working on with liberal amounts of blood but today all I did was get dirty.  About 3:00 PM I got everything buttoned up and we took the bus for a quick roadtrip out to Balgonie and back.  We didn’t go far enough to know whether the seal is holding but my bigger concern was whether I had the hub too tight.  Prevost has this amazing system for holding the bearing preload which is actually very easy to deal with but very complex nevertheless. 

As soon as we got back to Dyer Straits we scurried around and headed into town to visit father.  He’s doing really well so we don’t feel nearly as bad about leaving him as we did the last time we left here.  Moving him into Wascana has made a tremendous improvement in his quality of life.  It is really unfortunate that he couldn’t have been moved there earlier because he lost a lot of ground while at Dove House.  At the time we thought they were doing their best and they may have been but their best simply wasn’t close to what Wascana considers normal treatment.