...were it not for the record low temperatures, my solo camping trip
from San Diego to Fort Bragg and back last week would have been
excellent. Mellow Yellow performed admirably. The "OXS" lamp came on
somewhere around Bodega Bay. I thought about it and thought about it . .
. finally recalled that it was pretty much a 30,000 mile indicator.
Mileage had been 15.4 mpg and it stayed that way so I stopped worrying
about it. Two days later, somewhere around Caspar, the engine hesitated
for a moment. "Uh oh," I thought, "that bucking behavior that I thought
I had fixed when I sealed the air manifold leak is back!" But no, it
never happened again.

On the return trip, I had breakfast in Mendocino and when I came back to
the van, I noticed that both front tires were worn past the tread on
their outer edges. Visions of hurtling to my death hundreds of feet off
the edge of the road when a tire blew on a turn got me thinking that I
better do something, like maybe swap the front and rear tires to give me
fresh rubber. I asked the next flagman that stopped traffic (when you
drive on Highway 1 on the West Coast you get stopped a lot for road
work) where I might find a service shop. He suggested the shop 1/2 mile
further along, in Elk Grove. The Elk Grove garage (1901) is America's
second-oldest continuously-operating auto repair shop (has horseshoeing
equipment, too). Former Studebaker dealership, too, from when the locals
had plenty of money to spend. Scott, the very nice new owner, put Mellow
Yellow up on the lift and poked around. "Well, there's your problem," he
said. The upper ball joints were no longer happy campers. So he swapped
the front and rear wheels. Checked my tire pressure, took a look
underneath, declared it pretty clean.

"Tire rotation," he said. "Ten dollars."

I made him take a twenty.

--

Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
74 Utility Trailer. Ladybug Trailer, Inc., San Juan Capistrano
KG6RCR