5 PM CDT

12 May, 1999 

Hi all,

As you no doubt already know, things got kind of exiciting yesterday. We had a little rattle that kept getting worse as we went on. Interesting thing is, it only happens when the engine is maintaining speed on a flat. Going uphill with load on the engine, or going downhill and either coasting or torqueing on the engine it doesn't knock. Originally I thought it might be a CV joint, but on closer inspection I discovered the flange on the left side of the tranny(where the CV bolts on) had about a quarter inch of play vertically. Shouldn't have any. This of course made the likely suspect the bearing. Since it got continuously worse as we went along, we got pretty worried about it, and sent out the request for friendly driveways. Along with many others, listee Rex Rodgers in San Angelo replied with a most generous offer of assistance. We did a little futzing about with maps, and discovered that going down to Roswell, then over to Texas and down 87 to 71 was only 10 miles longer than going through Clovis to Lubbock, etc. So, since we had a friendly offer, we decided to go for it. We also decided to make it an all-nighter.

So, we shot on out from Albuqureque to 285, then down to Roswell. Hit Roswell about 5 in the morning, so all the UFO tourist shops were closed. Oh well... ;-) Took off from Roswell with a strong headwind, which kept torque on that bearing, and it just sort of relaxed and let us drive. What a relief. Taking all the state roads, besides being shorter, was quite relaxing. Rather than the hustle and bustle of the interstate, we had the laid back farmland of northwestern Texas. Just past Big Spring, heading toward San Angelo, the terrain becomes more like the hill country, pretty stuff.

All in all, apart from a long drive, it was an uneventful return. Somewhat stressful on Tuesday night, but all's well that ends well. Once again, I am amazed by the competence of the German engineers. We had a obviously unserviceable bearing on the tranny, yet it survived nearly 900 miles. Amazing.

Along with the knocking tranny, our inverter took a dive as well, so we had no juice in the book for pictures, sorry 'bout that... ;-) Craig did do up a nice little gif, take a look at this report on the web pages for that... ;-)

So that's it. We're home. I'ml going to go play with Hunter now. Thanks for listening...