Lesson for a Road Trip

Before we headed out we had the car serviced: oil change, coolant/heat checked, tires rotated, and safety inspection completed.

We didn’t think to check fuses. When we plugged in our Garmin GPS we realized it wasn’t working on the car charge, but on the internal battery. After searching for loose connections, defective wiring – we realized the fuse in the car to the power accessory plug was blown. Fortunately this occurred in a town and not in the middle of nowhere America.
Another incident was that the radiator fan would not turn off. Well, we thought it was from the haul up into the mountains up to 8000 feet. After a long dinner stop in Reno, we came out to a dead battery. The relay switch to the radiator fan was broken. Again we were lucky, it occurred in Reno – don’t know what kind of preventive maintenance we could have done on that one, but $250 later we were back on the road.

THEN, after about 30 miles outside of Reno the tread on one of our tires came off! Again, lucky! We were next to a truck stop exit and were able to back it off the road safely. We found a Goodyear tire store and replaced BOTH back tires. The tires had only been purchased about 3 years ago – BUT, the tires were 8 years old! How does that happen?! Apparently tire retailers can have tires in their stock rooms for several years and sell them without you knowing how old they are. The rubber had already started to deteriorate before we bought them! So buyers beware! Something to have checked prior to a long road trip.

Wish us luck the rest of our trip!