Inspection Challenge

On the way home, it became apparent that not all of Bella's brake lights were working.  Paul also learned that Bella needs a while to build up a full head of steam; her get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.  She's a heavy thing and hasn't got a lot of power.  Going up steep inclines is going to be a challenge; we'll end up in the slow lane the whole way!  LOL

We found out that we could get her inspected at a local heavy truck repair place in Hatfield, so on Monday Jan had to jump in the cab, and drive her for the first time!  It was a little scary, but the sun was shining and she only had to go a mile down the road.  Thankfully, the mechanics at G&S backed Bella in and out of the inspection bay because Jan didn't think she was quite up to that!

Bella failed!  (No real surprise.)  Her brake lights, a running light, and the back up lights didn't work.  But worse, the horn didn't work at all!  Thankfully, the emissions inspection was fine.  :)

Over the next couple nights, Paul troubleshooted (troubleshot?) the problems and was able to fix each one of them.  We now have two multi-packs of lightbulbs for the exterior lights, so hopefully that will hold us for a while.

In the meantime, Jan noticed that the onboard (built-in on the bottom of the truck chassis) propane tank was really, really rusty and started researching online.  It seems there is no required inspection for on-board propane tanks unless you live in Canada and then it's only every 10 years!  It also seems that such tanks can be replaced, but it's a bit costly -- hundreds of dollars.  We knew we were going to have to sink some money into Bella, though, so this is not unexpected.  Time for Jan to do more research and find a place to do it.

This is the propane tank -- totally rusted.  Even the metal plate with the part number is hard to read!