Vehicle Maintenance #6of9

1985 Renault, Pilote RV, driven 1988 and 1989

A friend at Cousin Josef’s office had a 1985 Renault vehicle with a Pilote RV body for sale, so we bought it. It needed a few small repairs, so we visited the Pilote RV manufacturing plant, located not far from Nantes, France. They weren’t in the repair business, but they took care of several things for us, including replacing the broken plastic stop light covers. The work was finished just as they closed the plant for lunch, but while we ate our lunch, we discovered a plumbing fitting under the sink was still leaking. They fixed it soon after lunch.

As we neared Bordeaux on a very busy highway, something flew off a truck going in the opposite direction, it hit the Renault's left front tire, and flat it went. It didn’t take too long to mount the spare. Just outside Agrínio, Greece, we stopped in time to see the Renault’s left rear tire go flat. We mounted the spare, then bought a new tire a couple of miles down the road.

Above the French Riveria, in the diminutive hilltop village of Peille, France, as I was maneuvering out of a tiny parking place, the back corner of the camper scraped a stone fence, and the Renault’s plastic stop light cover was broken again. Must do something about that. Either reinforce the tail lights, or get a new driver!

A couple of weeks later, near the town of Dole, France, we found a Pilote RV shop where we bought some odds and ends, including two sets of the plastic stop light covers for the back of the Renault. One to replace the broken one, and since we still had the same driver, one as a spare!

One rainy night, in pitch dark, as we entered the campground in Bernkastel, Germany, we heard a horrible noise, then found a hole punctured in the RV by a heavy pipe that remained from a tent building that was being demolished. We hadn’t seen anything close to the street, and had no idea there was anything sticking out, high above the street. They wanted us to pay for damage to the bent pipe, but the policeman agreed with us, that leaving the pipe, with no warning flag, high above the street, caused the problem, not us.

Luckily the hole was neat, and easily repaired. One of a very, very few “scratches” we received in nearly 87,000 miles of RV driving in Europe.