Transporting an Argosy MH to Kentucky

[bkahler]

First off here is a little background information on our Argosy. We bought it through eBay in July of 2007. The Argosy was located near Kingsport Tennessee. The Argosy had not been running or driving for many years and there was no way I would be able to get it running in Kingsport in any reasonable amount of time to allow us to drive it home. You can read about our 600 mile trek here http://www.airforums.com/forums/f310/trip-of-a-lifetime-34907.html That trek moved the Argosy from eastern Tennessee to central Arkansas just south of Little Rock. Fast forward from July 2007 to July of 2009 and the company I work for has relocated us to Richmond Kentucky which also happens to be 600 miles from where we lived in Arkansas. I still had not had time to install a freshly rebuilt 454 in the Argosy and to make matters worse, the Argosy was on jack stands, transmission was supported by a stand, the front suspension totally removed and items were removed from the differential.

In order to get the Argosy to Kentucky I had to somehow find time to reassemble the front suspension, put the parts back on the differential and somehow support the transmission for the trip. As a side note we made a total of 24 (I made 20, Susan made 2 and a friend made 2) trips moving our shop and other odds and ends from Arkansas to Kentucky. Pretty much every other weekend I made the trip back to Arkansas to load a trailer and pickup with “stuff” and then hauled it back to Kentucky. So finding the time to reassemble the parts on the Argosy that I hadn’t removed was not a task I was looking forward to. Late fall of 2008 I had hired two guys to disassemble the front suspension and rebuild it from the ground up. I wanted to make sure when we started driving the Argosy that the front end was in top condition. Well for a variety of reasons the guys I hired opted to disappear into the woodwork after they had everything disassembled and the front suspension only partly rebuilt. This left me with quite a mess to deal with considering I was living and working in Kentucky and had to try and reassemble the front suspension only on weekends. I ended up spending a lot of time tracking down missing bearings, seals, etc before I could finish the job.

Fortunately I did manage to get it back together enough to make the trip to Kentucky. Here and in some follow on posts you’ll see the pictures of how I got the Argosy up onto a 24’ gooseneck trailer. We bought a 10,000 lb winch and I mounted it to the front of the gooseneck trailer. The winch came with a wireless remote control which allowed me to sit inside the Argosy and using the remote to operate the winch I could steer the Argosy onto the trailer ramps. It was of course an exciting short trip getting it up onto the trailer . I elected not to ride it up the ramps because I wanted to make sure it would be centered on the ramps correctly. I did have to stop and block it a few times because it kept pulling badly to the drivers side. Maybe I should have had the front end aligned first .










To be continued...............

[bkahler]

Here are the last batch of pictures of the loading process. It was a long and difficult task but all went well and the Arosy made it to Kentucky without incident. I did have a friend do the towing as our older F350 just wouldn't have been up to the task. I did a lot of measuring to make sure the overall height of the motorhome was within DOT height limits. Made it by 2-1/2".







This final picture shows the Argosy turning down our driveway. Our friend said it was like trying to pull a parachute behind the truck with that big wide open grille in the front of the Argosy. Needless to say his mileage did suffer just a tad on this trip .

Brad

[Mike Leary]

Great pics (and a very nervy loading job)!

[345bill]

AAAWWW YES, What we go through for the love of our MH's. Always something, huh. Hang in there Brad for the end result will be worth every effort.

[guy99]

All I can say Brad is that you must be 26 years old given all the energy and effort you have to expend.

[bkahler]

Guy, double the 26 and add some and you've got me figured out! I can only wish I was that young again.

Mike, my biggest worry on the loading job was that my home made mounts for the winch would fail and send it flying through the Argosy windshield. Fortunately that didn't happen, although the mount on one side did get tweaked slightly.

Bill, after hauling the Argosy from eastern Tennessee all the way to Arkansas I wasn't about to leave it behind in Arkansas after we moved to Kentucky! The two guys I had hired to work on it definitely left me in a pickle but my luck held and I manged to get it ready for the trip.

All in all it was an interesting problem to deal with, one that I am also glad is over .

Brad