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So, November is two-thirds gone.  We are somewhere in Arizona.  I’m not saying where because my crazy family seems to want to know.  We’ve been in this campground for over a month and should be through the end of the year.  It’s getting colder – hopefully January we will be somewhere a bit warmer.  The bedroom slide is still “maybe”.  We went in for an oil change on the almost 10-year-old truck and came out with a newish 2024 truck.  Well, it took a week or so to get it delivered, etc.

Projects abound as usual.  And as if that wasn’t enough, we took the truck in for an oil change and ended up buying a new truck.  Old Blue was fast approaching 10 years old and there was a pretty good sale on end of season 2024 models.  We got basically the same truck with all the new bells and whistles.  We are still “remote sorting” out the title and registration transfers with the home state.  And there were all the customizations we did with Blue that we needed to get done, again.  I ordered Roadmaster tow mounts and taillight wiring.  With this truck at least, Ford left a connector in the engine compartment for hooking up to taillights.  One of the few things they did to make the process easy.  Phil and I took a serious look (started even) at installing the tow mounts ourselves – but I chose to call in the a mobile RV tech to help.  In order to install the mounts, much of the front plastic and bumper have to be removed.  Our tech had done it before and he was willing to let us work on it all with him, saving time and money.  I rarely pay to get this kind of work done, but in this case, I think it was money well spent.

But it was only the beginning.  We run a front and rear dash cam.  We install 2 magnetic phone charger mounts, plus a GMRS radio.  And, or course, the RVBrake needed the breakaway switch wire and power to operate.  I search and searched for a way to attach to an appropriate fuse for battery and accessory power and finally gave up.  Ford simple doesn’t make it easy unless you buy one of the high-end trucks with upfitter switches and circuits pre-installed.  Thus, I gathered up wire, a good quality relay, a fuse circuit tap, a couple of in-line fuses, a bunch of split wrap and a handful of tie-wraps.  I pulled ignition signal via a fuse tap, and used it to operate a relay to provide 12V to all the accessories (each with its own appropriate fuse).  I ran all the wire plus the antenna cable for the radio across the engine compartment and through the firewall together, then distributed as needed.  I put a 12 volt plus USB distribution box on the side of the center console, passenger side to split out power for everything except the RVBrake which gets straight from battery 12V.

Add in seat covers, floor mats, under rear seat storage organizer, bed cover, and mud flaps.  Enough is enough!!  We do like the truck and are still learning all the new tech.  It’s a nice truck.  Lots of electronic enhancements.  Oh, so quiet plus some self driving abilities.

Well, there is one more.  Ok, two… we put a plastic rock chip protector on the hood.  This was from Weathertech.  The instructions said to wash the hood, then wipe down the area that would be covered with an included solvent.  The idea was to remove any wax before attaching the protector with VHB tape.  The problem was, our truck had been coated with a special coating (Permaplate).  The solvent attacked the coating, causing it to peel up.  I bitched to Weathertech and got “gee, we are sorry but that’s life” response.  I was not happy but the protector covered up the ruined coating.  So beware of any product that wants you to “apply a cleaner” so their tape sticks better.  I assumed it was just alcohol but contained four much worse solvents.

While worrying about rock chips (Blue did have some chips, but we don’t really know if they were from being towed or just driving).  We first made a decision to add a full-width rock guard on the back of the RV – ordered one, then went “geesh!, the damn thing weighs 60+ pounds and that is before I would have to buy an 8-foot piece of angle iron and various bits of mounting hardware.  We took a good look at our existing RV mud flaps (to short, too narrow) and chose to cut up the rock guard we bought and use pieces to replace the RV’s mud flaps.  We ended up using about half of the ordered rock guard with no extra hardware.

Other misc….  I installed a small thermostat and three ultra-quiet fans to cool the electronics space behind the bedroom TV.  Between Starlink and the Pepwave router and the sun on the outside of the RV it gets quite warm.  The thermostat died, leaving the compartment to get warm and the Pepwave to start rebooting every few minutes.  I hot-wired the fans then installed a fourth fan to blow directly on the Pepwave and all is well.  I have ordered another thermostat and will be cleaning up all the wiring in that cabinet soon.

Janessa and I’ve made some progress on the telescopes.  Got mine almost working in every way.  We used her Dwarf II to take some deep sky picts as well as some panoramas of the Grand Canyon.

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Almost ready to leave.

Summer for us is about downsizing our house while hanging out nearby in our RV.  BUT…. hanging out often means fixing things, getting ready for the next trip.  I’ve already talked about replacing the rear AC.  Then we discovered a water leak under the sink which led to the water heater which led to scrambling to find a replacement.  Replacing it was straightforward, but the water connections were a pain.  The threads on the tank for the water lines were quite rough and it took several attempts to get them sealed.  Then for days afterward, we were getting air in the hot water line – too much to just be from what might have been left in the tank.  I did some research and found that sometimes the anode can off-gas.  Our previous heater didn’t have an anode – it had an all-aluminum case (which still corroded at a joint and leaked). 2 week old anode I purchased one of those electric anodes, installed it and the gas problem went away.  Here is a picture of what our anode looked like after just over a week.  It must have been a really cheap anode.

We chose to replace our weather station with one of the new-fangled one-piece units.  We bought the Tempest system https://amzn.to/4dpgawc which can read temperature, sunlight, UV, wind direction and speed, and rain.  It’s much easier to take down and store than my old unit.  The problem however was that there was no inside display. The Tempest system has a hub that passes readings onto the Internet where they can be accessed via our phones.  My solution was to purchase an Amazon Kindle Fire HD (with ad feature removed +$5) to run the Tempest app.  It’s not that simple though, the Fire can’t, as delivered, install Android apps.  But there is a way to install the Google store app, and then install Android apps, which I did.  I installed Tempest and our radar app and use the side-by-side feature to run them both.  I also ordered a wall mount for the fire.  Now we have a display that shows the current local radar and our weather station values.  I can choose to share my station via the Tempest web site, but my location should be updated or else it could show erroneous readings (Tucson temperature on what appears to be a central Illinois location).  I can change the location, but the process is a little more obtuse than necessary.  I’ve suggested to their support that they make it easier.

We’ve never liked the gas stovetop that came with this RV.  We bought a single countertop induction unit early in our RV travels and have used it ever since for any pan/pot cooking.  We purchased a dual built-in induction unit ( https://amzn.to/4dHdFFt ) and replaced the gas stove.  This required slightly enlarging the hole on one side and capping off the gas line.  Since we could finally free up some of the countertop, we also looked at ways to “fold” up the stove covers.  We’ve seen several examples of how people did this with hinges – but they didn’t work well for us.  Many of these drop-in stove covers have square corners which make a folding top able to move back.  Our unit (2019 32SA) had round corners, so a folded top was still two inches from being back and crowded a pan on the induction top.  We experimented with several solutions and ended up with what is shown below.  A stainless steel plate which makes the two-piece top into a one piece, plus a bracket right behind the stove top to keep the covers from pushing against the stove top and two small pieces of wood attached to the microwave and window frame for the cover to lean back toward. It works out pretty well.

Our ice from the ice maker started to smell like chlorine, so the annual ice maker filter replacement plus a cleaning of the condenser coils on the refrigerator was accomplished.

I made a new set of covers for the entrance steps.  We purchased some outdoor carpet a few years ago and have been making covers once or twice each year.  We cut pieces, install grommets and use tie-wraps to fasten them on.

We noticed the left rear leveling jack was raising on its own.  It was slow – and inch or two over a couple of months.  There were no hydraulic leaks, so I figured it had to be the solenoid.  There are two o-ring seals where it plugs into the control body – one of which if it leaked would cause this problem.  I ordered a solenoid seal kit for the HWH pump.  When I took the solenoid out, I discovered “an o-ring” was actually three rings, but everything I needed was in the kit.  I carefully replaced both sets of rings, and put it back together and a month past and the jack is still down.

We’ve been exploring what to do with the upholstery.  We all know RV manufacturers use the cheapest vinyl coverings on their furniture that money can buy.  We’d had slipcovers on our dinette for some time.  I made covers for the cushions on the couch two years ago.  Partly because they were too slippery for the dogs to comfortably jump up on but they were also shedding.

We looked at having all the seating recovered – $8000.  $3000 of that is the install.  In the end, we decided to push my sewing abilities and what reupholstery skills I had from my teenage years and start making custom covers for at least the dinette and the couch.

And so I have started the process.  The first cushion is shown here.  I eventually covered the dinette seats and backs as well as the couch back and all four cushions.  We also changed out some of the cushion foam but they still need tweaking.  Ultimately we want to replace that hide-a-bed couch with something better.  In the meantime,  here is the couch recovered.  The back and cushions are really the same color, some trick of lighting is going on.

 

And despite having done brakes on the truck in the last two years, we are doing it again.  There is a quite noticeable pulse in the brakes (front) and at the last oil change, they said the rear brakes are getting low.  So, a quick change out of discs, pads and fluid will happen soon.  Did happen.  And as usual, we made a minor mistake with the pads, but now all is fine. And fortunately, while we were working, my son found a nail in a tire, which we plugged.

I finally got around to replacing the battery monitor.  For the last 6 months, the battery monitor has been reporting 13.5 amps out – ALL THE TIME.  I installed a BMV712 which is physically like the 700 i replaced, but I had to run a new cable from it to my Victron Color Control.

Many other minor updates and replacements, area carpets, bedspread, sheets etc and so on until we leave.