Category: Trips

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Catching up with ourselves…

Melted fuses, learning a new rig and avoiding freezing.

It has been a while since I’ve made a regular post. Things have been pretty insane. Our new Class A became available late second week of December. We picked it up and immediately began familiarizing ourselves with it and planning where we would put stuff. There was also the quickly growing list of upgrades, changes and fixes that “needed” to be done.

But it was cold, rainy, sometimes freezing, miserable Illinois weather…..

Among the things we decided to do: Install an Acuva water purifier, make an end table for the couch, install a CB, GPS and compass/temperature gauge. Add to that a 12V outlet for my CPAP, a USB outlet for the hotspot install a set of temperature sensors to monitor the refrigerator and outside temps and convert a small “pantry” slide out into shelf space. We needed to buy some things to outfit the rig that didn’t come with it. All the while we were also continuing to do what we could to downsize the house and help my son remodel his house AND get ready for Christmas with family.

Then, one cold but sunny afternoon – my wife noticed “light coming in under the back wall”. What? Sure enough, there was a gap under one side of the back wall. Behind this wall is a mostly empty space under the “back cap”. A call to Tiffin and they agreed that they needed to see the unit. As it was just before Christmas, their service facility was shut down until Jan 2. If we left town late December we could be “in line” at the service center when it opened. That meant leaving a week ahead of schedule. So we packed everything, installed the TPMS, fixed the wiper motor in the rain (see how the list keeps getting longer) and hit the road Dec 29th.

Pantry->Shelves
Gap under back wall
“Couch End Table”

We made it to the Red Bay Service center and got into line. After a couple of days waiting (free full hookups), they stopped by to see our list of issues. We were most concerned with the back wall, but had a growing list of other minor issues. After a few more days we got our day in the shop. The service guys were very helpful. We were allowed to stay in the rig, watch, talk to them and ask questions. They checked the back wall mounting and foamed it the way it should have been at the factory. It was then late Friday afternoon, so instead of hanging around over the weekend to deal with the other small stuff, we left to meet our daughter and family who full-time and were out west. We hoped to get out to Quartzsite in time for the big show.

We worked our way out west, met up my daughter’s family and traveled together to Quartzsite. We did some full hookups and some Walmart and boondocking. The biggest thing we learned along the way was that with this unit having a residential refrigerator and many other AC devices, that four lead-acid batteries were probably not enough (not however the entire story). We would go to bed with everything not needed turned off and the batteries at 100% (we installed a Victron Battery Monitor just before we left). We’d wake up in the morning at 60%, yet when we tried to make coffee or run the microwave off the Inverter, the coach would cry “low voltage!”.

So, at Quartzsite, we found a good price on Battleborn batteries in the big tent, bought four and installed them. The difference was dramatic. But that still wasn’t the end of the story – which I will get to further down.

Quartzsite was often sunny but unseasonably cool.

We spent two weeks there, then moved on through a number of locations: Saddle Back, Tuscon, Guadalupe, San Angelo – so on and so forth. We did a lot of boondocking. We learned a lot about our RV and continued to add to the list of small manufacturing errors. I have a separate blog post, soon to be, public that covers the entire list. As it often seems, the weather was chasing us around – while we were trying to avoid the cold. We eventually ended up at Padre Island National Park and managed to snag two spots facing the beach. While we were there, we installed our WeBoost trucker edition with the antenna on an extensible mast (made from PVC pipe fittings and a painter extensible pole). 20 feet up, we managed to snag a fairly good cell signal. The weather, however, was lousy. Only a couple of days in two weeks we could even see the sun. Fog, Fog, Rain, Fog… Then it all went south….

We took a short trip out to the beach and came back to an RV with no AC power. I started debugging and figured out there was no DC power to the Inverter. Backtracking from the switch I came across a fuse that had been very hot, for a very long time. It was a type of fuse I’d not seen before. Black carbonized, plastic oozed out of it and the contacts between it and the two bus-bars were black and dirty. And the nut that held it in place was barely finger tight. We made some calls to Tiffin Customer Service and ended up talking to a Tech that walked me through a couple of tests and verified that generator power went through the inverter so I was out of luck on AC in the rig for most things until the inverter was fixed. It was then 8 pm, Friday night and nothing to do but borrow a small generator to plug the refrigerator into for the night.

400 Amp fuse with melted plastic hanging out.
Bus bar and inverter switch.

The next morning, we started phone calls and headed out to Corpus Christi to try to find the part. Three RV dealers, a truck shop, hardware store, two solar installers (closed) and numerous phone calls – no one had anything like that fuse or anything with which to replace it. By early afternoon, running out of options, I remembered there was a West Marine in town. I called and they had a fuse holder and in-line fuse that size. We went there and purchased a couple of holders, fuses and they helped us make up some 2/0 cables that would be needed to hook the fuse up to the RV. We went home, installed the fuse – and then I realized it wasn’t just the fuse. Seeing the fried fuse, I had just assumed it was the sole problem. It turns out the inverter power switch was fried as well. So much heat from the fuse traveled up the aluminum bus bar to the switch, that it melted the plastic holding the contact in the switch. Another quick trip to West Marine for a switch and we were up and running again.

Tiffin did give us the names of two businesses that we could call. One, a mobile tech just got us an answering machine. The other was a radiator shop which didn’t interest us at all.

I’m quite sure the fuse never was making good contact. That it is partially responsible for the low voltage alarms we were getting when using high current devices on the inverter. I don’t regret though my decision to move to the Lithium batteries. We are planning on a significant solar installation which now will probably including completely revamping the DC power panel, fuses and shut-off switches. We are also seriously considering moving from a 2000 Watt inverter to a 3000.

We swung up through Colorado to Horsetooth Resevoir. That let us spend a couple of days driving in Rocky Mountain NP and enjoying our days in the snow and our nights well above freezing. Then we headed home via a north route to avoid most of the storms swinging out of the southwest. Below is a photo gallery of this trip. Enjoy!


2019 Jan-Mar Southwest Loop
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Rover arrives, trip to another world and doctors, doctors, doctors.

So, Rover arrived at just about the last possible moment. The dealer got it on Friday , and we were told we could pick up on Monday. We took our trailer – and they removed the Propride hitch for us and swapped mattresses so we could keep our good mattress – which was nice because it was a short queen – so we got that little extra space between the mattress and the cabinets. The bed platform was already shorter than a short queen so a full queen is just a waste of room space.

Wait – who’s Rover? Rover is a Forest River Sunseeker 3050S, class C. It is 32 feet long, one full side slide. We special ordered as we didn’t like the color options that were available on anything we found at a dealer. (why do almost all have dark cabinets?). There were some surprises I just have to talk about. We looked at a model at the dealer and there were some built in items we really liked. But our unit didn’t come with those items. It seems Forest River takes it upon itself to simply drop various features in order to save money. So you’ve plunked down your down payment having looked at a 3050S – and when yours comes, it doesn’t have the same options…… For example: There were two skylights with clear plastic – and pull over room darkening shades. We thought we would really like this. What was delivered was two skylights with frosted plastic and no shades whatsoever. We could of course change out the plastic domes and add shades – for about $400 – but having to pay for what looked like should have come with our unit is REALLY IRRITATING! Second – the unit we looked at didn’t have an oven. I had a nice pot drawer instead and a convection microwave with built in vent above. What was delivered? Standard stove and oven, along with convection microwave with standard vent mounted under it. Why do this? Well FR could build all the units with the same stove/oven – no units with drawers. They could also slip in a standard microwave or convection without having to change the upper cabinets. We would have much preferred to skip the oven and have the pot drawer but are stuck with what they delivered.

We did a thorough walk-through, of course you never find everything. (We had actually gone and seen it Friday and pointed out a few minor things). The next morning we were hard at work testing out the truck hitch, packing trailer stuff into Rover, learning how it all worked again. I tried installing the RVlock – and had issues with it fitting right – so I took it off rather than spend precious time on it. One more day of packing, loading clothes, food etc. and cleaning. The third morning we quickly de-winterized, loaded some water and took off. It was already about noon so we didn’t know how far we’d get. We, at one point, hoped to get on the far side of Altanta’s legendary morning rush hour traffic.

Somewhere on the road I made a google map error and underestimated the distance to Atlanta. (in my defense, Deb tends to every hour or so, ask me the distance to or between various cities – which I work out on my phone). It was clear we weren’t going to get past Atlanta before we all fell asleep, so Deb wanted to get a few hours sleep somewhere and still hit Atlanta before rush hour in the morning. But my map goof meant we didn’t pull over until after midnight – to sleep in a Walmart parking lot. Two hours of sleep, three hours total parking lot time and we were back on the road. We got around Atlanta before the rush hour, but that put us a lot closer to Davenport, Fl . We had planned on two days, and nights, hitting the camp on the third day. We did stop at the Pig for their BBQ and got into the campground late the second day, totally wiped out. A quick visit with the girls was in order because they all couldn’t wait, including GG.

The next week was a blur of Disney visits. Jen had most of our days including Fastpasses planned out.

So, to digress a bit. Either we get a total fail on planning or life just conspires to get even with us on our trips. There was the trip we took to Topsail Beach one year, not realizing we’d be on the road July 4 on the way home. We couldn’t find a hotel anywhere and thus drove straight through, 18+ hours. Then there is going to Moab during a big motorcycle/ATV week. It was us and the kids with their trailer and we just weren’t ready to boondock for a week – thus we parked in Green river – an hour away from everything. And many others….  And this time, going to Disney during Christmas-New Year’s. In our defense, the delayed arrival of Rover contributed to mayhem, but it seems there is aways a reason.

My daughter had annual passes – so they knew all the ins and outs of Disney. When to go where, how to get the most out of Fast Passes, etc. For example, the best time to get on some rides is during the evening fireworks or parades. So we bought our week passes and Jen planned out our itinerary. Now we had already been pretty stressed handling conversion from Trailer to Class C, getting things done at home, ready for the trip, moved in and the long hard drive down. We went right into long days at the parks. We were usually getting there mid to late morning – but staying until the parks closed. 10 to 15,000 steps a day. The kids were with us most of the time as well. I do recommend, if you go to Disney, do your research – how to best make the use of your passes. Find some online resources or someone who is very familiar to walk you through. We got to see and do a lot more than we might have on our own.

BUT – it was Christmas holiday season. That is one of the busiest of the year. We couldn’t even get in to Magic Kingdom on Christmas day, so we spent it at Cocoa beach.   And when people travel thousands of miles to come to Disney and thousands on tickets – well they don’t stay in their hotel room if they are sick. So I estimate we came within three feet of several hundred thousand people over that week and it was impossible not to touch things that had been touched by thousands of people that same day.

Its funny – when you see you doctor, one of the questions you ask is “Have you traveled to a foreign country?”. Well, going to Disney is like going to a foreign country in every way except perhaps drinking the water and the kind of insects.

I came down sick first – which is a bit unusual. I missed out on the last day of our park passes AND the Pandora ride… 8^{. On the third day of sick time, Deb and I showed up at a local ER and in my case, Type A Influenza was confirmed. A round of antibiotics, Tamiflu and cough meds was ordered. Deb too had the flu, just the quick test didn’t confirm it. After a few more days, we started to feel better and headed for home. (more on that below). We got to Gulf Shores and found a place at Bay Breeze campground. We had stayed a week there a couple of years ago and they had a spot open for a couple of days. But the next day, I was down again – and a rapid care facility in Orange Beach confirmed – Pneumonia. Some IV drugs, another antibiotic and other meds and I feel OK, now but still not over it all.

So, why did we head for home via Gulf Shores? We barely got out of Savoy before the big freeze set in. While we were getting sick, thinking about how to get home – the freeze was reaching almost all the way to us near Orlando. And there was snow on the roads back home. There was no way to get home in one day or to have to try to winterize the rig on the way up. Winterizing before we left wasn’t really an option because – well, we want to use our plumbing on the trip. In a pinch, we could have winterized and stayed in a hotel but we still wanted clear roads to drive the new motorhome and toad behind.

So, the plan became to head west, then north stopping at a campground we’ve used before just south of Nashville. We scheduled our trip home to coincide with the warmest weather. We stopped at the Texas T campground south of Nashville (nice place) for a night and quickly winterized the next morning before we left.

Sickness aside, the trip home was pretty uneventful. We did have some issues with the TPMS and Braking system, as well as the heat pump, but I’ll cover those in a separate report.

We are now slowly recovering – working on the RV when its not too cold – trying to get it ready for some more leisurely travels.