So, we hit home base about the first of April. We planned to leave in about a month. Mike has had hip problems, so we started in with the treatment and Dr visits we couldn’t get in before we left. They not only didn’t help, but an entirely different form of arthritis hit.
The reason (besides not wanting to be in pain all the time) that this was so bad was we ordered 800 watts of solar, a controller, a new inverter/charger and all the bits and pieces to go with it. So, Mike was sitting around accepting packages but not really able to go climb around the class A and do the installations. Over time, the symptoms became a little more manageable and we warmed up for the big job by doing a small solar installation on our daughter’s trailer. Just 200 watts, but it makes a big difference to their lifestyle – way less generator use.
Eventually, we got around to performing the installation on our rig, with a number of relatives pitching in and Deb making sure Mike doesn’t do too much of the strenuous work. She learned a lot about solar in the process.
We didn’t film much because of the tight time frame, but there will be a couple of videos on the subject. We were squeezing construction time in between everything else, as well as the Midwest thunderstorms.
We will be heading out soon for a shorter trip out to the north west – Badlands, Glacier and maybe even Banff etc. A long post on the solar installs is coming soon.
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!
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