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.

 

Bluebird gets Toad preparations

Journey and Blue
Journey and Blue

Blue…… so we are going to tow our 2015 F150 pickup truck (AKA Toad) behind our Class C. Yup, you read that right. We want to do this right and we want to be able to disconnect quickly. That led us to the Roadmaster Nighthawk for a non-binding tow bar. It is quick to connect and disconnect. Doesn’t bind, folds up on the tow vehicle, can be locked and is pretty (led lights at night). (oh, we didn’t take any pictures WHILE we were working as we were pre-occupied with just getting the work done).

We also needed a breaking system. For that we settled on RVI Brake 3 because it involved less installation on the truck, and could also be disconnected quickly. (And since we seem to change things up every so often – it would be easy to move to another Toad.)  I put together orders for all the pieces parts (we needed a charge adapter to keep the truck charged and dedicated power connection for the Rvi Brake 3).

Since I’ve just had shoulder surgery, doing the installations would not be easy. We checked with the boys (our sons)– and their availability wasn’t the greatest. (Empty Nester’s means empty nests) We checked with a local truck customizing shop and they wanted $1000+ to do the installs. We didn’t like that either. So that left my wife, Deb, and I to do the work.  Now normally – I’d spend a couple of days in the garage doing this work with maybe a little help here and there. But since I’m still recovering from two shoulder surgeries, us working together means 2 and ½ arms, total.

Right Hitch Base Bracket from underneath.
Right Hitch Base Bracket from underneath.

Deb and I started with the base brackets for the hitch. We spent about 6 hours one day and managed to get one side done. We learned a lot and figured the other side would be easier. Fortunately, t was. We got our son Rob to come over the next day and we, three, managed to get the other side done in just a couple of hours. Each bracket required three bolts. The nuts that went with them were basically steel rectangles with drilled and tapped holes with wire handles welded on. In other words, metal lolly pops with a

This is as much of the hitch base bracket that sticks out.
This is as much of the hitch base bracket that sticks out.

hole in them. We had to stick each one through a hole in the frame, 6 inches away and line them up with a hole, then put the bolt through and get it started. But it’s not even that simple. The bracket had to be held in place (weighs about 10 pounds). AND… all bolts were supposed to have thread-locking compound on them which dries in about 20

This shows the uppoer bolt for the base bracket.
This shows the upper bolt for the base bracket.

minutes so we couldn’t take our time. Lastly – they third bolt required a hole to be drilled high on the side of the frame. My part on all this was mostly limited to manipulating the steel lollypops.  So total man-hours on this part was about 18 hours.

 

 

So, that was part 1 of 5 or so.

Rob stopped by on another day and helped me install the brackets for the tow connections and the bracket for the break-away switch. This required a trip to the hardware store as the supplied self-taping screws seemed like a lousy way to attach brackets especially since the holes were right near the edge of the bumper. We used real bolts, washers and lock nuts. Time not counting hardware store – 2 hours.

Part three was running wire from the rear tail-lights to the front of the truck. Sounds simple right? Well I ordered a wiring kit – and when it came, it didn’t say it worked for our truck – so silly me, I sent it back and ordered another one that the company web site claimed worked. It turned out to be for CHEVY’s, not Ford. I went back to the web site and dug around and found that they recommended two different models for our truck(one was clearly wrong). I called them – and the first one I had, was supposedly the right one.

So, I ordered it again. Upon arrival, we pulled the tail light and checked the connectors – and they were “almost right”. They were the right size, connectors and pin spacing, but Ford uses “guides” in the corners that point in different directions. Three of the four were right – the fourth was wrong. In the end, I “fixed” my connectors with a pocket knife.

So, now I divert a bit. I’ve been working on cars since the mid sixties when I started helping my father work on our car (Corvair bus). Most of the time, I’m working by myself. Even when I worked at the VW shops, I was working jobs myself. I’ve done a few major jobs with another person. For example, Tom (my son) and I pulled the head of the engine in his pickup – well 5 times or so – but that is another story. My wife knows how to use most tools, but hasn’t done a lot of work. She also has a lot of ideas. So do I – and of course, since I’ve done so much work, I’ve got fairly

Taillight wiring with blue split casing added.
Taillight wiring with blue split casing added.

strong opinions on how to do things. Deb worries about a lot of things that I often don’t think need to be worried about – but sometimes, it turns out for the best. Sometimes she has good ideas on how to do things that I haven’t considered. For example, the wiring harness was just your standard low voltage trailer type wiring. On the truck, all exposed wiring had a split cover over it, so of course we needed to provide the same for this tail-light wiring. We hopped in the truck, went to the other end of town and picked up 30 feet of pretty blue split cover and I covered and taped the entire taillight wiring harness. Idea two – I was planning on just tie-wrapping the wire along side the frame. Deb decided running it INSIDE the frame would be better. She had no idea how to actually accomplish that, but this is where we work it out together – I did. While we were picking up the split cover, we also picked up a snake for pulling electrical wire. We started at the front of the frame and pushed it back through the frame. At one point it stopped moving. I had her rattle it while I figured out how far it got. I found the point at which it stopped. It had hit a cross member and looped back. So, she pulled it back and I guided it under the cross member with my finger through a convenient hole in the side of the frame and it then proceeded all the way back.   From there we taped the wire on – and pulled it all the way through to the front. I actually hadn’t expected it to really work – but it was one of those situations were it was easier to go along and see than fight it. In the end, she had a good idea as it only took a few minutes to run the cable vs sliding under the truck all the way while tie wrapping the cable. Man-hours – 2.

Brake Away Switch mounted right of the license plate.
Brake Away Switch mounted right of the license plate.

On yet another day, we installed the remaining components. The breakaway switch needed a wire run inside the cabin to the RVI Brake 3. Power needed to be run from the battery to the RVI Brake 3. Due to the connectors and components pre-wired – those wires needed to pass through the firewall in opposite directions. We used the wire snake again – moving one wire through first and puling the other back through. I ended cutting

Blue Tow Plug
Blue Tow Plug

part of the rubber grommet to make this easier. And of course we had to seal it back up. There is also a battery charger that takes power from the tow vehicle and keeps the battery in the truck charged – since in order to flat tow, the key has to be on while truck is set to a “tow mode”. The RVI Brake also uses power.

So, today we pulled all these wires, made connects to the battery and connected all the wires to the 6 pin plug that the two bar cables connects into. Man hours – 3.

Side View of RVIB3 with spacer tube
Side View of RVIB3 with spacer tube

Lastly – the RVI Brake 3 sits on the floor and has an arm that locks onto the brake pedal.  It pushes on the brake which means it has to push up against something.  On the F150 – there is no cross bar under the seat – so one is provided.  BUT, between the floor mats and the rise of the floor as it goes back toward the seat – the RVIB3 doesn’t sit flat on the floor if slid all the way back.  So I found a piece of PVC that would fit between the RVIB3 and the bracket.  I added velcro so it would stick to the RVI B3.

We are ready to go!  In theory, we can disconnect in maybe two minutes.

All this with one shoulder I can only partly use and another shoulder I can’t really use. Surgery on the first shoulder was 5 months to go. The second was 1 month ago. They tell me it can take a year to get full use back. My issues started almost a year ago – so its been a year and have maybe another year to go before my shoulders are back to normal – and that sucks.

That totals up to 25 people-hours. $1000/25 = $40 per hour – not too shabby. When I started work at the Volkswagon shop, I was earning $3.50/hour.

 

 

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