It seems there is never enough time – or perhaps not enough focus on blogging to keep you up to date. Since I last wrote, we’ve had a few doctors visits ourselves, visited a sick brother and mooch-docked at my mothers, rescued another dog, replaced a long section of backyard fence, downsized some more, made a couple of visits to Tiffin at Red Bay, Alabama, got a bit of bodywork done on the RV, helped our daughter move into a new RV, phew….and so much more.
So, we are both in pretty good health. Not so much as a cold since we started Keto in March 2018. Oh, and I have a new metal hip to correct a chronic hip problem, which is healing well. I’m still having some issues with Arthritis that is neither getting better nor worse. I also have a brother in Wisconsin with a particularly bad form of cancer. We spent a week up there at my mother’s with the RV helping to take care of some things. We would normally have headed to the southwest for the winter, but we are staying on the Gulf Coast in case we need to make another trip to Wisconsin.
When we stayed at home, we worked on downsizing and we needed to rebuild 60 feet of fence and a gate on the back yard, plus all the usual summer/fall chores. We also cut down and recovered the valences in the living/dining area in the RV. We really needed a bit of color. After trying several locations for hanging hand and dish towels, we chose to hang a standard towel rack from the refrigerator door using VHB tape.
Since we were nearing the end of our year of warranty, we scheduled a visit to Tiffin Service at Red Bay. On our list, was the entry door that didn’t fit right, a terrible noise in the kitchen window whenever we were driving and a Spyder control panel that would “drop out” on a regular basis. Rather than trying to straighten the door, they adjusted the door frame. It’s better, but still not as I think it should be. The window turned out to be something very simple that required a lot of work to get it corrected. The kitchen window is LONG and narrow, thus any flexing in the side of the RV affects it. They had to remove the kitchen trim, then the window trim. What the found was – a screw. There were rubber spacers in the corner of the window space – held in place by a screw each. One screw had been placed to close to the edge of the wall that the inside aluminum trim was rubbing on the screw. The noise was literally the loudest sound in the RV going down the road. The spyder panel was replaced and a few other minor issues tweaked.
When one goes to Tiffin Service, there is a campground right on the property, that while under warranty customers can stay for free. It often takes a few days just to get into a service bay. Our wait time was short, likely due to the simple nature of our repairs and the time of year. The campground is a bit smaller than it used to be. Due to a crazy customer who drove their RV through a service bay door and smashed into someone else’s RV, Tiffin has had to install fences, gates to control access to the service bay area.
We also spent a few days at a body repair shop to get a storage door replaced. We had a small conflict with a hidden tree stump in Canada that left a crease in a storage door.
After we returned home with the RV we discovered an additional problem. While moving the bedroom slide in/out, I notice the trim on
the front side, pushing out from the RV wall. On closer inspection, I realized the slide motor frame was pushing out from the wall, while trying to move the slide in. I remove the cover trim and found that the bottom screw that should have been holding this frame in place was never installed. The screw above it was completely stripped out. As in – someone spun it in, then kept spinning it for some time. The screw was still in place (held by the trim), but I was able to simply pluck it out of the hole with my finger. I installed multiple screws to replace to two problematic ones. Then while inspecting everything I realized the slide was not centered in its hole. I presumed there was a mechanism for centering, but couldn’t find good documentation. Thus another trip to Tiffin was planned (on our way south to escape winter).
As luck would have it, on the way down, the solenoid that connects to the chassis battery to the house battery when the engine is running (to charge the house battery) failed. That solenoid is mounted on the same panel where I had a fuse melt my inverter switch early in the year. I had planned to replace the entire panel, thus never put it on my “warranty list”. But now that a second component had failed we put that on our Tiffin Service list as well. The wait was again short. They looked at centering the slide, but the tech quickly realized there wasn’t room on the inside of the RV to move the slide back to center. Since we had an issue early on with that same corner of the rv (back wall with light coming in under it), I’m left wondering if that corner didn’t get properly lined up when it was bolted in. Since they couldn’t move the slide, they did move the rubber seal so that it at least did sealed on the slide.
The power panel, which one might think was a simple job, turned into multiple attempts to get right. This panel is the primary interface between the batteries and all things DC powered. The main battery disconnect, the inverter supply disconnect, 4 catastrophic DC fuses, four smaller circuit breakers and the solenoid for connecting the engine to house batteries all mount on this same panel. Since the panel had melted components on it, along with the newly failed solenoid, they opted to replace the entire panel. It turns out the DC circuit breakers are rather flimsy. One broke, twice while reinstalling. The panel is mounted on a metal frame with just a small gap to insert it between the frame and the inverter fuse. On the first attempt to replace it a little bump caused a major short blew a fuse. Finally, it was all replaced and worked fine and we were on our way – actually a bit earlier than we had planned.
While we were waiting for repairs, Deb discovered a family connection half-way between Red Bay and our destination at Gulf Shores. We snagged a nice campsite at Tannehill Ironworks State Park. It was quite busy when we were there, but apparently not as busy as it gets at times because they hold a number of special events. Two things struck me as weird with Tannehill. Fir
st, there were no trash receptacles in the camping area. We had to travel at least half a mile to get to the trash dumpsters. Second, in order to get to our part of the campground, we had to cross a bridge. Shown here is the weight limit sign for the bridge, which appears to have been scavenged from a city or highway road department. Now we were told to drive over this bridge, by a registration attendant who knew we were driving a class A. Other class A rigs and some pretty large fifth wheels were also in that part of the park. The park rangers regularly drove around this loop and thus knew we all drove over that bridge – all the while that if the sign was accurate, we all were in danger of the bridge collapsing. I really don’t know what to think about this. I don’t want to ignore such signs and have my RV drop into a river, but there clearly was some sort of disconnect at this campground. I suppose I should have stopped a ranger and asked about it.
TPMS – sigh…. so, once again, on our first trip to Red Bay, the TPMS sending units started to fail. Once again, I complained and the manufacturer sent me a new set and once again, the new set works great. These particular units don’t have field-replaceable batteries. While I like the system in general, I’m only getting about 9 months (not full time) use out of a set when the manufacturer claims up to 3 years. So far, I’ve not paid anything for these new sets (4, or is it 5 now), but I think the first time I have to pay for a new set, I’ll be looking for an alternative system. Still, our system did notify us that we had a low tire when leaving the Tannehill campground so I won’t drive without TPMS.
So, we have settled into our campground in Gulf Shores until at least the end of January – maybe longer. We are tackling many of the todo list of modifications, including replacing the front console (future blog) and miscellaneous small repairs.