Tag: RV REPAIR

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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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Some semblance of Normal

When I last wrote, there was a long list of things that weren’t working/going well. The broken tow bar, roof leak, mashed fender, etc.

Well, the tow bar seems to be working fine. The roof isn’t leaking despite unusually heavy and frequent rain where we are staying (more on where later). Oh, the third RVlock was also having issues. I diagnosed it that the bar that operates the latch was bent. Once I straightened it, the lock has worked fine.

I had spent some time looking for body shops for thefront left fender damage RV – but there simply wasn’t anything out here. Not that we wanted to be out of the RV for the week it probably would take to fix it. The last fender we had repaired (much less damage from some lady in a gas station) took two days, and then we had to go back for the Diamond Shield. Thus we chose to do the repairs myself. Click -> to see the detailed damage.

I had done a lot of bodywork in my life – but mostly the kind where Bondo is being used to smooth out damaged metal. This repair job was fiberglass that had 10 breaks. One of the things I discovered when I took a better look at the fender was there was a large crack in the lower middle – where nothing hit it. Looking behind I could see there was a fiberglass patch, poorly installed in that area either at the factory or where the front cap was made. Lots of Bondo had been put on the outside of the front cap as well.  The twisting stress from the accident caused the damaged area to open up.

I reviewed my “fiberglass repair skills” on YouTube. It really CAN be a good resource so long as one is discerning. Time to order supplies: TotalBoat epoxy, mixing cups and sticks, small cheap brushes for application, a good mouse electric sander, a supply of sandpaper for the mouse as well as for hand sanding. I ordered two different thicknesses of fiberglass (single layer and mat), and a large duffle bag to put all that and some additional tools I would need. I had no place to store all this when it was raining, so I put a tarp under the front of the RV and I’d push the bag underneath when I wasn’t working.

Oh, and I tried several goo removers – the RV has Diamond Sheild on the lower front; a dense plastic film that is supposed to limit rock chip damage.  It can be peeled off with a little heat but leaves a nasty glue behind that almost nothing dissolves (I even tried gasoline, which did work).  Several hours went into a tedious cycle of application, waiting for the goo remover to work, then scraping.  In some cases the goo was simply sanded away, sacrificing sandpaper in the process.

When fiberglass breaks, the edges shred. It is like when cardboard is torn – it won’t go all the way back together, so each of the breaks needed to be cleaned up so the pieces could be put back in the correct place.   I first sanded down the inside and outside edges to give the epoxy clean access to the underlying fiberglass.  Then I ran a hacksaw blade between the damaged edges to cut off some of the frayed fiberglass so the sides would fit back into their proper alignment.  

Also, there is a metal U-channel support behind the fender that was “glued” across the joint between the front cap and the fender. It took me about 6 sessions of several hours each to straighten the support, clean up the torn edges, and epoxy the damaged sections together.  inside view of fiberglass repairsOn the back, I used mostly the thick fiberglass mat and epoxy to reinforce the damaged areas. On the front side, I added multiple narrow strips of single-layer fiberglass across the cracks.  Once everything had been reconstructed, work then moved on to Bondo and spot putty to smooth the outer surface.  I used a combination of a metal ruler and my hand to identify low spots; marking them with a pencil and then adding filler.  I used a foot-long 1×2 with sandpaper wrapped to even out everything.  Once I could see that this process was going to lead to a satisfactory repair, I ordered paint from PaintScratch.com. Their database was incomplete – I had to choose several different years of Tiffin motorhomes to find the three different paint codes I needed. I also ordered some primer and clear coat paint. With this automotive-style paint, the colors are sprayed on in multiple light coats.  Then when finished a clear coat is applied (in a similar manner) which is then polished to a shiny finish. PaintScratch supplied 12-ounce spray cans whose sprayers worked surprisingly well.

I think the one thing I failed to get was a better quality masking tape as I had some issues with the stripes – paint leaking under the tape.  I had to respray a number of edges to get clean lines. The most time was spent trying to get the surface as smooth and clean as possible. Some of the smaller defects didn’t show up until the first layer of finish paint was applied.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The headlight is now reinstalled and several layers of clear coat have been applied, but the surface is still “too orange peel” and needs further work (at the next long-term RV park, hopefully).

To recap – our insurance probably would have covered this repair, minus a $500 deductible.  Our rates surely would have gone up.  I spent less than that buying paint, tools, and supplies.  And most importantly, we didn’t have to leave our RV for a week to get it repaired. 

In other news – we have been working at Henry’s Lake State Park in Idaho.  It is only about 20 miles from West Yellowstone and thus Yellowstone National Park.  For three days (each) of light and sometimes interesting work a week, we get a full hookup site – and coincidentally a place to work on a broken fender.  

We’ve made a number of trips to Yellowstone as well as other local parks.  That is another advantage of this arrangement, 4 days off a week and lots of time to explore.  We even climbed Mt Washburn in Yellowstone.  

Oh, and two small doggies will be joining us soon.  Pictures and names coming in the next blog.