Fixed Brake Line - Family Fish - Big Storm Coming!

As soon as the auto parts store opened up this morning, Steveio was there at the door, ready to get the proper brake line fitting for motorhome. He also grabbed 3 quarts of synthetic Dot 3 brake fluid with a high boiling point as well.  He is not sure how much fluid leaked out, so he is best to be prepared with enough plus some for bleeding the brakes afterwards.

Before I could start on my second cup of coffee, he had put on his overalls and crawled back underneath the motorhome. I only had to hand him a few things because he already knew what he was doing with his various flaring tools, tube cutters, and wrenches.

Here is a section of the rusted out brake line that he removed, as well as now putting a new fitting on the end of it.

What a grubby looking thing, eh? That's what a combination of age (22 year old motorhome) and Wisconsin Winter Roads With Salt do to the undersides of our vehicles.  Remember, just a few weeks ago we also replaced the rusted out muffler.

Once he was assured that all of the brake lines were good, he took out his air pressure brake bleeding tool. He got that a number of years back from Harbor Freight.  Here is a link:

Pneumatic Brake Fluid Bleeder with Auto-Refill Kit

It has proved invaluable for drawing through the new brake fluid through the long runs of brake lines on a motorhome.  It operates with the air compressor and pulls the new fluid through the lines while sucking out the old stuff into the white chamber.

Steve keeps his air compressor in the motorhome. It is able to handle all of his air tools and stows compactly away in a basement storage compartment until we need it.  I bought it for him years ago for Christmas and it's just the right size. He has a different one now in the garage, so this one can stay in the motorhome all of the time.

He fills the main reservoir of the brake system up to the top with the new fluid. Then he uses this device on each of the bleeders at each wheel. It draws through the new fluid and at the same time removes the old fluid. Of course, in this case we don't have any old fluid because it all leaked out!!

By using this bleeding tool, it also suctions out all of the air in the lines so we never have a bubble. That can be dangerous. He used up one full quart and 3/4 of another bottle of fluid to adequately purge the system of air and make sure each of the brakes has fluid right up to the bleeder.

He had it all done before I could snap a pic underneath.
This is all I got.

Once he was done with that, he went inside and started up the motorhome. He pumped the brakes a few times to feel the pedal return to its normal position. Of course, since we are set up for a week on the campsite, we won't be taking it out for a test drive until we are ready to leave.

But he is confident that we are now "Good To Go"!

~~~~~~~~~~

I spent the rest of the morning working on a project myself. It's a "Repurpose Recycle Reuse" project!  And it has to do with fish???

If you've read my blog during the last few weeks you know that we built a bunch of cute shutters to dress up the exterior of our home. The motif we chose matches the fretwork cutout design of the lattice below our front porch.

The shutters sure came out cute 

and we are happy we did that....

Okayyyyyy 

now you may be asking yourself, 

what do shutters have to do with fish? 

Or recycling for that matter?

How could you toss these into a scrap pile? Steve was even going to toss them in our backyard campfire. No way. I could see a fun game coming out of these.

Well, just look at those cutouts. Tell me what you see? I saw it. I had an idea. I asked Steve to cut each of the pieces in half, at the center most point.

I tossed them in my handy-dandy weeding bucket from my brother-in-law Pete. I'm done weeding my garden, so right now this bucket can be for the fishing game, okay Pete?

I brought along my electric pad sander, my glue gun and a pack of magnets. Oh boy, when I get creative there's no stopping me.

I sat outside of the motorhome and sanded off all of the rough edges around each fish. There weren't any other campers nearby us, so I wasn't bothering anybody.  Steve said he thought I looked so cute and snapped this pic of me. Awwwwwww

I sanded down each fish and got myself covered in sawdust at the same time. What fun!  I love fun projects and using power tools.  The smell of fresh cut wood reminds me of the fun time we had building our log house together after we first got married.  Ahhh memories.  Anyhow, back to the fish---   I was having fun and not making too much of a mess.

My next step was to grab my wide permanent markers. I wrote each family member's name on a fish. I also included all of their dogs and cats as well.  I added all of the kids, grandkids, great grandparents and the nephew, wife and two cousins who are also coming on Saturday to the park.   I had to make a list to not forget anyone.

Using my hot glue gun, I attached strong magnets to the mouth of each fish. Whatever did we do before the age of glue guns?  I am using the new Gorilla Glue sticks, that really seem to hold better than the older style sticks.  I glued the magnets at bit of an angle to fit the drilled out hole of the shape.  (Steve had to drill pilot holes on each end of the pattern to get the jig saw blade started to make the cutout).

I have a long bamboo fishing pole I found in our garage attic from the previous sellers.  Steve will cut it in half for me tomorrow and sand the edges. I am adding strong cords and two round magnets to the ends of the cords. That way the kids can "fish" by hooking onto the magnets, either from the bucket or from behind a curtain or a panel so they can catch random fish and be surprised by who they catch! 

I started lining them up to cool off the glue 

while the dogs watched me work.

Lining them up was fun,

and I started sorting them out and 

grouping them by family.

This was fun! 

After each one cooled, I lined them all up on the picnic table.  There are 33 in all completed, and I have more unpainted ones to add to the group later.  I might add my own siblings and their grandkids too. 

I can just see our grandkids 

making up games 

and rules for the games, 

and learning to identify family members, 

reading the names, 

teaching the younger kids, 

and 

catching various fish 

from a hidden space behind a blanket 

or out of the bucket? 

We will call it:

"FAMILY FISH"

~~~~~~~~~

This afternoon we got warnings on our phone of bad weather coming across Wisconsin.  The radar didn't look too good.  Since we had a lot of rain the last two days, the ground at the park is totally saturated.  High winds combined with the shallow root systems in the park (due to being on the Niagara Escarpment of rock cliffs)  Trees are known to blow down easily, and we kinda sorta know what to expect. 

SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS WITH DAMAGING WINDS AND TORNADOES POSSIBLE DURING THE AFTERNOON AND EARLY EVENING... THE POTENTIAL EXISTS FOR SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS ACROSS THE AREA DURING THE AFTERNOON AND EARLY EVENING HOURS. THE STORMS ARE LIKELY TO PRODUCE DAMAGING WIND GUSTS. LARGE HAIL AND TORRENTIAL RAINFALL IS ALSO POSSIBLE. 

SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS POSSIBLE THROUGH THE EVENING... STRONG THUNDERSTORMS WITH HEAVY RAINFALL, GUSTY WINDS AND HAIL WILL CONTINUE ACROSS NORTHERN WISCONSIN THROUGH EARLY EVENING. THESE STORMS MAY BECOME SEVERE AS THEY MOVE RAPIDLY THROUGH CENTRAL AND EASTERN WISCONSIN BETWEEN 8 PM AND 11 PM. DAMAGING WINDS WILL BE THE PRIMARY THREAT, BUT ISOLATED TORNADOES AND LARGE HAIL WILL ALSO BE POSSIBLE. 


We made a wise decision to head into town to our house. It's only 15 miles away, so we figured we would hunker down at our house, and leave the motorhome at the park. We rolled up the awning and put away our lawn chairs.  There aren't too many people camping this week, so we are not really needed to be there. We notified the rangers and the park superintendent that we were leaving for the evening.  We popped the dogs in the Tracker and headed back to town.

Things are looking grim, and the winds are kicking up.  We went for a quick walk around the block with the dogs, and almost got blown away down the street.  A few sprinkles were starting as we made our way back to the house, safe and sound.

The rolling and boiling clouds 

look eerie against the night sky

and the church tower. 

Since most of our "cookable" food is out in the motorhome's refrigerator, we decided to order Chinese take-out here in Chilton. We don't often do that. Steve had Spicy Beef and I had Shrimp with vegetables.  The dogs got the fortune cookies!  

Tonight we will sit here and watch some movies, check the weather reports and be safe and sound in our house. I hope all of the storms blow over, and are not as ominous as some of the weather reporters are making it sound.  I just shudder to think of the blowing winds and toppling trees in the park. Our motorhome is insured, but our lives are not. Better to be safe than sorry!


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