MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS *A* and Our New Year

I am going to start off the new year with posting three of our motorhome modifications at a time. I will post repairs, modifications, or neato things we have found for RVing.  I have lots of pics in my files so I will do them in alphabetical order.

Underneath that stuff, I will post my regular daily stuff..... kinda sorta fun, eh?

So here it goes:

MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS 

STARTING WITH THE LETTER A 

Air Intake Relocation:

As I stated in yesterday's blog, the air intake for the air cleaner is located in the rear of our diesel motorhome, as most are.  But the problem is that it is located UNDERNEATH the motorhome by the engine. Things get pretty dirty and dusty back there, especially with driving on any dirt or gravel roads, out in the desert, or just around blowing winds from newly plowed farm fields. You ever see a dirt devil over loose soil?

Anyhow... our friend Mel, who also has a Safari, came up with this one.  He figured out how to relocate the air intake by some creative piping and cutting a side vent through the fiberglass. Here he is with his saved piece of fiberglass!  Yes, he framed it! haha

Steve measured and figured and futzed around... and soon he said he was ready to cut!! OH MY!  Cutting into the fiberglass on our vintage motorhome is pretty scary (to me) but he was not daunted in the least.  He grabbed his drill and made four pilot holes and used a sabre saw to cut out the rectangle. 

Here is his crazy looking inner workings for the intake vent.  It looks very rigged, but it works. Thankfully it is hidden up inside the back engine compartment and nobody can see it. LOL  PS he said that is super duper heat resistant aluminum fibered duct tape.

With a little bit of sputtering, partial swearing, and a few bruised and scraped knuckles, he got it into place.   Laying in the driveway is how Steve does most of his projects. Of course we do not have a garage space large enough to pull it inside. I am the ''gopher'' to bring him tools, take the pics, and basically support and encourage him as he does a great job.

And there it is...  all complete!  He sprayed a regular steel household vent grid with silver paint to match the motorhome color scheme.  It would have been impossible to match the blue, so he went with the silver to go along with the stainless steel lower compartment doors.

I am pleased to report that it has been three plus years since we replaced the air filter housing because this reconfiguration works so well. The little filter minder device is only showing a small amount of dirt picked up since the replacement, so our air flow is fine. Engine temps are fine.

Air horn button on passenger side:

This one is a recent improvement. You are going to think it is really STRANGE.... but it is a great idea--- And it works!!  

See.....  when you are in a long long rig, with a towed vehicle behind, you can not just whip over to another lane to avoid the merging idiots who do not seem to see you.  Countless times we have had idiots who cannot merge safely into traffic.  They are immersed in their cell phones, their coffee, their GPS settings or whatever.  They cruise right alongside of us, mindlessly involved in their own little world, going the same speed until they suddenly run out of pavement from their on ramp!  We have had soooo many close calls of possibly having them crease right down the side of our rig.  We do not want to go through the trouble of being laid up for weeks to have have our rig repaired, or trying to match the stainless steel doors and paint, nor cause injury to other folks around us if we did have an accident with a dumb merging idiot. Not to mention the insurance hassles.

Usually Steve does not have room to move over to the left, and we find ourselves struggling with either trying to  rapidly slow down or speed up to try to avoid the collision with the idiot who does not know how to merge.  ARGGHHHH   

I swear they just do NOT see us! We are blue on top and silvery/grey on the bottom. I think they think we are sky and pavement????

When this happens, Steve is busy looking in the mirrors, driving straight ahead to stay in his lane, but trying to see if he can move, trying to see the tiny car in his almost blind spot on the passenger side, etc., that he does not always have time to beep the air horns to wake up the idiot.  

I warn him to blast the horn, but he does not always have time....  when he does, it does help!  It wakes up the person who suddenly either speeds up and cuts in front of us, or drops back to safely merge behind us. 

Ssoooooooo to help with this tension filled event, Steve installed an extra horn button on MY side of the rig!  Seriously!!!

I can look down out my passenger window and determine if the person needs a blast to wake up and realize we are there!  Our dual air horns blast out sounds similar to a big ocean liner.... and it is enough to get their attention before we are both in an accident.  It is the GREATEST thing ever and so far it has saved us twice since he installed it this summer.

Plus, it is kinda rewarding to see the idiot suddenly realize we are there and look up and react --- and either look stupid or sorry .... or worst of all angry!  Then they drop back, intending to swing around us to quickly to flip us off as they speed by. But then they meet up with our towed Tracker behind us, which makes them having to back off even more to get around behind us.  By now, they are pretty ticked and zoom up alongside of Steve to flip him off.  He smiles broadly and waves a nice wave at them.  No sense giving them the satisfaction of getting US mad... right?  

Awning locking rod:

The awning on our Safari motorhome has a ribbed aluminum cover to help protect the awning during travel. But it is possible for the awning to unwind by accident during travel. This has happened to many people over the years and once to my parents while driving on a cold rainy windy sleety winter night on an interstate. Traditional arm locks are not enough. Yes, their awning unfurled and it was dangerously flapping out like a sail into the next lane! They had to carefully pull over in the dark, and examine the damage that had ensued.  My folks were in their 70s and had no choice but to try to fix it and get off the dangerous section of the interstate where they were pulled over. They could not just roll it up, the arms had bent in the process. Now, while in the dark and wind and rainy sleet weather, they had to crawl up on the roof and strap it up around their air conditioners and vents to be able to finish their journey.  

After that happened to them, Steve started thinking.  He came up with this: 

I am pleased to say it works perfectly

and we have never had an unfurling 

in the past eight years since he made this for our rig! 

~~~~~~~~

We managed to make it to midnight last night for Happy New Years.  We both are battling some kind of bug. Steve seems to have it worse than me.  So either I avoided the full blown junk, or else it is pending, doomed to come? 

I sewed on my quilts until about 10 pm, then we shared a dish of ice cream as our treat.  We nixed the bottle of wine idea, because of the cold medicine in our systems. Although, I proposed the thought of us getting all gussied up in our finest clothes to dance around the dining room by candlelight, which Steve nixed that idea. LOL  Instead we crawled into our jammies and watched tv until midnight. Then it was a kiss, a hug, and rolled over to go to sleep. Hello 2017! 

Today we were both feeling a little better and we took the dogs out for a walk for few miles while the weather was nice. It was in the low 30s and dry pavement to walk on without slipping.  But later this week it will sink down to sub zero temps, so we got in some walking while we could. 

 We are thinking of taking down the Christmas tree tomorrow. 

For projects today, I had some stain out to touch up a special Christmas present from the kids and I will post about that tomorrow when it is hung up in its special place. I did some staining here and there of bits of floor molding trim Steve added around the house a while back. I also touched up a few chips and scratches too. 

I was able to get some sewing done this afternoon... I finally finished up the extra foot wide sections on each side of this quilt I have been working on.  I need to clamp it to my frame and free motion the quilting designs to finish up the width. I wanted it wide enough for the king sized bed in our motorhome. For now I popped it on our bed in the house to see how it looked.  Steve said he likes it enough to leave it on the bed for awhile. 

I call it my Copper Log Cabin quilt because the colors remind of the changing hues of copper as it ages, and Log Cabin because that is the pattern design that I used. 

The Packer vs Lions game is on right now, (for the NFC Championship!) and we popped a Dina Mia pizza into the oven for a late supper.  So I am going to sign off here and think of the next three Motorhome Modifications I will post tomorrow.