MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS - *L* Ladder, Lights and Louverectomy~ Loom and Icy Yard

I am going to start off the new year with posting some of our motorhome modifications, a few 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, we are up to the letter L now!

MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS 

STARTING WITH THE LETTER L

Ladder (telescoping):

Steveio said he just HAD to have one.... so I bought this for him about twelve years back for Christmas. He had NO idea it was coming and was pretty surprised. Our friends, Rich and Mary, had a collapsible ladder for their motorhome  and Steveio was drooling over it.



It reaches all the way up to the motorhome roof, as our rig does not have a built-in ladder on the back. I think it is 12 feet tall.  Just perfect for the motorhome and stows away in a small space next to his tool drawers.

Ladder helpers:
These are foam blocks that are made to haul a canoe on the roof of a car or truck.  But Steveio figured out that they would clamp on the sides of the ladder. Not only do they protect the painted edge of the roof or the awning (like in this photo) the foam surface also grips to prevent the ladder from sliding or slipping sideways!

Light Replacements:
Our rig had two of the most useless "map lights" on each side of the cockpit area. The lights were very dim, and didn't shine down, they showed out instead. arggh!

Steve took care of that right away.  It was my idea to paint a used CD disk with black paint for a backing fixture base for the new lights.  I am happy to say they work wonderfully now.



We also replaced some of the 12 volt lights with LED bulbs. I am not nuts on the blueish green light they emit, but Steve seems to like them. We use them when the power is going down and we are not getting much sun on the solar panels till the next day.


LED bulbs use a lot less power than anything else.  We will soon upgrade all of our lights to LED’s now that price is coming down on them.


Little speakers for MP3 player:
I know I am a bit of "old school" with a tiny MP3 player.  But this little device runs forever on a AAA battery.  Even old batteries from other things like remotes or flashlight that are seemingly used up will still play for hours yet on this little MP3 player.  The speakers let me play it without using power on the rig, or wearing down my cell phone to play music from my own files on the phone.  It is pretty basic and I load up the songs by plugging in the USB end of the device into my laptop and copy them over. Easy peasy.

The speakers we ran across on a clearance one time at Walmart years ago.  They do not need any power source of any kind, they just run off whatever device you plug them into.  They deliver such a clear good sound, better than any other speakers we have tried.

We like this little set up so much, I bought two more of the little MP3 players and two more sets of speakers I found on Ebay.  I have one set in our house and one out on front porch to enjoy tunes and not need to be plugged in. I can take it outside and set on the table, or bring into the bedroom and set on the bedside table.  Of course I can use it with headphones too.

P.S. for me it's all Celtic, New Age and soft 70's like Jim Croce, John Denver, Carly Simon and Neil Young.  Then for fun it's Supertramp, Fleetwood Mac, Simon and Garfunkel and America.  For Steve he has a full set of The Sounds of the Seventies that we crank out when he is feeling frisky!  LOL


Louverectomy:
This is a common modification among the Safari owners of this vintage.  It really helps to increase the air flow around the engine compartment. I just love the phrase that fellow Safari owners coined to describe the process!

Our engine runs cooler, especially if we are climbing high hills out west and pulling our Tracker along behind.  It improves the heat buildup in the engine compartment under the bed that radiates into the back bedroom as well.

That is it for the letter L .... 

tomorrow we will start out with the letter M---

~~~~~~~

Yesterday, I posted about weaving a rag rug using two shuttles, one thick and one thin to create an interesting rug. I had a bunch of weavers email questions to me, and Facebook posters also messaging questions to me: "How on earth did I get the edges to look so nice when weaving with two shuttles and not skip and make strange selvages?"

I tried to write out an explanation in words, but I realized it would be much easier if I just set up my cell phone and made a little video clip. I posted it on YouTube because it seems to be the most easily accessible way to share a link with a video. Here it is:

I hope that helps someone.

Yesterday the sun was shining, although it was still quite cold and windy. We let the dogs out for a while in the Big Backyard to play. It's pretty icy and what little snow we have left is very crusty and hard. It's not really a fun place to play when the ground is all patchy ice, but it was good to get the dogs out and about a little bit. They really like their Big Backyard!

Here is a little video clip of Finnegan having some fun,
and Binney being the "Fun Police"
reporting to us the the fact that he is having fun.

This is the reason why they are out in the big backyard to play--- because their little poop yard which is closer to the house is suddenly totally frozen and inaccessible for little doggie paws. The recently melting snow has created a thick layer of ice in that low spot.  They skid and slide all over and can't find a good spot to "go".   Hope it melts soon, but we are due for more snow and ice in March, and into April. It's still Winter in Wisconsin!

The little poop yard near the house can connect to the big backyard with opening a gate at the corner of the garage. There is a long fenced-in runway behind the garage to get to the larger area. Sadly, the little gate is frozen right into the ice as well. So we have been taking them out through the garage to get to the big backyard for the time being. We are so glad we built this fenced area for the dogs, it's such a relief to not have to tie them out on ropes, and they are not going to escape out to the busy road.

Yesterday, we took a quick trip to the Verizon store in Appleton. 2 years ago, I got my droid Motorola Maxx 2 cell phone from them. Since the newest update on February 13th it's been acting very crazy. The battery goes dead in 2 hours, it keeps freezing the screen, or it starts up apps and programs that I'm not even using. It even feels hot to the touch when charging. Not good. The nice technician there explained the newest update is really over stressing the microprocessor of the 2 year old phone. He tried multiple times to diagnose and reset the phone. It would jam up, even in his technical troubleshooting modes.

He finally gave up and declared it irreparable. He ordered me a brand new phone to be shipped to me next week, under my protection plan I have on our account.  Whew! 

I love the phone and mostly the camera on it, and hope the new replacement is just as good and will last me for 2 more years. He said just don't run the newest update on it for about 3 months so Motorola can work out the bugs and develop a patch to override the problem.  I hate being a guinea pig for a company to see if their updates work or not? ARRGGHH