MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS *A* and News of Sam and Donna Weibel

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 Conditioner Gasket change:

As many of you know, our motorhome is 20 years old! Old enough to vote, but not quite old enough to drink and drive itself, thank goodness.  LOL

Routine maintenance has kept it up in tip top shape, with 99% of it being done by ourselves.  The few things we have let other people do, we realize we could have done ourselves with a bit more information.  And also I think we would have done a better job, with more attention to details, and cost us much less in labor and parts.

So I try to take pics of the things we do ... step by step... and hope they will help someone else to do the job themselves too.  (rather than paying someone $100 an hour to do it)

We noticed a bit of water leaking down onto our bed from the back rooftop air conditioner.  This has happened once before on the front unit, and we learned a trick to remove the bottom plastic housing and tighten down on the three big bolts... compressing the gasket a bit more.

This time, we realized the gasket was squished down almost flat and not doing it's job on the back unit.  So we picked up two new gaskets to replace both of them when we had time.   Gaskets are generally available at most RV dealers.  We bought ours at Merz RV in Fond du Lac and they were pricier than what we found online.  We paid $35 each, but Steve wanted them NOW.... and not wait to order them I guess. Gotta keep the local RV dealers in business too.

Here is one I found online so you can get an idea of what I am talking about.  Yup, it is just a square shape of closed cell foam rubber that is sticky on one side.  We didn't use the leveling pads, perhaps those are for some fifth wheels I see with sloped rooftops where the AC unit is attached....  I think most RV's use the same gasket, as the hole in the rooftop is pretty universal in size.

I took step by step pics of the process. We have two Duo Therm Penguin rooftop air conditioners but I only documented changing out one of the gaskets.  They both were replaced the same way.

First .... UNPLUG your rig from any power source!   Then assemble all of the needed tools:

• aluminum sticky tape, 
• oscillating power tool, 
• permanent marking pen, 
• rags, 
• acetone, 
• ladder
• an assortment of various screwdrivers, ratchets, sockets
• and a camera to take pics

THE STEP BY STEP DIRECTIONS ARE NOTED ON EACH PICTURE:

 We looked up inside and saw why our gasket was leaking:

this part might be easier if done with TWO people, but Steve is strong.... 

I would suggest here that before you remove the old gasket material, 

to make some marks with a permanent marker. 

This will show you exactly where the new gasket needs to be attached... 

so it will perfectly line up with the rooftop hole.

If you had marked with a permanent pen here, 

you wouldn't have to guess where the gasket needs to be applied. 

Again, this next part would work better 

with two people lifting, 

and a third person on the inside 

to eyeball how it's lining up 

with the hole in the roof.

You could use duct tape here, but Steve had some of this on hand too

now to take care of a couple air leaks that were never done from the factory either.

We feel the air will flow better by plugging up the leaks

that should have been plugged from the time it was built.

Awning shade screen:

This is an awning sun screen that came with our rig.  We never realized how nice it was until we were camping in desert one year.  When the sun comes down at such an angle in the winter months, this really helped keep the light off the sides of the rig.  Some days it was 95 degrees out there and this really made a difference during the days!   These shots were snapped after supper, so the sun is even lower in the sky and kinda on an angle now.  But it was great for mid-day use!

The top edge of the screen has a thick rubber bead sewn into the top hem.  It slides in the extra unused awning track on the bottom surface of the roller.  It has some little grommets on the bottom edge to attach ropes and tie to stakes in the ground. It was kinda tough to pound in stakes into the hard packed desert gravel. I think even tying around a large rock on each corner would work too. 

It is thin enough that we could possibly roll it up with the awning each time, but can also be removed and stowed it away in it's bag in a compartment. 

And... that is it for the letter A. Tomorrow I will start with the letter B. We will post about hings like batteries and backup cameras and boosters and blocks. Stay tuned! 

~~~~~~~~~

What kind of crazy weather is this in January in Wisconsin?  We had freezing rain all night, roads are glare ice and the temp is at 33. Schools are delayed or cancelled. Steve hauled in the trash containers for us and the elderly neighbor lady next door.  He said it was quite slippery.  Today is the first REAL day of his retirement because if he was still working, he would have had yesterday off for vacation.  I am SOOOO glad he didn't have to get out and drive today to the park. 

We have a pot of coffee going and are discussing what we would like to get done today. I write part of the blog in the mornings, and add to it in the evenings before I post it.  So hopefully we will do something fun or exciting today to have something to post about.  But I do think that we are going to take down the Christmas Tree and put away the decorations from around the inside of the house. Fun, eh? 

P.S. added later... we did get to take down the tree and put away most of the inside decorations. My oh my, the house looks so BARE now!  It was kinda sad to pack it all away. We removed the presents from under the tree and put them all away too. 

Steve helped me hang one of the gifts we got from daughter Erin and soninlaw Waylen.  How thoughtful to make this with all of our grandkids' names on plaques.  The word GRANDKIDS is done with colorful string around nails. We decided to put up on the wall in my kitchen to gaze upon any time I am hanging out at the island.  

(the pics in frames on top were already there) 

On a serious note:  Fellow RV bloggers Sam and Donna Weibel are both in serious condition in the hospital.  http://samdonna-5thwheelvagabonds.blogspot.com/  We have been waiting for updates and Sams sister Wendy sent me this update: 

Karen this is Sam's sister. Here is an update: Just a quick update on my brother Sam Weibel and my sister in law Donna Dutson Weibel. It has been a week since Sam was admitted into the hospital with what appeared to be a mild stroke but he then became agitated and incoherent. He wasn't eating or sleeping. MRI showed no stroke and even though he had fallen a few hours before symptoms started apparently there is no signs of head injury or concussion which would have showed up in the MRI. Today the did a spinal tap and we are waiting for those results. So basically we have no answers for sure what has happened and where to go from here. He was asking for his twin brother and he did go see Sam today so I am praying this was what Sam needed to turn around and come back to us. Donna is making improvements. She is still in the ICU but only has to use the cpap at night. They are hoping that tomorrow she can be moved to a regular room. They are both in the same hospital which makes it a little easier on my nephew but not much. I feel so bad that he is there with no family with him. Again I am asking for continued prayers for all of us. The waiting and not knowing is very very hard. I know I have friends on FB who know my brother as well as family members that I may not be able to call or texted/messaged so this is also a way to let them know what is going on. God Bless everyone and I hope we all have a Happy Healthy 2017

This has to be very hard on the family,
and their doggie members Riggens, Charlie and Sadie Mae too!

MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS *A* and Homemade Chicken Soup

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 

Awning Lights and Clips:

Just about every RV in a campground has awning lights attached to the valance of their awning. Sometimes called Party Lights. Our motorhome has a fabric awning... without a thick hemmed edge on the valance. It is not the thicker plastic coated type of awnings you see on many RVs.  Thus it makes it more difficult to use regular clips or clothespins to hold on a string of awning lights.  They just slide off the edge with the slightest movement.

Over the years we have had various party light sets.... and we finally stumbled on a set of clips that worked with our awning. 

They are tiny double metal clasping types that are reminiscent of the kind our moms used to keep our mittens attached to our jacket cuffs so we didn't lose them! Made by Camco and sold in most RV stores, along with Walmart and Amazon too.  Called Camco Lantern Snaps. 

We also have some of the fabric with rubber glide tabs that slide into the groove of the awning roller, but using little S hooks was not practical either.  We do use a few if we are hanging a spinning doo dad or a little sign. 

I leave these Lantern Snaps attached permanently to the light sets (being careful to not snap through a wire) and just clamp them onto the awning when we put them up. Easy to take down in a rush for an oncoming storm, and you don't lose them on the ground because they are still snapped to the light wires yet. 

We gave away that light set shown in those previous pics, and just this past summer we found this pretty set at World Market on sale. It looks so cool and patriotic! They are glass, but we put them carefully in a tote when not in use. 

Alternator Woes:

Our motorhome with a 3126 Cat diesel engine has burned through FIVE alternators in the last 10 years since we have owned it. 

• Some motorhome folks believe it is the added strain on the alternator of leaving in the morning and having to charge up the camping (coach) batteries after being drained overnight. 
• Other motorhome owners say it is from not being used every day like a car alternator.  
• Some motorhome folks say we need a larger one than what originally came in our rig, and to stop replacing it with the same size. 

Whatever the reason, we have replaced alternators five times. It is NOT fun to be stranded. We have had to drive with holding down the ''boost'' button on the dash that connects our engine (chassis) batteries to the camping (coach) batteries and running the generator to keep up the charge level to get home. If too low of a battery charge, the transmission will not shift, its electronic.   Nope not fun.

After the third one went out while down in Florida last winter, Steve even tried to rebuild it, but that didn't solve the intermittent charging problem either.  It would fluctuate and not charge steady. Then he ordered a fourth alternator while in Florida to bolt up just so we could get home.  That burned out in just 100 miles on the road.

Obviously, that still didn't solve the problem so we ran jumpers from coach batteries to chassis batteries to get home. We ran the generator the whole way for 1,300 miles. Whew.... And I might want to mention also that the inverter which changes our coach battery power from 12 volt DC to 120volt AC was acting goofy too.... Hmmmm?

This leads us to a sub subject also starting with the letter A is
Access to Our Engine Compartment:
When Steve does this kind of work, we are fortunate that our whole king sized bed lifts up for access to the engine compartment.  Motorhomes with bedroom slides usually only have trap doors and acceess holes to reach things from above the engine. That is why many semi truck places do not want to work on motorhomes, or charge a higher labor rate per hour.  We do not have a bedroom slide out unit, so our entire king bed lifts up insead.

The compression struts have long ago given out, so he lifts up the bed and also supports it with an extra prop pole that is really a cargo retaining rod for delivery trucks (found at Harbor Freight around $15)

Okay.. back to the alternator and what we found out was REALLY the problem....

Once we got home, we chatted with a local guy who rebuilds alternators.  He said we should replace the alternator again with a brushless larger one, they run in the $300 range but he had one on the shelf for $160. He said all the semi trucks with Cat engines were going to this one. It cost more but we decided to try it.

Since the fourth alternator was a fairly newly rebuilt,  we were perplexed as to why it was not putting out enough amps. It was intermittent, sometimes 12 or 12.5... and other times 13 or higher. He said he would bench test that one for us.... and hooked it up.  I got to watch and learn.  It was not putting out a charge of course.  He took off the rotor section to test and the regulator was shot as well as some other parts inside.  All the diodes were burnt right off, like over fried from something back feeding! 


He said to go home and test our isolator.  That is an electrical unit that splits the power from the alternator and sends it either to the chassis batteries or the house batteries, but doesn't let them bleed over into each other. Well, Steve bypassed the isolator on the chassis battery post by putting all three wires onto one post just to hold them together.  

BINGO!   that was it!   The isolator must have been malfunctioning and back feeding into our alternators and burning them out. The rebuild guy said that is how the others got fried. It made sense.

Nobody locally carries isolators, so we had to place an order on Amazon to get one delivered in a few days. 

Here is the old isolator... it is mounted on the wall in the engine compartment which is open to the dusty road and dirty diesel engine.  That is probably 20 years of accumulated dirt on it. LOL...

NOCO IDG200HP   $55.27 from Amazon

 Steve hooked up the wires and double checked and triple checked each one....

•  2 wires on the left are to the chassis batteries and solenoid boost switch on the dash...
•  (next post is skipped)
•  the center post is the alternator and the engine clock. 
• The far right post is for the chassis (house) batteries.

Everything is working properly... even the inverter!  

Whatever was back-feeding with the old isolator is now corrected.

Whew....  and since then everything has been fine as frogs hair.

Here is my third A hint:
Awning Arm Trick for Cleaning: 

Cleaning an RV awning is not a fun job, but it needs to be done a couple times a year.  We found out this little trick for making it easier. Of course you can lower your awning like this to scrub the underside. 

But here is the trick to reach the topside.  Unhook your awning arms where they attach to the side of the rig.  Now carefully lower them down so they can slide underneath the body of your RV!

Now you can easily reach the topside surface, scrub it with a long handled broom or 

brush on an extension pole, and easy to spray off with a hose! 

P.S. We clean our fabric awning with mild car wash soap.
Some folks with the plastic coated awnings find that
Bleche-White automotive tire cleaner works well for them. 

~~~~~~~~~

Now that those three Motorhome Modification posts are done, I will put in more of my regular blog stuff now below.  Did you know my first post of three A mods garnered 2424 views! 

and the one from last night is almost to 1,000!
Thank you for reading my blog!!!!!


~~~~~~~~~

Today is kinda like a normal Monday but different because Steve is home now. We had a leisurely morning and then went out to remove our Christmas Decorations from the outside of the house. It was warm in the mid 30s to get them all down without cracking wires or busting lights from the cold. Tomorrow the temps will drop and we are going into subzero stuff later on in the week. 

Steve is feeling better from his cold, but it is starting to take me down. I was up most of the night feeling yucky.  I crawled into a warm bed this afternoon for a well-needed nap, and I woke up to the most heavenly smell.  Steve had simmered up a pot of homemade chicken soup with veggies and bow tie noodles! YUMMMMMM  

Maybe we will start to take apart the tree tonight. 

Maybe not. 

I am thinking I might sneak upstairs and do 

some more sewing on my next quilt. 

And because I have not posted any cute pics of the dogs recently,

here is one of where they are right now, at my feet. 

(this is Binney, Finney is laying behind her)

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.