August 31st - Marge is Home and a Meltdown Discovered

Yesterday we drove to Union, Missouri and retrieved Marge from the RV repair shop. Hopefully after paying $1,965.15 the slides are fixed for the rest of my life. It was not a simple adjustment. We were told that their diagnosis was that there was not strong enough metal on the frame. As the two large slides moved in and out the beams flexed causing the slides to rub and wear against the top of the RV. Things had to be taken apart to access the area and reinforcing metal had to be welded on. This was a labor intensive job. Good to have her home.

Today I was plugging Marge into the electric at the house so I could vacuum and I pulled out the 30 amp cord and the 50 amp to 30 amp dog bone adapter I use for this. I was shocked to see that the female end of the 30 amp cord looked like this. It was badly melted which is obviously very bad.

I then looked at the plug on the 50 to 30 amp adapter that plugged into it and it looked like this. 

The yellow rubber was melted just a little on each flat prong. The two prongs are still tight but were burnt brown and black all over.

On our way back through the States from Newfoundland it was hot and at several campgrounds the voltage was very low since everyone was using their air-conditioning. Because of the low voltage we were opted not to use the AC at all for long periods on several days but we did turn it on at night when the load was lighter and the voltage went up. Apparently, even being cautious, the low voltage caused the rig to pull too many amps causing the plugs to melt. When plugs melt it is usually at connections that are loose or overloaded. These plugs were not loose. In fact the female 30 amp plug that melted so badly was a newer replacement. I have to assume that either the replacement plug was defective or the low voltage and high amp draw when we were able to use the AC caused the meltdown. Either one is not good.

I ordered a new female plug for the 30 amp cord and will install it upon arrival. I then cleaned up the male end of the 50 amp adapter with a brush in my Dremel tool and sprayed it with a contact cleaner and protector. It now looks like this.

Since the prongs are tight it is still usable. If they were at all loose I would throw it away and get a new one or put a new end on it.  From now on I'm going to have to be mindful of the need to check connections when voltage is low. If they get warm at all they need to be disconnected.

Another upgrade on Marge this weekend was installing a fuel filter on the generator. Surprisingly it has never had one. I had a piece of gas line and one hose clamp so all I had to buy was one more hose clap to make the installation.  Here is a picture of the orange filter in place. I will carry a spare.

Yesterday I ran the generator for a significant period of time and there was no oil leak. I can only assume that the last oil leak was due to my failing to properly tighten the fill cap. Good news.

We want the generator in good working condition for the trip to Albuquerque the end of this month for the Balloon Fiesta. We will be boondocking (no water or electric hookups.) We can run the generator to make coffee, for Kelly to curl her hair, and charge the batteries as needed.

For my birthday and Father's Day my daughter, Annie, gave me a gift certificate to get Marge washed. I made an appointment today and they will be here to wash it on Sunday September 15th. It needs it after the trip to Newfoundland and back and another week in the shop with dirty hand prints all over it on one side.

August 27th - More RV Repairs

Marge is still in the shop in Union, Missouri. (It has been two weeks plus.)  Unfortunately it was not just a matter of adjusting the slides. They have been adjusted twice before. They determined that the I-beams the slides go in on were flexing with the weight and needed to have pieces welded on to correct the problem. It is a $1,500.00 job and they don't guarantee it will solve the problem but they think it will. It has to help. What choice do we have anyway? We can't have the slideouts eating into the side of the camper.  They are waiting for a new seal to come in. We should get it back by the end of the week. They could not get the new AC unit compressor to act up, which I figured would be the case, so it is not fixed. Hopefully it will continue to operate.

I took Bart (our HHR towed vehicle) in to get an oil change and tires rotated yesterday. That all went well but in rotating the tires they found that one of the rear coil springs had broken. Very unusual on a passenger car. This had to happen since last year when I had new shocks put on. The repair was $190.00 parts and labor. Got him back today.

We took Kelly's Acura to St. Louis for the second time yesterday to get the windshield replaced due to a crack. The first time they had the wrong windshield. This time after four hours they determined that they could not get the front camera recalibrated through the aftermarket windshield. They sent us home and will contact the insurance company to see if they will pay for an OEM windshield. It will then have to be ordered and we will have to make another trip to St. Louis once it arrives to get it installed. If the insurance company will not pay for an OEM windshield, we will have to pay the difference. We already have a $100.00 deductible. All this new fangled stuff is a pain in the butt.

Last week I replaced some floor tiles in the entry and Kitchen area of Homer which had yellowed for some reason and looked terrible. Here is a picture of one of the tiles I took out. There were about twenty tiles like this. I'm hoping it was just a bad batch of tiles and that the replacements will not do the same.

Here is a picture of the work in progress. These are peel and stick tiles and fortunately they came up fairly easily.

Here is a picture of the finished floor. Hopefully the new tiles will not yellow. If they do I will take all the tile up and put something else back down. Doing this will be a several day project because the dinette, couch, and toilet all have to be taken out and there is a lot of cutting and fitting from front to back which slows the project down.

Homer is scheduled in next week for an oil change, inspection, and the front rotors resurfaced or replaced, as well as the front brake pads. The front brakes have gotten a little hot on a couple of occasions over the last four years.

Once we get Homer back I will schedule the truck in for a front end alignment and oil change after the Newfoundland-Labrador trip. Hopefully that will be the end of our vehicle issues for quite a while.

August 12th-18th - Joliet RV Rally and Indiana Visit

On  the 12th we drove to Joliet, Illinois for the last Carri-Yal Rally of the season. The rally was hosted by club members Bill and Karen who live in the area. We took Homer because Marge is in the shop and Homer needed a good run anyway. Our rally was at the RV Park at the Hollywood Casino in Joliet. We had nice sites and a free breakfast each morning at the hotel nearby.

While it rained at night the day weather was great. One day we toured the old Joliet Prison which was abandoned in 2007. Unfortunately there was a lot of vandalism to it before the Historical Society took it over last year. The architecture of the place is amazing. Here are a couple of pictures of the outside. It is all made out of Joliet limestone for which the town is known. Prisoners quarried the stone and built the prison in four years. Part of the "Blues Brothers" movie was filmed here years ago when it was still in operation.

Being inside this place was no picnic. Here is a picture of the very first cell for two people. No water, no toilet. There was one bucket for water and one bucket for waste. It was 4 foot by 7 foot by 7foot. This was hard time.

Of course the women prisoners were kept separate. Interestingly the women were only allowed out of their cells ONE DAY PER YEAR.  When they were let out they gathered on the cistern. Here is a picture of the cistern in the middle of the prison. Crazy.

We toured downtown Joliet which is known for its murals and the Rialto Theater. Here is a picture of some of the murals by the train depot. Most murals depict life in the city over the years. Sadly many are in need of major restoration.

We also went down to the Rialto Theater. It was not open so we were not able to tour the inside which they say is over the top. It is a magnificent theater which now shows movies and hosts other events.

Another day during the week we took a boat tour of the Des Plaines River from Starved Rock State Park.  Here is a picture of our group boarding the trolley to the boat dock.

Here are a couple of pictures on the boat ride toward the dam. It was a beautiful evening for a boat ride. The Asian Carp were jumping up as we motored along. They get excited by the vibration of the boat motor. They are an invasive species that they are trying to contain by various means.

The last day of the rally we went to the Joliet Museum which depicted life in Joliet over the years. It was really well done. There was this new building which was attached to the church they purchased on the right. It made for a beautiful museum inside with the stained glass windows.

For our last evening we went to Bicentenial Park where the city provided free live music each Thursday night. This week it was two bands who took turns playing. One band was a polka band and the other was a Sinatra tribute band. Both were quite good and entertaining. We just took our chairs and enjoyed it all. Many got up and danced as well.

After a great rally, on Friday morning after breakfast we drove to Fort Wayne, Indiana to visit Jim and Marilyn our friends who moved there from Middlebury, Indiana this year. Some years ago Jim lived in our subdivision and we RVed with him and his then wife, Kathy. We had a nice visit and got home Sunday afternoon and unpacked until our next trip.

July 18th - August 2nd - Repairing Marge

Since getting home from Newfoundland I have been working on repairing things on Marge that needed to be fixed and making some changes (improvements) we deemed necessary after traveling in her for six weeks.

Major problem:

A major issue is that the slide out on the driver side moved and is wearing badly on the outside wall. Here is a picture of the back and front of the slide out. The red arrows point to where the wear is taking place on the wall. In the second picture an arrow also points to the seal that is falling off (even after I glued it back on during the trip). I can't fix this myself so I made an appointment at 3R RV in Union, Missouri, to get it fixed next week.

Next issue:

Last fall 3R RV put a new AC unit on Marge and it has acted up on occasion by the compressor kicking off, grunting, and then kicking back on when it should just be continually running. I'm hoping they will replace the whole unit it under warranty but the problem is it probably won't act up when it is there.

First improvement:

For years I have been stuffing the umbilical cord, which makes the electrical connection between the truck and the RV when underway, into the open area of the trailer hitch when not connected.  I decided to install a hook on the side of the hitch to hang the cord on. I didn't coiling the cord in the hitch because this often bent the cord at the plug. You can see this in the picture. I like this setup a lot better and should have done it some time ago.

Sewer Smell Issue:

An issue that has arisen on occasion in the past and rose again on this trip is a sewer smell in the bathroom from time to time. We have had this happen off and on over the years. I thought I had it corrected by the installation of a 360 Siphon vent cap on the roof. The siphon cap is designed to pull the sewer gases out of the holding tank by using the wind. It has worked well but periodically we still had a major sewer smell. I thought this trip that maybe we were getting a smell periodically due to fewer dumps of the waste tank or that there was a chance that the sewer vent was stopped up. When we got home I got a hose and ran water down the vent pipe on the roof. If the pipe is not stopped up the water should just run down into the holding tank. Before I could get off the ladder to check the tank drain for water I saw water running out of the bottom of the camper. This should not happen at all. Even if the vent pipe is blocked up, the water I was putting in should have backed up the vent pipe and out on the roof, not into the camper anywhere. I shut off the water and I crawled underneath but could see nothing. I then proceeded to move everything out of the storage compartment and remove the side wall to get a look at the vent pipe itself.

I turned the water back on and crawled into the storage compartment with a flashlight to see where the water was coming from. It was running down the pipe toward the tank but then just running off the bottom of an elbow. I crawled further into the basement area to feel where the water was coming from. As I felt around the pipe I found a hole on the back side of the pipe and then another smaller hole on the front side of the pipe. The water was just hitting the hole in back and running out the pipe rather than down into the tank. Not much water should ever get down the vent pipe because it has a cap on it to prevent water getting in. The vent pipe's purpose is to vent any sewer gases outside. It should be solid not have any holes in it. Holes let sewer gases out. In this case it was letting sewer gas get into the basement area and then they would migrate up into the bathroom above. Here is a picture of the vent pipe with my flashlight in back of it. The holes couldn't have been from drilling that hole in the wood in back of it because the holes in the pipe were two different sizes with the largest one being over a half inch in diameter.

These holes had to be in this pipe from the factory. The only thing I can think happened is that someone picked up a piece of pipe with these holes in it and installed it without looking it over. Crazy!!! Anyway a project I thought would take about a half hour (flushing water down the vent pipe to unclog it) ended up taking most of the day by the time I pulled everything out of the storage compartment, took out the wall, covered the holes with Eterna Bond tape, and put the wall and cargo back in.

Next project:

Last year we purchased two recliners to replace the reclining love seat which we found uncomfortable. The recliners are rocking recliners so they are not the wall away type. When we arrive somewhere we have to pull them out to use them then push them back when we pack up. It is always a guess as to how for to pull them out and how far to push them back in. They didn't push all that well on the carpet and just getting in and out of them regularly causes them to move around so that they end up rubbing on each other and on the side wall.

I decided to make a wooden runner for the chairs to sit on with cleats to keep the chairs in line, to stop them when pushing them back for travel, and to stop them at the right distance when pulling them out so we can fully recline. I used plywood and 3/4 inch cleats for this project and varnished it so they would slide easily. Here is a picture. All you see is a little of the plywood base. It seems to work great but we will need a trip under our belt to make a final assessment and maybe some adjustments.

Next project-improvement:

Marge has a foldout couch for guests. It looks nice and sits nice, but it is terribly uncomfortable as a bed. Here is a picture.

The first reason it is so uncomfortable as a bed is that the foam mattress originally laid on a stretched black fabric attached to the sides with springs. It was like sleeping on a hammock with metal supports in the  middle of your back. Here is a picture of the fabric stretched over one of the metal bars.

A couple of years ago taking my friend Bob's idea I covered the entire bed area with 5/8 inch plywood. This provided a firm surface so that the metal supports were not pushing up into your back. Being a foldout the plywood had to be installed in hinged sections. It was an improvement.  Here is a picture.

You will notice, however, that the bed surface is not flat. It goes up and down because of the support legs below. I thought about cutting a piece off of each metal leg to take the hump out but was a little leery of doing so being afraid it might compromise the bed in some other way. I consulted with my friend Bob and we decided that the best thing to do was to put a block under the foot end so that the surface would then be flat, even though that would cause the foot end to be higher than the couch end.

Surprisingly it took an inch and half block of wood under the foot legs to get the hump out. Here is a picture of the block of wood under the legs. It will be stored under the couch when not in use.

Here is a picture of the mattress surface with the board under the foot legs.

While the foot end (on the right) looks higher, when it has weight on it the end levels out. Guests will have to sleep with their head at the foot end. It is the best I can do to improve a piece of junk foldout bed. If it remains too uncomfortable we will not use it and carry a blowup mattress instead. Unfortunately a blowup mattress takes up more room.

Our next trip will be a couple of days in Northern Illinois for an RV rally. We will take Homer, he needs to be exercised.  The end of September we will take Marge to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, New Mexico.