August 12 - 23, 2024 - Homer Door Adjustment - Campout Trip - Headlight Lenses Restored - Battery Replacement

I noticed that it was becoming necessary to slam Homer's entry door to get it to catch properly. Upon investigating I found that the door was sagging a bit, causing the door latch prongs to hit the door jam striker plate. The slamming action would lift the door into the striker plate slots. The latch prongs and striker plate slots should be even so the door latches without a lot of effort.

To address the problem I made aluminum shims and placed three under the lower hinge and two under the middle hinge. Here is a picture of one set of shims. The arrow points to the shims. I also found one of the screws on the middle hinge had broken off so I replaced it.

The shims moved the bottom of the door toward the lock side of the frame but the striker plate on the jam was still too low. Here is a picture of the lock guides hitting the striker plate on the top and bottom. Sorry for the poor picture quality.

The striker plate needed to be adjusted down by loosening the two Philllips head bolts in the picture below. 

These bolts had probably never been moved and I soon found that I could not budge them with a screwdriver. Luckily, last winter, at a garage sale in Florida, for $5.00 I purchased a screw impact tool.  Here is what the set looks like.

This is a tool I will rarely use but when it is needed, like now, it is worth its weight in gold. How it works it that you put the appropriate bit in the tool, place it in the screw or bolt head, and then strike the tool with a hammer several times. The impact action slightly turns the bit, thus loosening the screw or bolt. I put the Phillips bit in the tool and hit it several times with a hammer. Both bolts loosened allowing me to adjust the striker plate down. Money well spent! Success. The door shuts much better now.

August 17, 2024

At 6:00 a.m. we headed out in Homer for a campout with friends in Ortonville, Michigan, and then an RV club campout in Pierre Marquette State Park in Illinois.

On our way we were stopping overnight in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to visit friends Jim and Marilyn. We mooch camp in their driveway. 

Last fall we spent $1,800.00 getting the transmission fixed on Homer and thought everything was well. We made a four hundred mile trip, no problem, a five hundred mile trip, no problem. We got three hundred miles to Terre Haute, Indiana, and the transmission acted up again, the same problem as before. We were able to make it to Fort Wayne, Indiana. 

August 18, 2024:

We spent the night at Jim and Marilyn's and decided to head back home early in the morning to get Homer back to the transmission shop. Upon leaving their place the transmission acted up immediately. We headed back to their driveway to spend another night until we could call a transmission shop on Monday.

August 19, 2024:

First thing in the morning we got a recommendation for a transmission shop and Jim drove me over there to discuss the problem. We were told they could work on it but that they couldn't look at it for a couple of days. I then contacted my towing insurance who sent out a wrecker. Here is a picture of Homer being hooked up and a video of him being towed off for the first time ever.

While waiting for the tow truck Jim drove me to the airport, about fifteen minutes away, to rent a car to get home. We borrowed coolers to hold our cold food and bagged the other groceries and our clothes in trash bags. We left at noon and got home at 7:00 p.m. Quite a disappointment. The transmission folks asked for copies of the invoices for the transmission work done last fall so they could start from there. I got those emailed. I hope they can find the problem this time.

August 20, 2024:

We had to have the rental car back by 11:30 a.m. so we took a quick trip to Cape Girardeau to get that done. 

August 21, 2024:

Not planning on being home this week, and with time on my hands, I decided to polish the yellowed and foggy headlight lenses on the truck. The truck was recently detailed but apparently that was not part of what I paid for.

I opened the door to the truck to back it out and immediately found the battery totally dead. This has happened several times over the past year. The truck was in the shop last month trying to find a phantom draw on the battery. They could not find one but did find that the second Walmart battery I had put in this year was bad. It was still under warranty so I took it back to Walmart for a third battery. 

The truck sat for about a week and again a completely dead battery.  I called my mechanic to schedule an appointment to find the battery draw. I think the odds of getting three bad batteries from Walmart in a year is astronomical but my mechanic thinks otherwise. He had me come to the shop the next day to get a battery of the brand they install and try it for a month before they start spending time and money looking for a draw on the battery. 

Once the truck was charged up I got it out of the garage and began to work on the headlight lenses. I neglected to take a picture of the headlight lenses, which were foggy and yellowed. Both polished up nicely using cleaner wax and a buffer. I did, however, take a picture of the fog lights, which clearly had never been cleaned before. Here is a before and after picture.

While polishing the fog lights one light appeared loose so I crawled under to see what that was about. As I crawled under I found that one of the bolts that holds on the metal skid plate under the engine was broken off. This was allowing the plate to vibrate a little. Not good. 

I got busy drilling the broken bolt out. Pushing the drill up while laying on your back is a pain. With the help of about five different drill bits I finally got the broken bolt drilled out. I then took another bolt out and went to Buchheit's to get a matching bolt. I have hundreds of similarly sized bolts but none of them are metric. Once home the bolts were reinstalled and the skid plate is secure. Ready for a trip to California in October!

 

August 22, 2024:

When I went to start the truck in the morning to get the new battery, it did not have enough charge to start even though I charged it the night before. I charged it up, picked up the new battery, and installed it. We will see how this battery lasts. Actually, I hope my mechanic is right that the Walmart batteries are junk! This would be a cheap fix.

Late afternoon Kelly came home from a meeting and told me that there was a rock chip in the middle of the windshield of her 2021 Acura. Great! I called the insurance company because they will pay for a chip repair. I then called Liberty Glass in town and they scheduled me in for an appointment at 9:00 a.m. the next day.

August 23, 2014:

By 9:15 a.m. the chip was repaired. Hopefully no more vehicle issues this month!

 

 

August 7 - 11, 2024 - Getting Homer Ready for Trip to Indiana-Michigan-Illinois and a Flatbed Trailer Project

 MY BLOG REFLECTION

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Mark Twain

August 7, 2024  -  Homer Out of Storage and Ready for a Trip

We got Homer out of storage unit. We arrived and ended up having to call the owner of the storage facility to get the code to get in. I'm not sure if I forgot it or if he changed it. I do like this added security installed last year. 

The only issue with Homer so far is the solenoid for the internal battery charger not working (again). I thought maybe the house batteries were too low to energize the solenoid so I hooked up an external charger for a couple of hours. Once the batteries were charged the internal battery charger was still not charging the batteries. It was operating correctly but there was no charge getting to the batteries. I hit the solenoid in the battery compartment with a hammer handle a couple of times and it is now working. Tis happened on our last trip to Cuba, Missouri, earlier this summer. I now carry an external charger just in case this happens again. I purchased a new solenoid but since this one is now working, and it is such a pain to change out, I will wait and see how it does on this trip.

August 8, 2024 - Flatbed Trailer Floor Replacement

The deck boards on our flatbed trailer needed to be replaced. This trailer is primarily used to haul our lawn mower out to the lake lot to cut the grass. The trailer is only about three years old but the decking boards totally rotted out. Here is a picture.

The individual boards were much worse than I envisioned. The ends literally crumbled as I pulled them out and the rot in the middle became much more apparent.

 

To save money the trailer manufacturer did not use treated 2 x 8s. I can see why. I purchased eleven treated replacement boards and they cost $212.00. The young man at the lumber yard did a wonderful job of picking out "decent" boards for this project. At his suggestion I laid the boards out in the shade to dry for two days. The boards were quite wet with the chemical they soak them in to treat them. He said laying them out in the sun would cause warping.

Once the boards were removed it was clear I needed to paint the surface area of the framework before installing new boards, especially since the new boards are treated wood. The wood treatment chemical is known to attack unpainted metal. 

Twelve foot long treated 2 x 8s were heavy for this old man to handle. I cut and fitted each board in place then removed them so I could paint the metal frame. I won't paint the boards.

August 10, 2024 - Frame Painted

The Rustoleum product that I ordered, which encapsulates the rust and protects the surface, arrived. I sprayed the entire can. It covered the areas of the frame I wanted but it was not a very thick coat. I decided to buy two more cans of regular paint and sprayed it on top to further protect the steel frame. Here is a picture of the surface area of the frame painted. I didn't worry about the areas of the frame that do not touch the wood. The black paint I sprayed on looked brown until it dried.

August 11, 2024 - Deck Boards Installed and Bolted Down

After church I reinstalled all the new boards. Better than new. They will outlast me. 

The next couple of days I will finish checking some items on Homer and load him for the trip. We leave on Saturday for two weeks. I hope the weather stays cool.