Good, bad, and ugly with a dose of reality

The good is we are back on the road, which we love, and we have to admit, even for folks like us that have been full-timing now for almost 15 years, the transition from sitting still for 4 months, to moving takes attention to detail.

Our first day was only 200 miles to a brand new campground in Chiefland, FL, that has a long way to go to be fully done.  And it doesn't look like it will stay on our radar as it appears they are gearing towards park models and permanents, and it is also apparent that whoever is building the park doesn't really have a lot of knowledge as to what is and isn't required for a primo RV resort.  For example, the electric hookups are not RV friendly and are mounted upside down so it is almost impossible to get your electric hooked up, the pull-throughs, while paved, are narrow and have no apron so it is impossible to pull in or out without running off in the grass.

Then we moved about 300 more miles to the Pensacola RV Park, NW of town, a nice park with huge sites that we would definitely go back to.  Then 550 miles to Longview, TX and Fernbrook RV Park, a very nice full service park that we have stayed at many times before.  The dose of reality is even though I generally feel pretty good, I just don't have my stamina back yet, that long day kicked my ass!  But it got us in position so we could accomplish the install that took us so far out of the way, the braking system for our new truck.  We still had about 100 miles to go the morning of our appointment, so we left as to arrive at M&G Engineering for our 930am appointment.  They were waiting for us and started as soon as we unhooked the truck.

Into the shop

The actuator

We had an M&G braking system on our last truck that uses a modification of the master cylinder which is M&G's invention, but on our new truck there is no room to install the same type unit so they use an air activated actuator that along with vacuum to the master cylinder, pulls a cable attached to the brake pedal, still a seamless operation that also provides runaway protection.  

Installing the cable

All done, the air connection, the wiring, and the breakaway

Now on to the bad, all on me.  There is an indicator light by the driver's seat in the coach that shows when the brakes are being applied in the truck, when we wired the lights on the truck, I was careful to wire up an extra wire so they could attach the indicator wire to it.  So when all was done, we hooked it up to make sure everything worked properly and no indicator light.  I was absolutely positive it was something they had done because I was positive I had wired in the correct wire, and unfortunately, I told them so.  Anyway, we left without an indicator light, and after we arrived here at Grapevine Lake, in between raindrops, lightning, and thunder I checked out the wiring, and found out that I was completely wrong, I had wired in the wrong terminal, I did apologize to M&G, and realize that I am evidently still under the influence of the anesthesia, that's my story and I'm sticking to it:-)  So after evaluating and fixing the light, I walked back around to put my tools away, and for the ugly, I see water running out under the plumbing bay, where no water should be.

I tear off a panel to see what's what, and find a ABS schedule 40 drain pipe has broken off at an elbow just before it enters the gray water tank, which means any water from the shower or washing machine pours out into the bay.  And after looking at it, we could see it had been seeping for awhile, so maybe the rough roads finally broke it off.

Panel off

Signs of a leak, it's really not as gross as it looks

If you look close you can see the break

Now the top of this elbow is basically impossible to access, it is under the shower pan, behind a reinforcing vertical member, so Jan with much arm bending was able to get in from above while I could sort of get in from below to figure out what to do.  Everything is spray foamed to insulate and isolate the basement from above so all that had to be torn out to get to the pipe.  I wanted to be able to replace the ABS, but we soon found out that short of tearing the entire shower out that wasn't going to happen.  Luckily this is a drain pipe so under hardly any pressure.

This gives you an idea of accessibility from above under the shower

And accessibility from underneath

We ended up cutting off the pipe, no easy feat either, and getting a flexible rubber repair coupling that would fit over the elbow flange on one side and the pipe on the other.  One glitch was when the coach was built they had barely cut a big enough hole in the floor and had left a small piece that had to be removed in order to fit the coupling over the flange. It went well only interrupted by us running inside twice to get out of the lightning and thunder.

Pipe cut

The offending corner that had to be removed

Repaired!!

We were able to have a nice visit with our daughter, Kelly while we were here and she took us to a fantastic sushi place nearby for lunch, Sushi Zen, in fact so good we went back the following day!  Now you just knew there would have to be food pictures, right?

We are at a campground right on Grapevine Lake, one of the nicest places we have been, The Vineyards, beautiful, huge paved sites, lots of room, reservable, excellent!

Our site

Coming sunset between raindrops!