As the Year Draws to an End, Two More Projects, One Planned and One Not

I know you've been riveted on my year end recap, but while here in Florida we have been busy.  We completed one project that was planned and one that came a lot sooner than anticipated.

The sound in our coach comes from a surround sound system with no center channel, and as our hearing has become a little challenged over the years we wanted to perhaps install a sound bar.  Didn't think that hard about it, but when we were in Durango earlier this year Jan got to talking with a neighbor and they mentioned they had installed a sound bar in the ceiling and it really helped them.  About that time I had mentioned to our son, Jason we were thinking about a sound bar and he, much more savvy than us, said he would research it for us.  We gave him the dimensions we were dealing with and he did the rest.  Anyway about a month later, he called and said he found a discontinued bar at a fantastic price, did we want him to get it, we said yes.  He was going to send it to us until we found out it would cost $150!  We told him to hold onto it til further notice:-)  Then when our plans changed and we decided to go to Buffalo, we picked it up.

Over the last few months our main TV in the living area, 46" would every once in awhile decide to just not turn on.  We'd fiddle with the controls and eventually it would.  Figured at first it was a fluke, then wondered if its life was coming to an end?  We figured at some point we would have to replace it.

After we arrived in Florida it was even more reluctant to turn on, and finally said, that's it.  Dead.  It's not like we watch a ton of TV but we watch some everyday, so we had to replace it.  And of course, I wanted to replace it with the biggest TV I could find.  We took some measurements and off to Costco we went.  We had to order it, but it arrived in a day, our new Samsung 50" 4K HDTV, now all we had to do was make it fit, install a sound bar that had never been there before, and at the same time revamp our entire audio system.  We thought we could knock it out in a day, ha!

Our TV lives in the ceiling on a retractable mount, so when we travel it is up in the ceiling and then we lower it to watch TV.  First we had to get the old TV out, no big deal.

The mounting system with the TV off and retracted into the ceiling

Then we had to modify the mounting attachments for the new TV.

The old TV out, the mounting fittings on the TV and an aluminum brace to keep it rigid

We got the new TV mounted and figured we were way ahead of the game.

I wanted to mount the sound bar as unobtrusively as possible, wanted it strong enough to never have to worry about it loosening or falling down as we went down the road.  It came with brackets that were meant to attach it to a wall.  I needed a custom bracket that would attach to the OEM bracket and be shaped so as to go around behind the moulding that surrounds the TV lift.  With some ideas floating around in my head, off to Lowes we went.  Wandering the aisles waiting for something to jump out at me and finally it did.  I found correctly sized black angles that I thought I could make work.  Brought them back and immediately found that with my tools there was no way I could bend them as precisely as I needed.  Over to friend Scott's house to see what he had, he offered up his vise and with some persuasion I was able to get them pretty good.  I fastened the new brackets to the OEM, threaded them through the moulding and viola we had mounts I was pleased with.  Hard to see in the picture though.

First we made sure it worked, at least as much as we could since we had no idea how to work any of it, and it seemed to, actually it sounded great.  We are into the second day at this point:-)  Next we tried to raise the TV into the ceiling but no, it wasn't aligned right so it wouldn't close.  Great, that meant we had to loosen everything up, move the TV as much as we could to try again.  All easier said than done, as no adjustments could be made with TV all the way up, so it had to come down enough to get behind it to loosen some bolts, but not so far that the TV would slide out the bottom, but we managed to get it to work.  Then we put the cover on and found out more adjustment was necessary since the cover wouldn't fit up in the ceiling, and so on.  Eventually we got it to work.  Then we removed everything from our audio cabinet and started over, we planned to throw out our surround sound receiver and use a HDMI switch box to go from our DirecTv box to our Blue Ray or Apple TV.  The switch box was bad in the box so we had to send it back and go find another.  But we got it all to work and we are very pleased with the result, the bigger TV is awesome and now we can hear especially the voices, it even came with a Bluetooth subwoofer so we were able to get rid of our big OEM sub in the cabinet under the sink to make more room.  All in all, superb!  And only 3 full days:-)

Meanwhile our friend Ray lent Jan two Liberty puzzles with a slight time crunch so she did those in between projects.

Then the next project which was planned, was to install a new RV Tank Monitor system.  We have a fresh water tank, a gray tank, and a black tank.  The monitoring system that came with the coach is poor at best, and a constant irritant because it doesn't read very accurately and sometimes, especially when boondocking, knowing the levels in the tanks becomes important.  Why we waited this long to do this I can't answer, but it had been getting worse and worse and we said the first thing we were going to do when we got to Florida was install this new system called SeeLevel.  The major difference is the SeeLevel system uses sensors that stick to the outside of the tanks, so dirt, etc can't impact the readings unlike what we had.  And, of course like so many other things it seemed a lot simpler than it turned out to be:-)

The original system had a monitor in the plumbing bay so while dumping waste or filling the fresh water you could read it there, and also we could read it on a screen near the driver's seat.  We wanted to replace the monitor in the plumbing bay in the same spot if we could and then we had to find a convenient, but not too challenging place inside the coach to mount an additional monitor.

First the monitor in the plumbing bay.

Old monitor out

We hoped the new one would go right in, but it wouldn't fit

Then since we were still working on the location inside the coach for the other monitor we needed to find accessible sides on our tanks.

Our fresh water tank easily accessible in our AquaHot bay although
on the opposite side of the coach, no problem

Then our black, on the left, and gray tanks, also easily accessible behind
a stainless steel panel, our next challenge

The panel turned out to be a challenge in that the directions say to keep the sensors at least 2" away from metal and our panel was 1" from the tank.  A quick phone call to the manufacturer gave us a solution.  We temporarily attached the sensors to the tanks with painter's tape to assure they worked.

We got them stuck on and I wired it in temporarily to check it out.

It did

Then we stuck the sensors on permanently and using the advice of the manufacturer, I covered the sensors with rubber gasket material to isolate the panel from the sensors.

One done, one to go

Then we came up with a plan to mount the outside monitor.

Installed

That left a bunch of wires after we fed them up into the coach for our second monitor where we thought we would mount it.

We have an open area above our washer/dryer in the hallway where we had previously mounted a switch for our second electric element for our AquaHot and thought I could build a little 3 sided box to mount under it which would make it unobtrusive, easy to get to and read, and somewhat blend in.  So that's what we did.

The rough box

Then all stained and mounted

We now have an accurate monitoring system for our tanks.  All that was left was to welcome in Christmas with a nice breakfast complete with Bloody Mary's and our regular delicious prime rib dinner.

So a little late, but 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

The Final Episode

We turned the corner in Eugene, OR and headed west stopping for two nights in Sisters near Bend.  We didn't have much smoke in Junction City, but as we drove we had more and more.  We had received a lot of advice that our generator woes were most likely a bad fuel supply hose, so we had a new one made in Bend and took it with us to Ennis, MT where we were supposed to stay for a month.  At this point I was spending a lot of time thinking about the generator, we had already replaced almost everything and I wasn't truely confident the new fuel line would solve our problems, so after doing a lot more research into a new control board ended up ordering one to have sent to Ennis.  I found out the board from Cummins was almost $1000 and backordered for a few weeks, then found a company called Flight Systems that made a replacement for $635 with a 2 year warranty compared to Cummins 1 year, and they had stellar reviews.

We replaced the fuel line, I should say Jan replaced the fuel line, I did the connection at the fuel tank but she crawled under and did all the hard work, it turned out to be pretty easy, but it didn't solve the problem.  As we were running the generator and listening to the continuing surging I got a text from the office that a package had just arrived for us, our new control board, what timing!  It went in quickly and........no more surging, and has been working well to this date, a long road, but, knock on wood, it looks like we finally solved it.

New line on the left, old in the middle

It was in Ennis that we changed everything.  We had grown frustrated with the smoke and wind and dust and heat, the Madison river was under tons of restrictions for fishing which had never happened before, so no fishing, we just had to go.  So we shortened our stay to a week, changed a ton of reservations, and decided to go across the country first to see our daughter Kelly, and Brian, then to Buffalo to see our son Jason, and Joanne.  Lots of miles but we were done.

First went south to Durango for a few days and found fresh veggies, very hard to come by in Montana, and managed to even get in a couple hikes.

We had our galley sink drain hose break for the second time and replaced it with a 1" hose in Kalispell 6 weeks previously and it seemed the sinks were getting slower on the draining when it completely stopped draining when we arrived in Lubbock.  After a few hours of this and that and a pipe snake we got it unclogged and the sinks drained wonderfully again, but it sure made a mess.

But the reason we went to Lubbock was to see Kelly and Brian again on our way east.  We had a nice visit.

Then a mad dash across the country to Buffalo to see Jason and Joanne.  A great visit and we were fed like kings.

Then south we went to try to find an eastern leaf peeping gorgeous fall which we hadn't seen in many years.  First a stop in southern NY, then down through PA to check out fishing, and make our way to Luray, VA and the Skyline Drive.

Somewhere along the way we were invaded with stinkbugs, in fact, we are still fighting them, but our son-in-law Brian showed us a cool bug weapon which we got, a Bug-A-Salt.  It shoots and kills bugs with salt, very effective and fun.

This was the year of some frustration, the generator, the alternator, and the truck braking system light burning out the fuse.  We have replaced now the switch, the wires and fuse holder in the truck, replaced the ground wire in the coach, and since we still haven't fixed it will run a completely new wire from the rear of the motorhome to the front.  Jan, the diesel mechanic also works on the truck:-)

Then on to NC for the Blue Ridge Parkway and color.

And since you were wondering where the food pics were, we even found seafood.

We had stellar days and we had rainy, foggy days, glorious!

Found some more great food in Waynesville, NC, saw a beautiful chapel in Lake Junaluska.

Reservations were very hard to come by, so we bounced around quite a bit after Waynesville, we went farther east of Asheville to Marion, found great Vietnamese south of Asheville, managed to get new tires for the truck, had another wonderful lunch in Blowing Rock, then back to Sevierville, TN before moving to Murphy, NC.

We were lucky as the color followed us along!

Our site on the water in Sevierville.

Then back to Murphy, NC where we had visited in the spring.

Then down the road 30 miles to Blue Ridge, GA, a very cute enjoyable town, where we were met by friends John and Diane.

Then down to Atlanta for more dental work and more visits.  Then south to Florida.

We stopped in Cedar Key for our oyster and clam extravaganza:-)

Meanwhile Karen and Tom had arrived in Nokomis and were met by friends, Debbie and Harold.

We cheered them for cocktail hour and joined everyone the next day, even had a chance to join Debbie and Harold at the jetty for lunch before they returned to Canada for the holidays.

So yes, the torture is now over, back to our regularly scheduled show:-)