Time is running out, more projects complete, and thank goodness for exceptional friends!

We still have a few projects on our list, but we knocked out several this past week or so, two fairly big ones, a routine one, a big challenge and surprise one, and a small disappointment.  Yes, time is flying by, only 3 weeks to go, friends are already talking about when they are heading back north, 1 week, 2 , or....  Turns out BIL Tom only has a week or so, and our great neighbors and friends, Debbie and Harold are down to 2 weeks. Feels like we just got here.  Anyway, on to the stuff.

I got one routine project completed and that is the annual maintenance on our Aqua-Hot system.  It is what provides continuous domestic hot water and coach heat. It uses two electric elements and a diesel burner.  Every year the manufacturer recommends  changing the diesel fuel filter and the burner nozzle, a check of components and a cleaning of the combustion chamber, sounds like a lot but it takes only about an hour.  And even better, in our coach, the unit is right inside a basement door and very easy to access.  

Easy access

Ready to remove the burner

Cleaning out the combustion chamber

The nozzle ready to be replaced
The flame sensor and fire rings ready to be cleaned

Soon to be reassembled

That went smoothly, and the unit checked out perfectly, nice burn, no smoke or odor.  Done!

The rest of the projects were completed with the welcome help of friends, without whom Jan and I might still be working on them.  It is so very nice to be surrounded with exceptional people who are ready to jump in at any time and lend a hand.  We are very fortunate, and in those few times when Jan and I think about maybe spending our winter elsewhere, it is our friends that keep drawing us here.

First up was running a new wire to provide power to our small air compressor that I have mentioned many times that provides air to keep our coach level when we are using our air leveling system as opposed to hydraulic jacks.  We have had an abundance of issues with it since we got our coach and each time we think we have solved the problems we are bit with another, in fact, that once again happened this time.  Originally they had mounted the compressor up in front of the drive axle, completely open to the weather and road dust, mud, and grime.  It would often clog up the compressor and played havoc on the pressure switch which turns it off and on.  We had moved its location to a basement to keep the compressor out of the weather, and it had operated flawlessly for several years.

The new location in 2015

Well, recently we had noticed we hadn't heard it running and wondered why?  Normally it runs every other day or so to build up the pressure for leveling.  Usually it has something to do with the pressure switch, it is usually a little moisture that gets in and messes the switch up.  But, no, somehow we lost power to the compressor!  We checked, or I should say Jan crawled under and checked our connection and to see if there was power to the original source where we had spliced in, and there was NO power there either.  So rather than mess with trying to find a wire in a mass of hundreds of wires and tubes and hoses we opted to just run a new one.  Well, easier said than done, but it was accomplished with Harold and Jan doing all the work with me just watching.  Harold did a fantastic job, and I have to admit it was done a lot better than I would have done it, since I may have cut a corner or two.  Together Jan and Harold managed to run the wire from the front of the coach to the compressor with 95% of it inside!

Jan and Harold deep in the basement

This is the Front Run Bay where most of the 12 volt power and fuses live
The new black wire is coming from the top of the compartment

Harold getting the wire through the difficult wheel well area

So after they got the wire run, I connected it up and got good power to the compressor. BUT, and a big but, we didn't hear it run for several days.  So I figure it must be the switch, but no it works fine, maybe moisture, no, nice and clean, so what?  There is now a blockage between the compressor and the air tank it supplies, all I can figure is a service center that was tasked years ago with removing a check valve at the tank, a very hard place to access never did, and now it has seized and won't let air through either way.  We will address that fitting when they have the coach jacked up without any air when they replace the air bags.

The next one on the list was the skid plates under the rear passenger side slide and replacing the bottom seal, and again it was the help of friends that got the job done.  First I had to jack up the slide a bit and needed a 4X4 the right length, so Scott said he knew where one was and promptly took me on a golf cart to get it.  Got it cut to length and we were in business.

Harvey watching, Scott holding, me cutting, and Harold holding

Scott, Harold, and I jacking up the slide

Once we got it raised, we tore off the old seal, used it as a template to cut the new seal.

You can see a hole on the metal flange where the seal fits,
and also see the marks on the bottom of the slide where the rollers are wearing

Our workbench with a skid plate almost ready

Applying some silicone 

Harold and I mounting the plate

A view inside of the roller without the plate

And with the plate

The seal was a little more of a challenge, we together managed to get some 3M double sided trim tape on the flange and then screwed the rubber seal to the flange.

Harold and I working on the tape

Tape ready for the seal

Seal installed

Here you can see the skid plates and the new seal

Some black silicone on the edges and that project was done.

The last challenge was what we thought was a no-brainer and easily done, we couldn't have been more wrong.  Our coach has a articulating door on our plumbing and electrical bay that gets it up and out of the way unlike a swinging door.  It is assisted in its movement by 2 gas struts.  

Closed

Open

This shows one of the 2 struts

Now I felt like the door was getting harder to raise and figured the original struts were getting tired, so I ordered 2 new struts using the part numbers on the original struts.  Easy-peasy, right?  Wrong.  I got the struts and went to line them up to make sure they were correct and they were too long, by about an inch.  Now I should mention that these struts are powerful, even though these are rated 35#, you cannot compress them manually, you can stand on them, lean on them, and they do not move a millimeter.  So we figured they were the wrong strut after all, so in order to be sure, we pulled off one of the "bad" struts, and as it sprung off, we lined it up against the new one and they were exactly the same.  Now what?  Now we can't even get the original strut back on!!!  Well, Harold and I, and eventually several others tried every which way to manipulate the hinges and the door, and finally removed the door, and each end of the arms to see if there was a trick to getting them on.  If there is, we never found it, how Monaco ever got them on is beyond us.

We had lots of help and opinions too.
Harvey, myself, Harold, Bob, and Joe all trying to figure out the puzzle

Damn, it has to work somehow.

Now I should mention we have another friend here that is our Jack of All Trades, and miraculously can fix anything.  Jack and his wife Betty are nearby and friends that also host a campfire almost every night.  To say Jack is talented is an understatement.  In fact everyone in the park brings their broken items to him and he performs miracle repairs on all of them.  Whenever any of us have an item that we just can't fix, you take it to Jack and, boom, it's fixed!  Well, while we were working on this, Jack was off getting some medical stuff attended to, but when he returned he came right over to see what we were doing.  We explained that I would have to order shorter struts as these were impossible to install, and we couldn't even get the original back on.  I shouldn't have said impossible because that just gave Jack more incentive to fix it.  He grabbed a strut and since it was late afternoon said he'd study on it and let us know what he thought the next day.  

I went over the next day and he and Scott were sitting there working on a custom tool Jack had invented, then by using Harvey's large pipe clamp to compress the strut, we inserted the strut in the tool, and used vise grips to amazingly hold the strut compressed, it left the attachment clips accessible for putting it on the door.  After 3 or 4 attempts to get everything in exactly the right place to go on the door, it went right on!  The first one took maybe 30 minutes for the learning curve and the 2nd one took 3 minutes, and he even gave me his custom tool so I would be able to do it myself if I ever have to replace them again.

Jack, me, and Harold with success!

A long post, but we got a lot done.  Our to-do list is almost whittled down to nothing now.  A few more way simpler items, a wash and maybe a wax, and we can call it complete.  Thanks again to all our friends that helped so very much in accomplishing all these items, and for just being there, it's what makes our winters so very special.

A quick check in

First, on the air bags or springs.  I inquired at Monaco, or what's left of Monaco, and at Alliance, and on numerous forums and found out the part numbers for our bags.  Seems the front 4 use bags with a 3/4" supply as they connect to a ping tank in the air suspension system which is basically an accumulator to provide more air and comfort to the ride, and the 6 rear bags use the more typical 1/4" supply.  Barry at Josam likes Firestone bags better than the Contitech on our coach so I was able to get a cross-reference.  Although Barry was very competitive with his tire pricing, I was able to do better at SDtruckspring.com.  We also made up our minds to replace them this spring so we have an appointment set up in April on our way out of Florida.  We have already received all the bags and have them in our storage facility until we head north.  If anyone cares, on the Roadmaster S10 bag chassis, the front bags are W01-358-8897, and the rears are W01-358-9376.

In the meantime we have been doing a few little things on our list.  Our front entry door needed a bit of adjustment, it was getting to the point where one of these times we wouldn't have been able to get in, not a good thing.  Well, we pulled off the access panel and found we could not reach the adjustment nuts with any wrench I had, so we were looking at removing the inside panel of the door.  As we studied that, we saw we would have to cut the caulking between the outside border of the door and the face of the door, and dismantle the entire edge to get to the nuts.  We figured there had to be a better way.  The inside of our door is a vinyl covered extruded plastic, so I decided to cut a hole in the door with a hole saw right above the adjusting nuts, and then cover the hole.  But what to cover it with?

Our new adjusting hole

Another project of ours this winter is to install skid plates on our passenger side rear slide bottom.  A weakness of our slides is the bottom where the rollers touch deteriorates over time and many, many slide extensions and retractions, and if you catch it before it goes all the way through, it is a fairly simple and inexpensive fix.  The rollers will ride on top of the plates preventing any further damage.  In fact we had plates put on at Elite in Oregon 2 years ago on our driver side rear slide and were warned we would need to do it on the other side at some point, well that time has arrived.  

You can see the wear spot where we will install the skid plates.
Getting ready to raise the slide.

Kind of hard to see, but it is wearing through the fiberglass

Eric installing a plate 2 years ago

So as I was ordering the stainless plates, we had an epiphany that a piece of stainless would cover our new hole in the door and look like it had always been there, so that's what we did.  It still needed to be cut to the exact curve, and our good friend Jack took care of it for us with his portable band saw!

Looks great!

We are now down to 5 weeks, and are starting to feel the need to get the rest of our stuff done, and we do have a small list.  Aqua-Hot service, Sani-Con service, check the roof for caulking, wash and wax, replace some clearance lights, etc.  

On another note we have made reservations at almost all the campgrounds for the summer, a new record for us.  We still have a few public campgrounds to go, but their reservation windows haven't opened up yet.  So right now we are firm in our plans to swing quickly through New England, then to Buffalo to visit our son, then to Elkhart to get our wheel well repaired, and then race west to Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado for the rest of the time into fall.  More details will be shared as we get closer.