Not exactly chilling in our old home town…

Well we certainly picked the wrong summer to spend in our old home town in College Station, Texas. It has been over 100 degrees for seemingly forever. College Station has currently seen 60 days over 100 including 51 days in a row and 15 days in a row of over 105 degrees. They also set the highest ever recoded temperature of 112 which we have hit twice! Not hot by Arizona standards but the humidity here is always more oppressive.

Anyhow so what are we doing here except to get our RV repaired… Well, it turns out that our daughters is having another baby. We had thought about taking the RV over to North Carolina but after getting the recent repairs we decided to stay here and just fly over to NC.

So we have fallen into a bit of a routine with all this heat. We go for a morning walk of about two miles before it gets too dang hot! Lunch is next and then in the afternoon we go to a local gym for a workout. After our workout we are in search of a nice happy hour. And that is our life is for now.

As a side note, I should mention we joined a gym through a program called Silver Sneakers. If you haven’t heard of this program it is offered through Medicare any more specifically through Medicare Advantage. Not all Medicare Advantage programs offer it but most do.

Silver Sneakers is a health and fitness program designed for adults 65+ and Silver Sneakers members can:access live online fitness classes and an on-demand video library of prerecorded workouts. What we took advantage of is that thousands of gyms, community centers, and other participating fitness locations across the nation participate in it. This means that you can get a FREE gym membership!

Why would they offer it free? Well, the goal is to help you stay strong in body, mind, and spirit. Knowing regular physical activity keeps your heart, brain, bones, muscles, and joints healthy, insurers hope to save money in the long run!

So we've been going to the gym M-F to not only work out but to cool off as they air condition the heck out of these places. For now we are members of Tru-Fit and if we go somewhere else we will just change fitness clubs.

In the meantime we wait for Katie to have baby number 2. She is scheduled for a C-section in about a week or so and Sharon will fly up first to help take care of baby for 8 weeks and then I’ll fly to NC for 2 weeks before returning back to Texas.

In the meantime today’s pictures are from a walk we took on the Texas A&M University campus.

Converting our fluorescent overhead lights to LED using LED light strips.

Well, we finally ran out oft-8 fluorescent bulbs for our overhead lights. That meant it was time to finally convert all of our fluorescent bulb overhead lights to LED. Instead of buying new lights or buying expensive replacement LED bulbs I chose the more frugal way and used LED strip lights.

I  purchased some LED strip lights from TEMU, specifically the Bright Cold White LED Strip Light, SMD2835 12V strips.  These have 120 LEDs per meter. I also bought a Light Strip DIY Connector Set (8mm) so I wouldn’t have to do any soldering.  These connectors were for 2 Pin 8mm 3528/2835 LED Strip Light.

The strip lights cost 3.89 per roll; I bought two rolls. The connector set was 4.89. My total investment so far is less than 15 dollars. I found that one roll and one pack of connectors will do 5 overhead lights where I used two strips (18 inches) for each light. So if you buy the LED strip and a connector kit from TEMU your cost per light conversion will be about $1.75 per light!

This light has white LED's that are equivalent to "daylight" fluorescent tubes, ( ~6500K temp). If you like “warm white" which is more like an incandescent-like (about 4000K). We like brighter lights.

So how did I do this? Here you go…

1. Remove the light cover and then you can see and remove the four screws which hold the light fixture in place. Make sure to take out the bulbs before removing the screws.

2. After removing the four screws the light can be taken off of the ceiling by cutting the 12V wires that are attached to the light fixture. Disconnect the battery if you are concerned or just turn off the lights you are removing.

3.  Remove the ballast cover by drilling out the rivets (from the back side of the light fixture). Now you only need the two wires coming from the switch and save the longest white wire by cutting off of the ballast. This will allow you to keep the light rocker switch intact.

4. I chose to remove the ballast and the white ends which hold the bulbs in the fixture. These have 2 small phillips crews on each end. Once these are removed you can take out the light bulb holders and toss them.

5.Now cut the LED strips to desired length and put one of the strip connectors on the LED strip - MAKE SURE TO OBSERVE POLARITY (there is a (-) printed on the LED strip). It’s a good idea to test each strip with12V to make sure they work.

6. I mounted 2 LED strips in each light and this gave as more light than the 2 original bulbs. Each strip has an adhesive so peel off the tape and stick them to the cleaned surface of the light fixture (you did clean it first,didn’t you). I also used a small piece of double sided tape to hold the connecter where the wired end meets the light strip for a firmer hold.

7. Then I wired the strips all together (positives together, and grounds together).

While I only did five lights I still have three more to do but that will be another day.

SA Japanese Tea Gardens and a follow up to our engine repairs…

When in San Antonio I forgot to mention a neat place we visited while staying at our son’s house. Our son told us we need to check out the Japanese Tea Garden close to where the Cummins Service Center was located. So one afternoon after we went to check on the RV at Cummins to stop by.

The Japanese Tea Garden is a lush beautiful park that was created from an abandoned rock quarry. The garden includes a 60 foot waterfall, koi ponds, a pagoda-style pavilion, and a café. There are walking paths and trails that take you around the garden. Several picturesque stone bridges.cross the waterways.

It was constructed in 1918 by prisoners for about  $7,000.It has paid  for itself multiple times over as it includes areas that are available for rent for functions such as for small weddings. A small wedding was being set up while visited. It is a nice place to visit on hot day in San Antonio.

When I last blogged we had just left San Antonio and were  quite pleased at how the RV handled during our drive. When we arrived in College Station Texas we set up our site and settled in.

As soon as set up Sharon insisted we needed to rent a carpet cleaner because the Cummins service folks left quite a mess around the opening to the engine..Curious about the work they had done we started to inspect things closer. There was quite a bit of engine grime all around the front area so I decided I needed to take this up with the Cummins people.

Before calling I lifted up the engine opening cover to inspect their work.  The top of the engine was very clean but when I crawled under the RV to inspect the underside of the engine I was horrified to see oil everywhere. Oil was dripping off of multiple surfaces prompting me to immediately call Cummins in San Antonio.

When I called the service manager was very understanding and told us have the carpets cleaned and they would pay for the service. He also stated that we should take our RV to a nearby service center and if the oil leak was due to their work they would pay for it.

We chose to simply rent a carpet cleaner so we could do the cleaning ourselves to our satisfaction. As for the oil leak it took a while before we could get it serviced. Once we did they determined the valve cover gasket was the likely culprit and ordered the part. We have since returned and had the service performed.

While we certainly weren't pleased with the original work on our RV we were very pleased with how their customer service made things right. We would return for service there because of that and do recommend them for the same reason.

Fingers crossed that this is now all FINALLY behind us!

Damn that was an expensive stop!

My last blog had us still at Canyon Lake and being towed to Cummins in San Antonio, Texas. While the RV was in the shop we stayed at our son’s house about 45 minutes away.

It took five days before I got the dreadful call from Cummins to inform me that we had leaking fuel injectors which were causing the problem. Four of the six were leaking significantly, one was slightly leaking and the other was marginal. Therefore the only logical choice was to replace all six of them.

We drove over one afternoon to pick up some needed items from the RV since our stay with our son would be longer than we thought. Good thing we did as we discovered that the technician had somehow broken our lighted exterior door assist handle. Of course they agreed to pay for it but the part is (sigh) on back order.

About four days later Cummins called to say it would be ready the next afternoon. I told them I’d just pick it up the following morning  in case there were any unexpected issues. Sure enough I was later informed that they found a possible oil leak during the test drive and would have to clean it up then do another test drive.

Had we planned to pick it up that afternoon it wouldn’t have been ready until San Antonio’s primetime for rush hour. Thankfully the next call we received explained they cleaned the underneath of the engine block and could find no oil leak. The conclusion was it was most likely residual oil from the repair. Residual oil is not uncommon in this type of repair.

We picked it up the next morning only to discover yet another snafu. For some reason the tow truck driver had removed our tow hitch and when he put it back on he installed it backwards. We only discovered this because the tow hitch had obviously been dragged down the road and damaged the steel ends that attach to the car.

With the help of a Cummins service guy we put the hitch on correctly and determined it was safe to tow the car even with the damaged ends. I will replace them before we go anywhere else. Finally we hooked up the car and happily left San Antonio. The RV was running great and we drove three hours over to our old home town of College Station.

Sharon and  I sure hope all of this is now behind us and we can look forward to our future travels…

NOTE: Todays pictures are from our stay in San Antonio while our RV was being repaired.