Best laid plans…

The day I picked for painting the primer on the end cap finally came and it was a perfect day for painting. Eighty degrees for a high, overnight lows above 65 degrees and wind less than 8 mph. My plans were coming to fruition!

Before the morning chill was over I went outside to wash the area to be primed with dawn dish soap. After about an hour I went backout to mask off the area to be painted with plastic. Then I did the final cleaning with Sprayway glass cleaner and SPI 700-1 Waterborne Wax and Grease Remover.

The Waterborne Wax and Grease Remover. Has to sit 45-60 minutes before applying the epoxy to allow the solvents in the cleaner to dissipate. While the Wax and Grease Remover was drying, I mixed epoxy primer with its activator because it must be induced (allow to rest after mixing) at least 30 minutes covered.

It was nearing noon by this time, so I let the epoxy continue to induce and broke for lunch. I wanted to be fresh for my first attempt at painting. The day before I had bought some water based paint that was on the discount shelf at Lowe’s to practice with. This allowed me to work not only on my technique but to get comfortable with the paint gun and it settings for air and fluid.

After lunch I donned my goggles and Respirator (charcoal), paint suit and latex gloves. Then I stirred the epoxy once again before spraying, poured the epoxy into the paint gun’s cup using a filter, fired up the compressors and got ready to paint.

I mentioned compressors because I had to use two borrowed 20 gallon compressors to do this job because a 50 gallon compressor wasn’t available for rent anywhere in town. So I used a splitter to join the two compressors together to give me 40 gallons of air supply.

Once the compressors stopped filling their combined tanks I was ready to paint. I used some scaffolding I bought (cheaper than renting and to be sold later) and three borrowed ladders to get up, down and across the endcap so I could maintain a “wet edge” on the paint.

When painting it is important to maintain a “wet edge” of paint for it to have a professional look. I had my Eastwood Concours spray gun with a 1.3 tip set at 28 psi and started spraying about 5 inches away from the surface. I sprayed a initial light to medium coat for the first coat.

Everything went pretty smooth as I was able to maintain a wet edge for the most part and getting up and down the ladders and scaffolding wasn’t as challenging as I feared. I was pleased with my first coat.

After 40 minutes of ”flash time” (time allowed to drive and for solvents to dissipate) I got the paint gun loaded for the second coat of primer.I had planned to put three coats on this day but towards the end of the second coat the gun started sputtering paint which resulted in paint drips all over the endcap. Crap! Now I will need to research how to handle this setback…

Steps– Painting Epoxy Primer on the RV Endcap

The primer I will be using is Southern Polyurethanes Inc. (SPI) 6620-1, Black Epoxy’

Below are the steps I will follow to put the primer on the endcap:

1.wash it down with dawn dish soap
  2. blow off w/ air and mask out area to be painted with plastic/paper
      a. Clean with sprayway glass cleaner
      b. Clean surface with SPI 700-1 Waterborne Wax and Grease Remover, let sit 45-60 minutes before applying epoxy
      c. Tack Cloth surface before priming
  3. mix VERY WELL SPI 6620-1 epoxy primer & 6700-1 Activator
      a. MUST BE MIXED up very well with a paint stick due to sediments
      b. use a paint filter to filter out contaminants from being poured into the paint gun.
      c. induce at least 30 minutes covered
      d. Respirator (charcoal), eye protection, paint suit, gloves
      NOTE: We strongly recommend when you activate the epoxy to stir and mix very well before letting it sit/induce for 30 minutes. Stir once again before spraying and the longer you wait between spraying your coats of epoxy the better.

  4. prime the surface - epoxy, 2-3 coats
      a. Primer will fill in 180 to 320-grit sand scratches.
      b. set gun full fan full fluid, then adjust it until finding the right settings on test panel
      c. spray gun 1.3 tip, 25-28 psi 4-5 inches away lay on light to medium, 2-3 wet coats
      d. spray first coat  w/1 hr. min flash time between coats, then 2nd, 3rd if needed
      d. Wait 24 hours before sanding
      e. clean gun Aerosol Injected Cleaner/lacquer thinner

  5. Sand primer
      b. Sand with 320 to 500 grit w/interface pad to smooth paint runs or drips smooth to the
  surface, being careful not to sand too far and exposing the surface again.
      d. Wash area to be primed with Dawn and dry
      e. Use compressed air to blow water out of crevices.
      f. do initial masking,
      g. wipe down with W&G remover and Tack Cloth right before painting
  6. Seal with epoxy reduced 25%. 1:1:1/2
      a. one wet coat only and wait 2-48 hours before basecoat

I will move from my current RV park over to a friend's lot where I will be

able to paint without bothering anyone. Wish me luck for I will need it. Not only because I have no clue what I am doing but the weather is going to try and sabotage my plans…

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 hometown 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.

Repairing our Atwood Leveleg Leveler

Before arriving in Arizona, we had an issue with one of our levelers on our RV. When we were in Texas, we noticed the issue first at a park in Beaumont when the leveler wouldn’t come back up. As readers of this blog may remember I used a machine jack to raise the RV and simply removed the broken Leveleg so we could continue on our planned route.

When we arrived in College Station Texas I disassembled the gear box. After removing the gear box and opening it I didn’t find any sign of damage anywhere. So, I regreased all the gears, reassembled it and reset the control board. Next, I tested it manually and it worked automatically after that.

We travelled further west before it again gave us trouble upon our arrival here in Mesa AZ. This time the leveler wouldn’t go down. Once again, I took off the offending Leveleg to attempt to figure out what might be the issue.

Like before I removed the gear box and after opening it I still couldn’t find any sign of damage. I regreased all the gears and reassembled it one more time to try testing it manually. (You can use a drill with a socket to turn the nut at the end of the motor to manually raise or lower the Leveleg).

While it takes hundreds of revolutions with the drill to move the leg even slightly it was obvious that it was not going to budge up or down. Once again, I took the entire leg apart and to get to the lower half of the leg which houses the mechanical screw that moves the RV up or down.  No matter what I tried the screw would not turn it was entirely seized up.

The problem with this is that they no longer make these levelegs or any of the parts needed to repair them. Well desperate times call for desperate measures, so, thinking the leg may have become dry and rusted together I filled the lower half of the leg with oil and let is sit for a week.

I emptied the leg of oil, and the screw still wouldn’t turn. So, I thought I should cut the leg in half and see what the problem was and then have it welded back together. Before doing so I drove over to consult with a welder who adamantly suggested that this was a bad idea and would not work.

Now my only options were either to replace our whole leveler system or somehow get my broken jack to work. Giving it one more try I simply beat on the lower half of the leg until suddenly it “unseized” the leg. Then I unscrewed the entire leg (which was very dry) and loaded it with packing grease along the entire length of the screw.

I put it all back together and happily we have a working Leveleg system. For how long… who knows. We’ll just have to cross our fingers each and every time we put the levelegs down or up for the foreseeable future.

A few fixes while in Mesa AZ…

We are settling into our winter routine here in Mesa AZ. We’ve been hitting the gym, talking walks, making the short drive to Gilbert, enjoying the music on the patio at this park and birdwatching at the Gilbert Riparian Park. Along with the fun, one huge plus of these extended stays is we have time for a lot of purging, chores and repairs which have been on the back burner.

The first thing I tackled was our Suburban hot water heater. Over the last few weeks, we noticed that our electrical side of our hot water wasn’t functioning. That’s really not a big deal since we also have propane which also powers our hot water heater. However, it needed to be repaired.

After close inspection I found that the thermostat had been charred by excessive heat. I also tested the hot water electrical element, and it tested fine. I did notice our anode rod was ready to be replaced as well. Finding no other issues, I ordered a new thermostat and replaced it. Well, that didn’t fix it either.

The way I do mechanical/electrical repairs is by researching the heck out of the issue online before tackling what I think the problem might be. Then one by one I try all of the “fixes” I have uncovered on the internet. When unsuccessful, I start the process over and research even more for new fixes.

Will while researching I also had to repair our front A/C unit as it too wasn’t seemingly getting electrical current to start up. Having repaired our a/c many times I suspected one of the start or run capacitors was the culprit but upon checking them out everything seemed fine.

Perplexed by the assortment of electrical issues I focused on our power source. After looking at our 50-amp electrical plug, I found it too had some char near the base of one prong of the plug. So, I took apart the plug and trimmed all the wires to get new copper to the prongs. One prong had a slightly loose connection as well.

Well once I fixed the electrical plug both the A/C and the electric side of the hot water heater started functioning normally. Sometimes stepping back to look at the bigger picture reveals the true solution. In retrospect I should have realized there might be a loose wire since the A/C would sometimes work but mostly wouldn’t.

With those things fixed I can focus on our really big problem. That problem is our Atwood Levelleg System no longer works because one of the legs is seized up and will not go up or down. We have been fortunate that since the problem first arose we have been able to find nearly level sites at each campground we stayed in.

We are grateful these extended stays allow me the time to do the research needed and a mailing address for parts so I can tackle such problems as these…

A few RV repairs finally finished, or at least we hope so…

We left the Beaumont area with the Atwood levelleg removed from the RV and put it in the back of the CRV. The drive over to Colleges Station took about 3.5 hours and we pulled into Holiday RV Park for a longer stay.

We have stayed at this park multiple times and their monthly rate just can’t be beat. We have been here for a couple of weeks already so I’ll share some of what we have been doing.

The first order of business was to try and solve the Atwood Levelleg issue. First I took about the box at the top to see if there were any gears broken. After removing the gear box and opening it I could find no sign of damage anywhere.

Finding no obvious damage I regreased all the gears and reassembled it. I cleaned up the jack, reset the control board and tested it manually with a bit I  bought for the drill.

I ran the drill on the jack and was able to completely retract it without any issue. Stumped as to what actually happened to it in Beaumont I decided to reinstall it on the RV. For grins I started the engine and tested the jacks. Of course the control board alarms went crazy so I reset the board. I tried once again and all the jacks worked.

While we aren’t entirely out of the woods since I still have no clue why the one jack didn’t retract, everything seems fine now. To be sure we will test them once again before we leave, then if they work we will just cross our fingers and hope it doesn’t happen again

While I was at it I went ahead and pulled our Thetford Aquamagic up and installed a new replacement cable for the foot peddle. This was actually quite an easy repair. I don’t know if I mentioned it but some time ago as we were flushing our toilet the foot pedal made a loud noise and fell flat to the floor.

After a little online research I discovered we had broken the foot pedal cable. Well we were in travel mode and couldn’t find a replacement part anywhere, and, well… to us having a toilet that flushes is critical for life. Since I couldn’t find one I had an idea to fabricate one out of a new bicycle brake cable. This worked so well we never replaced it once we got the new cable. Yet, recently my fabricated cable was slipping and flushing was not easy so it was time to replace it. Thankfully all is well once again!.

In the meantime we have been revisiting friends we haven’t seen in a while, playing disc golf at several different courses and going to happy hour at our favorite haunts. We will be here till November 12th so we will rinse and repeat these activities until our departure.

Stopped in LA for Boudin Balls and then had a RV problem near Beaumont TX…

Our next stop on the road was near Lafayette Louisiana in the small town of Duson. We have stayed several times before at Frog City RV Park . It is a nice little Passport America park just of the interstate.  It has pull through sites, a little road noise, a small pool and a great location to try out all the boudin balls in the area.

Next to the town of Duson is a small town called Scott. Scott, Louisiana is smack  in the middle of a region in Louisiana known as Acadiana.  A lot of French influence historically in this area gave rise to the wonderful Cajun culture we so thoroughly love. Scott is a well known tasty stop off of I-10 for some of the best boudin in Louisiana.

There are four places in Scott known for their boudin balls  Boudin balls are a classic Cajun culture food staple. Made from boudin which is a pork sausage made with rice and seasoning usually stuffed into a casing. For boudin balls, they simply remove the casing, roll it into balls (about the size of a tennis ball), bread them and then deep fry them to a perfect crisp.

Healthy? No! But let’s be real healthy food will never tastes this good. We planned to try all four stops at Billy's Boudin & Cracklins, Kartchner’s Specialty Meats, The Best Stop Supermarket and Don's Specialty Meats. We managed to try three out of the four as Don’s was closing by the time we arrived and didn’t have what we wanted.

The winner for us was Kartchner’s Specialty Meats Jalapeno/cream cheese boudin ball and the runner up was Billy's Boudin & Cracklins pepperjack boudin ball. I also had to buy me some cracklings at Billy’s and had absolutely no regrets doing so. Man this was some fine, albeit unhealthy, eating. I am sure I’d be 250 lbs. if I lived near here!

We left the Acadiana part of Louisiana and stopped for one night in another site we have stayed at before in Texas just across the Louisiana border. Near the town of Vidor we stayed at another Passport America park called Boomtown RV Park.

We didn’t even unhook as we planned to leave the next morning. Well that is when things turned sour. As we were preparing to leave one jack would not come back up. I couldn’t retract it manually either since I didn’t have the right sized bit to use in my drill to retract it. We called the office for mobile RV repair guys and both of the ones I called couldn’t get to us for several days.

Not wanting to spend more time in Vidor we called the office again to ask if they had a commercial hydraulic jack and lucky for us they did. A nice young man brought it over on his golf cart and jacked up the front of our RV. Then I simply crawled under the RV and unplugged the Atwood jack. I then removed the four bolts holding it on and removed the jack from the RV.

The nice guy then dropped the RV back down and I tossed the old jack into our CRV. We even made our departure before the 11:00 am checkout time. We were so thankful that Boomtown RV Park worked with us to help get our RV mobile again. Now when we get to College Station I’ll have a longer time to solve this problem.

Repairing Bedroom Lippert Rail Slideout

It’s been a while since we blogged as we were visiting my son and his family in San Antonio, Texas. However, I wanted to continue where we left off on our last blog after our ordeal with the slide popping out on the highway in downtown San Antonio.

Once we settled in at one of our favorite campgrounds at Canyon Lake in central Texas I immediately started researching what could have possibly gone wrong with our passenger side bedroom slideout. Web searching yielded few clues other than I might need to replace the motor so I decided that I would go ahead and clear out everything under the bed to get a good look at the slide motor and rail assembly.

This slideout assembly was originally known as a power gear slide system. Power Gear was bought out and is now Lippert. Once I could see the slide system I searched the support documents on the Lippert Support site to see how to troubleshoot my issue.

Not finding any useful documentation I was now ready to talk with Lippert Support via a phone call. After considerable discussion the Lippert Support tech could offer no guaranteed solution so they recommended a full assembly replacement. As long time blog readers might recall I replaced a slide out motor in our large living room slide so I knew what it looked likes inside a motor gone bad.

The issue I was now facing was different. When I would engage the slide using the switch in the bedroom I could hear the motor spinning effortlessly so in my opinion the motor was working well. However there is an additional gear box attached to the motor which I assumed controlled a toothed gear on the rail of the bedroom slide.

 

The Lippert Support tech had no diagrams of this Power Gear system and even after I explained in detail that I thought my issue sounded like it had something to do between this add-on box to the slide motor and a possible toothed gear on the rail, he still suggested full assembly replacement.

I decided my next step was to take out the rail system to look at what was under the steel box and see if there was a toothed gear attached to the slide out motor box. Lo and behold once I took all the bolts out and was able to remove the rail system I had discovered my problem.

There it was in plain sight!!! There was indeed a toothed gear attached to the rail and that toothed gear had come loose from the shaft thus, it was not able to match the teeth on the rail which would make the slide go in and out (see inside the rail box in picture above with the centered gear reattached over the rail).

Once I was able to use an allen key to retighten the toothed gear on the shaft so it would be in alignment with the toothed bedroom slide rail as in the picture above, I assumed it would be good to go. Thirty minutes later with everything reassembled I tested it out.

Voila! We now have a bedroom slide working correctly again. Even better it cost nothing other than my time and effort to fix. Yet, another successful venture on the Road of Retirement…

NOTE: We are now at Canyon Lake State Park until April 11th…

Making our way to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and another hiccup!

I finally finished helping our son build his outdoor kitchen so we headed back to the RV at Canyon Lake for a few days of rest and relaxation before moving on down the road. One thing we always love to do when visiting Canyon Lake is take the drive down the old River Road to New Braunfels Texas.

As always this drive was very cathartic and very scenic. We checked out the New Braunfels area then headed over to Greune TX for a mid afternoon stroll. There was some live music going on at Greune Hall so we stayed and listened for  awhile.

Afterward we drove up to San Marcos to have a cold beer at Aquabrew one of our favorite Texas breweries. They moved to a new location, not nearly as nice as the old one, but at least their beer was still good!

We left Canyon Lake and moved a short distance eastward to Lockhart State Park in Lockhart, TX. Lockhart has one of the coolest court houses (see above) and is the BBQ capital of Texas. This is an annual stop to get our Barbeque fix. While we were only there two nights we had some great hikes within the park and were able to enjoy BBQ at both Smitty’s in Lockhart and City Market in Luling Tx.

All things weren’t rosy however because when we first arrived I noticed a “Check Trans” light, come on as we backed into our site. Since we didn’t experience any transmission issues driving over to the park I kind of figured it might be electrical.However we still had to have the code read to know for sure. Finding a mobile mechanic just before New Year’s eve was a bit tricky.

We finally got a mobile mechanic over the morning we were to leave and his opinion was that it was just an electrical issue. He checked everything and just didn’t see anything wrong with our transmission. We can highly recommend Rush Truck Center’s near Austin Texas if you need mobile service in this area.

Whew, dodged a bullet there so we packed up to move on to our next location. It would be an overnight stop at Southbound RV Park and Cabins in Victoria Texas. Before leaving Victoria we made a run over to the last Aldi’s grocery store we will see for a while to stock up on some of our favorites. Then it was back on the road.

The next stop would be in V I P - La Feria RV Park in  La Feria TX. This would be a longer drive than we prefer but I wanted to stop in Kingsville TX to meet up with an old friend who had a proposition for me while we are in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. I will save the news about the proposal for the next blog after I receive more details…

NOTE: We are currently in South Padre Island TX until March 1st or later if we change our minds…

What every RV’er dreads happening (Part 2)…

The next morning we started up the RV, pulled in the slides and headed down the road. Well we only got 3 miles out of town and the engine died AGAIN! Sigh. I somehow limped over to the side of the road. I got it started again so we decided it would be best to just to go back the three miles to the RV park and stay until we could have a tech check out the RV.

Here’s where it got interesting… As we started a U-turn to head back to Iraan the RV died again straddled across both lanes of the road. Fortunately this road was lightly traveled but still a few cars had to wait until I could start it again several times to inch our way back off the road.

The only solution now was to be towed to a service center. We contacted Good Sams Roadside Service and after about a four hour wait we had a tow truck hooking up the RV for the long haul (about 92 miles) to the Odessa Texas Cummins Service Center. Having your RV towed as a full timer is a very disheartening thing to have to do.

While waiting for the tow truck I found an Air BnB in nearby Midland which we booked for two nights assuming nothing would get done the day of our RV towing to Cummins since it would arrive near closing time. After watching the RV arrive and plugged in for power to the fridge we headed to Midland to spend a few nights hoping for the best.

The next morning we were informed that the lift pump had failed which was one of the cheaper options. That made us happy. What made us sad was they had to try and find the part since they didn’t have one in stock. A few hours passed and we were told they located a new fuel lift pump and hoped it would arrive the next day. Sigh…

Well the fuel pump did get to Cummins and they were able to assure us that they would have it installed by closing time so we checked out of our Air BnB. While we were waiting for word of the part’s arrival we made backup plans to spend a night in a hotel should it not be finished in time for us to make our way down the road to a suitable RV park.

We found a disc golf course in Odessa to play a round of disc golf while we waited. Happily Cummins called to say the part arrived and they were working on our RV. After our round of disc golf we started looking for nearby RV parks to stay at for when the RV was ready. We picked several parks at varying distances away.

They were able to get the repairs done by 5 PM, their closing time. With little daylight left we drove about 90 miles down the road and stayed at Water Valley town park in  Water Valley Texas. It was a nice little park and we were the only one in it. When morning arrived we hoped our problems were behind us and luckily they were as we made it a few hundred miles further down the road into Fredericksburg Texas.

Whew, what an ordeal but such is life On the Road of Retirement…

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays this year!

NOTE: We are currently in TX for the holidays…