Replacing a Faulty Slide-Out Solenoid…

I mentioned some time ago in several blogs that we were having trouble with our slide-outs suddenly and arbitrarily not working. These were seemingly random and seldom occurring events but very, very frustrating every time they failed. I read as much as I could on the forums and web in general but really couldn’t seem to isolate the issue.

We have four slide-outs which when properly working provide us a lot of inside living space. Our RV, with four slide-outs, seems more like an efficiency apartment than it does and RV. Well… that is if you don’t notice the driver and passenger seats in the front…

However, when it is time to leave and none of the slide-outs work, I mean, not even one! It can be very frustrating. I had read on several forums that the issue was due to the RV not being in Park (or recognizing that it was) or that the leveling jacks were not being properly recognized as being fully extracted. Another suggested issue was that the ignition switch was faulty and not being recognized as switched on. Well all these issues really didn’t help much as there was no real way to test them. Then when I opened the black plastic cover of my electrical panel I saw what you see in the top photo – a maze of wires and components!

Researching the internet some suggestions to solve my slide out issue were: (1) to turn off and on the ignition switch several times to get it to “wake up”, (2) to push the transmission selector to “Park” and “Neutral” several times to “wake it up” and (3) to engage the jacks to extract and then fully retract to “wake them up”. Well sometimes this would seemingly work and sometimes it wouldn’t. What worked the most, it seemed, was simply turning the ignition key on and off but waiting a minute or two in between attempts.

After taking some pictures inside my electrical panel I sent an email to Tiffin to help me identify the components in the compartment. So in photo above - A is the slide out solenoid (which Tiffin suggested as the likely culprit) and B is the 12 volt disconnect solenoid (if it was bad then I wouldn’t have any lights or 12 volt inside the coach). In photo below C is the two slide out control boards (I checked the 2 fuses in each one with a test light and they were good) and  D and E are the charging and boost solenoids for the emergency/auxillary start.

After speaking with a Tiffin mechanic on the phone we had determined that the solenoid was the most likely cause of the failing slides. The slide-out solenoid (see photo below – item with tape and the number 22906 on it) apparently would only occasionally fully energize and work properly. The only real way to test it was to wait till the next slide-out failure.

Well during one of several famous “Betty’s Shuffles” while we were staying at Betty’s RV Park the slide-outs failed again. The mechanic at Tiffin suggest I first try simply tapping the solenoid firmly with a small hammer to “wake it up” and if that didn’t work to run a wire across the two (positive and negative) terminals and bypass it altogether. Well after the first tap-tap with the hammer the slides all went in. Finally, I was able to determine the real culprit behind the infrequent failure of all slide-outs.

 

I ordered a new solenoid (above photo) and when it came I got all the necessary tools together to complete the task.

Tools Needed:

• Multimeter or Test Light – to easily check live current
• A 3/8 socket set to use on the nuts that need to be removed
• Phillips Screwdriver to remove solenoid bracket from bay wall
• Black Sharpie to number wires in sequence (also I use different color Sharpies dots to mark opposite ends of connections)

First I numbered the wires that were going to be removed and labeled them according to when they would go back on. Then I removed all the nuts that held the wires and solenoid bracket in place. Next in the picture below I swapped one wire at a time from the old solenoid to the new solenoid to ensure no mistakes in wiring were made.  I always take a before picture of the wiring just in case!.

Then I used the appropriate socket to tighten the nut holding the wires to the new solenoid terminals. Then attached the wires back in the correct sequence to the nut just above the solenoid.

With everything installed and tightened I was ready for the test! The new solenoid (below) was installed and ready to go to work…

Well it was indeed the problem as I have brought the slides in and out multiple times since the installation of the new solenoid. Hopefully my experience will help someone else out there that has a similar problem…

Three Years Full Timing, A Review - New Orleans, LA…

Today is March 3rd and it was this day three years ago we left our home of over 30 years to hit the road in our first ever owned RV. We sold everything we owned with the exception of the few items our kids claimed and whatever we could fit into our RV. We hadn’t even sold our house yet as we drove off to the east without a care in the world…It does seem a little crazy when you think about it...
Our first year found us traveling all along the eastern USA where followed our daughter's last year of college fastpitch softball. After softball and her graduation we ended up seeing every state on the eastern shore and spent our first winter down in Florida exploring the Keys enjoying all of Florida’s grandeur. Yes we had a wonderful first year!
Our second year was our western tour as we went out and explored every coastal western state from the Wineries of Washington State to the beauty of Oregon and the diversity that California had to offer. Winter took us to Arizona and Texas. By the end of our second year we had visited over half of the USA.
This past year was different in that we didn’t visit states along the ocean during the spring and summer. Funny that we started out our third year in the same place we started our first one as we were in our original home town of College Station, Texas. We may have moved from there but we still love to visit it and see our old friends as we move east to west or west to east across our great country.
From Texas we headed east where we stayed at Betty’s RV Park,a real treat and a place we plan to revisit very soon. A short visit in the Big Easy (where we are now) and then we went to the Camp Freightliner class in Gaffney, SC. The class was fantastic and reinforced much of what we had learned yet it also offered us some new valuable tips and insights.
We stayed a month during spring in North Carolina a state we have grown to enjoy and where we are also able to visit our daughter who resides there. As spring gripped control of the weather we headed north and visited with a great friend we met during our first year on the road where I once again stopped by to help him hay his farm in Virginia.
From Virginia we made our way north to our first stop in Canada where we checked off a bucket list item for us, Niagara Falls. We visited with more friends from the road in Toronto, Canada and then headed west into Michigan where we visited with Sharon’s cousin and his wife.
This began what we call our Great Lakes tour  where we wanted to dip our toes in each of the Great Lakes. We had many memorable highlights on this trip but Wisconsin stood out as the real star as we really enjoyed our stays in Ashland, Green Bay and Madison. Next we cut through the nation's mid section and visited more RV friends in Illinois as well as some old softball friends in Indiana. The highlight here was visiting small Midwestern towns and one of our friends graciously taking us for a flight in is airplane.
Finally we ended up wintering in the same location (but a different park) as we did the first year in Bonita Springs Florida. After a few months wintering where it was much warmer than most of the rest of the USA we made our way back north along the Emerald Coast of Florida and eventually to where we are now, in New Orleans.
The beautiful sights as well as the fun we have had visiting the many new and old friends along the way makes us glad in retrospect that we dared to shed our things to trade them in for these priceless experiences the past three years.
The facts… 6820.8 miles across 17 states and one Canadian Province. Another very successful year. I will post a follow up blog to this one with more financial details.

Replacing the front TV in our Tiffin FRED…

When we first bought our motorhome we pretty much knew we were going to replace the TV’s as soon as possible. However, as bad as the analog TV was in the bedroom the front room TV wasn’t all that bad. So here we are two years later and decided it was high time to replace the front TV. My plan was to replace it with a nice 32 inch TV that would also provide ample storage behind it. I went to a Lowe’s store and bought everything I needed including a nice piano hinge that would let us swing the entire TV assembly out to access the storage behind it.

So with tools in hand I removed the outer frame which turned out to be quite tricky. An email to the Tiffin service department revealed that there were two screws on each side of the frame assembly that had to be taken out before you could remove it. These screws can be found in the shared wall of the cabinet to the left and right of the TV. Once the screws are out it releases the “wings” attached to the frame that holds it to the cabinet.

Next there were four screws that could be reached with my electric drill and and 10' inch extension with Phillips bit. These screws released the TV and the steel frame it was attached to. The frame was massive and weighed nearly as much as the TV did! Once it was removed it unfortunately revealed (see header photo) that there wasn’t going to be any useful storage behind the TV so now my original plan was shot and I had to come up with a plan B.

After looking at the steel frame I had an idea that I may actually be able to salvage part of it to assemble the new TV. After lots of head scratching I came up with a hybrid steel and 2X4 frame that would be the support for the new TV. So back to Lowe’s to exchange what I didn’t need and get the new items needed for plan B. I used a hacksaw to cut the bottom of the frame off and then I attached it to the 2x4’s with bolts and chiseled the wood so the frame was recessed into it.

Once the frame was stabilized the TV was attached to it and installed in the space. This made me aware of the speaker placement in the back of the TV so I made a support piece for the bottom edge (photo above) of the TV that I could attach some fabric to so sound could get through. Then I created a few support blocks that I screwed into the cabinet to lock in the new frame so it wouldn’t move while driving.

Now I also wanted this new TV to play the audio through our receiver so when we watched movies we could get surround sound. Our old TV would not do this. This required me to order a special converter to make it happen. I found an inexpensive one from Monoprice that would convert the analog audio signal to digital since my receiver did not have an input jack for digital sound. This and an additional 10 foot HDMI cable was all the electrical stuff I needed for Plan B.

With the new cables installed and the frame securely attached all I needed to do was to come up with a solution for the top and bottom gaps created by the new TV. However I didn’t want anything solid as it would block both the sound from the TV speakers that were in the back of the TV and it would also block the remote IR signal. The solution turned out to be an inexpensive one! I simply bought plastic gutter guard. This plastic mesh designed for keeping leaves out of a roof gutter was perfect for the job.

So I cut the gutter guard to the right dimensions and stapled it to the back of the frame. Then I attached some industrial strength Velcro to the backside of the frame. The only thing left is to get the fame trimmed a little on the right and left sides to expose the entire width of the TV. Since I don’t have access to a band saw or a jig saw and a router the trimming of the frame will wait until I can borrow one. I attached the Velcro on the two sides that won’t be trimmed and hung it up. Looks pretty nice for an amateur…

Hopefully now that we are in College Station I can get an old buddy of mine to let me use his wood shop to finish up the job and while we are here we will go ahead and replace the back TV as well. In the meantime we can now use my laptops Blue Ray DVD player and attach it to our TV with the new HDMI cable to watch movies and listen to digital surround sound through our old receiver. Total cost of this job was right around $500.00 including the TV. Sweet!, movie night will now be more awesome in Abbey our beloved motorhome…

Goodbye Red Bay… Hello Mississippi…

Monday morning, 7:00 am, we were lined up behind bay door number 7 after waiting 6 days it was finally our turn to be seen in the service center. The large bay door slid open and I fired up the motorhome and drove her into the bay stopping when the service techs told me too.

I get out and the techs asked if I had a list of things for them to look over. Odd, I thought, as I had given one to the service center. Nonetheless I showed them the list and we went over each item. Then they asked if I had ordered the windows that were going to be replaced… “why yes I did” Now I was getting a bit worried about the quality of the work I was about to receive…

They found the windows and started to take out the old ones and so I went to the lounge for some coffee. A little over three hours later our motorhome was done and all but one item was finished. The remaining item would have to be done another day and was not so critical as the other items were anyhow. After  inspecting the workmanship I have to admit I was very impressed with the quality of work performed by the techs.

I went to pay the bill and asked Tiffin if they ever got any clarification on whether the windows would be covered in any fashion on warranty. I had inquired about this over a month ago and had no definitive response. I was told the best they could do was offer the windows at cost which saved us about 100.00 bucks so even though it wasn’t what we had hoped we saved a few bucks.

Tuesday morning we had another appointment with Bay Diesel to have some preventative maintenance work done and to have our brakes looked at after they had overheated when we went through Birmingham Alabama. I spent a lot of time with the techs at Bay Diesel and they taught me a lot about the mechanics of my motorhome. When everything had been finished the owner chatted with me and told me there was an ABS modulator that was touchy and may go out in the future. He said he had contacted Freightliner and was trying to get them to pay for the part but they refused. He informed me that it wasn’t necessary to fix it now and to just wait till it fails since there was nothing to worry about. When I asked why not do it now he told me the part alone was $2300.00 YIKES!!!

So we paid the bill for the great work performed and the wonderful diesel mechanic education I received and prepared to leave Red Bay… And the we got a phone call from Tiffin. It turns out my request about the windows made its way all the way to the owner and founder of Tiffin Motorhomes, Mr. Bob Tiffin.

I read about many stories involving Bob Tiffin going way above what was necessary to make a customer happy but assumed most of these stories were a wee bit fictional… Well it was my turn to get in on this act! It appeared that Bob Tiffin told the service folks to give us a call and tell me that they were going to give a refund for the cost of the windows we just had installed – $690!!! WOW!!! We are now part of the generosity of Bob Tiffin who had been the pinnacle of Customer Success at Red Bay in the past before he took a lesser role in the management.

To summarize our Red Bay experience I have to say that:

• when getting service at Red Bay you will enter the twilight zone known as Tiffin Time
• Tiffin Time is another way to say you will have to wait around a lot before seeing anyone remotely affiliated with the service center
• When first seen you will be told you are in a queue to be serviced and again you enter Tiffin Time
• After patiently waiting your turn you will eventually end up in a service bay where you will get top notch work performed by very skilled workers
• What may be lacking in customer service up front is more than compensated by the fact that the work you have performed is of very high quality
• You simply must have mechanical work performed at Bay Diesel if ever in this area

We were so glad to have the work done and so glad to be out of Red Bay that we left immediately after our PM work at Bay Diesel. We are now about 130 miles southeast of Red Bay at a gem of a campground in Mississippi called Lake Tiak-O'Khata. We have full hookups, cable TV on a lake for 19 bucks a night… think we will stay a couple of days…

Repairing our window shades…

As many RV’ers can attest; if you own day/night shades they will eventually fail. And when one or more of the strings break they don’t work very well. Well as fate would have it two of our window shades finally broke, one in the living room behind our couch, and the other was the largest window in our bedroom.

As another annoyance the venetian blind that covers our front door window’s string catch also broke. This small piece of specialized plastic that holds the string that keeps the blind pulled up and secure had broken before and all we did was super-glue it. We did this three times and when it broke the fourth time I finally decided it was time to get a new one.

A trip to the nearby Camper’s World was in our future. As luck would have it they didn’t have the plastic piece I needed and suggested we try to order it from Tiffin Motorhomes. They did however have a restringing repair kit I purchased to repair our day/night shades.

Without the plastic piece I decided it best just to improvise and found a old picture frame hanger that looked like it could work. Along with the use of a half of a replacement snap from our snap kit I was able to improvise and make a better mouse trap. The string that holds the mini blinds is now not as tight and thus easier to secure. The picture to the right shows the repair before it got some touchup paint.

Once I screwed in the new picture frame holder into the snap piece I had a string support for the blind that worked exquisitely better than our old one. Thought this tip might help others so here it is…

Feeling pretty smug about this repair I was finally ready to tackle the restringing of the day/night shades… Reading tons of web pages on how to perform such repairs I was pretty sure I could tackle this job as well… wrong!!! After several hours of simply trying to remove the blind from the valance or simply just removing the valance it was obvious I didn’t have the right tools.

A trip down to various hardware stores was made to purchase a 12” long Phillips screw bit for my power drill. This also turned out to be difficult and I finally had to settle for a six inch bit and a six inch extender. With these tools in hand removal of the valances was a whole lot easier even though I had to get a bit contorted to get to several of the screws inside the valance.

I removed the three screws on the top and the two on the sides of the valances. With the valances removed I had to remove several screws that were screwed in at an angle to hold the shade to the valance (which is why I was unable to simply remove the shades from the valance supports). With shades in hand and all the knowledge I gained from the web I was ready to restring the shades… Easy, right? Wrong!!!

After several failed attempts I got wise and contacted Don Boyd at Tiffin to see if they had a diagram for a shade with four springs and four strings. He sent me the one above (click to enlarge it) and when properly deciphered it actually worked. The picture of the diagram was confusing in that it appears to show the strings going diagonal in the top half of the night portion of the shade but they don’t. This is just a depiction showing that the strings on the outside go to the opposite inside part of the day portion of the shade. Once deciphered the restringing was a snap. I used a large needle after compressing the shades together and simply pushed the needle with the new string through and Shazam!!! The shades were repaired.

With the total cost of the stringing kit and the new bits at about $25.00 I was able to repair both blinds for $12.50 each. I still have enough string to repair a couple more when they break. The learning curve to repair these is pretty steep but once you figure it out, the repair of the next one can be done rather quickly. Hope this helps some other Tiffin owners out there in repairing their day/night shades.

Recipes and other cooking thoughts…

I have mentioned a few meals we have prepared while on the road and have had a few requests from some of you for our recipes that we use. The only problem I have with this is that I really don’t use many recipes but I have guidelines that I use to make the meals we like. The first recipe I am going to share is our Tuna smothered in a zesty mushroom sauce. This is one of our favorites but there really isn't a set recipe - more a list of ingredients. Then depending on how much you like some of the ingredients and how thick or thin the sauce is you can modify the ingredients to make it just right for you.

Other recipes we have are works in progress as we learn to use our convection/microwave oven. We have been working on recipes for a lot of bread products such as bagels, home made pizzas, focaccia bread etc..

One of the biggest challenges we initially had was finding the right sized pan that would fit in the oven and still provide a large enough surface area so we could have a decent amount of food… most of the commercial pans we found were too small. But then I had a eureka moment, as the 13x9 pan we were about to throw away since it was a wee too bit big, just needed some tweaking to be the perfect RV convection oven pan. So I got a rag and some vise grips and slowly bent upwards the lip on each end of the 13 inch side. Then with some subtle bangs with a rubber mallet I had it…

Viola the perfect convection oven bread/pizza/cookie pan… Give it try and see if this works for you as perfectly as it did for us…

The next recipe I will post will be for the bagels since several of you have asked for it as well. Note how the edges of the above pan were bent upwards to square up the pan and thus shorten it enough for the convection oven in our RV.

Now as far as the recipes go I think I will post them on the other blog called Road Treats since they seem to fit better there than here… what do you think? Should I post recipes here on this blog or on my sister blog?

Wiring up the toad…

Well as you may remember when we started this journey over a month ago we were not able to tow our Honda CRV since we were missing some parts. We finally got the parts needed to finish being able to hook up the toad. Yes!!!! So I got up early one morning to get all the parts out and make sure we would be able to tow the CRV the next time we are ready to leave.

   

I had previously installed the Roadmaster base plate on our new Honda CR-V. That task takes about 3.5 hours and requires minimal cutting on the front fascia of the CRV. The parts I was initially missing were the quick disconnects that we had to order from Roadmaster . Once these parts arrived we finally had everything we needed to mechanically tow the CRV, or did we?. Because now we had to hook of the electrical side of the equation.

                    

To install the Roadmaster Universal Light Kit we were going to need to run the lighting wires underneath the car and along the brake lines and support beams on the driver’s side until we could run the wires up into the rear quarter panel to the rear lights. I couldn’t find an easy way into the interior via the firewall so I chose the outside and under approach. Snaking the wire under the car was best done by feeding in through the hollow support steel from below where possible and feeding the wire rear wards making sure to avoid any possible areas that might compress the wires or put them too near the exhaust system (don’t want them melted).

                       

Snaking the wires from front to back will take a good hour if you are meticulous and have to redo parts of it like I did ; ) … But once this part was done I was able to determine which lights lit up when the turn signal, brakes and lights were used. I used a sharpie to mark inside the plastic what each light did. Now the universal kit didn’t have everything I needed so I had to order two additional diodes (which I had ordered after ordering the light kit).  The additional diodes are necessary for me since both my CRV and motorhome have separate lights for turn signals, breaks and lights. Wiring the diodes in place wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

After splicing in all six of the diodes I had my wife watch the lights as I retested everything and all seemed to work like they was supposed to. Looks like I didn’t screw anything up :) !!! So all I need to do is attach the 4 flat-to-4 round adapter I bought to the 4 round-to-7 round pigtail I have for the motorhome attachment point and we can test the motorhome. But alas, I still need another part as both of my 4 round adapters are female… so even thought I thought I had ordered all the parts I will still need at least one more…

The rest of this story will have to wait till I find the additional part…

Learning one day at a time…

We have been in the motorhome for 4 days now and have been stationary for the last few nights and it has been wonderful even though it has been raining since we arrived in Athens Georgia.  We are staying at an absolutely quaint little RV park named Pine Lake RV camp about 15 minutes from Athens. There are about 30 sites but only a couple of pull-through sites for larger rigs. It is very quiet with no trains nearby and only slight traffic noise on the little traveled road nearby. The only negative is they only accept cash. However there are a few ponds and a dock that looks like a nice place to sit and enjoy a cocktail if it wasn’t raining…

We are striving to learn something new about the motorhome day by day since we never had the opportunity to do a shakedown trip before full timing. We never stayed anywhere in a motorhome till our first night on the road a few days ago. So what have the rookies learned so far?

• the RV will fit between two semi trucks on a highway without the mirrors hitting them
• the Norcold refrigerator will only work on AC power when plugged in
• the clothes bar for hanging clothes will not support 200 lbs of clothes when you go over a bump in the road
• leveling the motorhome is an art not a science
• packing two 3 lb. packages of homemade tamales in the freezer leaves little room for anything else
• the fantastic fans work best when you open the vents more than a little bit

We have much more to learn but most important is that we are getting to know our motorhome more and more and are loving are decision to live in her more each day…