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…

Chilling in Aberdeen, NC…

We have been taking it easy the last few days and started to do some catch up work around the place. While we were in Nashville we stopped by a Sams Warehouse and bought a new printer to replace our printer that became a trip casualty right after we first headed out. You see, we put everything away before hitting the road like we were suppose to d but one time we left the printer on a shelf fending for itself. While in transit it got jettisoned across the bedroom and landed on the bedroom floor. While it still worked at the time it made a gawd-awful noise when it printed…

Well we needed to print some papers and sign them for our real estate agent back home before we left for Nashville and it of course decided not to print for us.  Chalk this up as one of those unexpected expenses of RV’ing :). Then to top things off the wife’s five year old laptop decided to call it quits when the power supply finally gave out. It also fried some RAM in the laptop when it decided to blow… so we have another big ticket item to purchase very soon. This needs to be bought ASAP since she said early on in this adventure that she didn’t need dish or satellite TV since she could see all her favorite TV shows on her laptop. Well her favorite shows and mine are quite different so we are shopping furiously for a new one. ;)

Also, we finally got our diode wiring kit and light relays as well as our quick release brackets for the toad for towing behind the motorhome. I will have to install all this pretty soon. I have read this is a big job and may take 4-6 hours with most of the time involved trying to feed the wires from the front of the Honda CRV to the rear where the tail lights are. I will attempt the job but not sure I will be able to finish it without some assistance. Need to get all this done before we head up north in about a month from now…

NOTE: Photos of some buildings in Nashville, TN have been added to this blog, and as you know clicking on any of them will enlarge them…

Less than 20 days… Yikes!

Well I noticed today that we are winding down our working life and about to hit our retirement date. With all the unusually cold weather we haven’t been able to get a lot done.  The rig has been cleaned inside and out and is seemingly ready for her first trip. However, we have a few key things that must be done before we can leave.

I put up a punch list a few days ago and have been updating it as I get things done or as I realize something else that needs to be done. One thing not on the list that absolutely has to be done before we leave is to have the refrigerator serviced. Even though I asked the previous owner if he had taken care of the Norcold recall and he said yes… he didn’t.  I called Norcold with all the necessary info and they said it had not been serviced.  So now we have to wait till the part arrives (sometime next week it will be shipped) and have it installed.  We decided we will need a refrigerator before we leave :)

Another key item to get done is the baseplate on our toad.  It has been ordered and should arrive next week.  I have already spoken with a mechanic who said he would install it. Also, we have started selling our bigger items on craigslist. Our antique dining room set sold, along with an antique rocker, an antique sideboard, an outdoor wicker furniture set, my 42 inch flat screen TV :( and a few other items.  The last really big item that we must sell is our early 1900 English three piece bedroom set. Some of our keeper stuff has even been loaded into the RV.

We might make it down to the Houston RV show on Saturday since we can’t make an outing in the RV yet. We still have much to do and the clock is ticking…

Blue Ox, Roadmaster, Brake Buddy… Oh My!

Now that we have our toad it is time for us to get the toad ready to be towed behind our future home.  I wanted to buy the entire towing system and install it before we get our motorhome (since we don’t have one yet) but it appears as if we really need to wait on some of the parts since a crucial measurement is needed before installation on the toad.

It has been suggested to first measure the height from the ground to the center point of the motorhome’s hitch receiver and from the ground to where the base plate tow bar connections would be on whatever hitch plate system we decide upon. Why? Well most tow bar manufacturers recommend there be no more than 4" difference between these two measurements.  This will prevent the toad from pushing under or over the tow bar connection points during emergency stops.

But that shouldn’t stop me from buying and installing the base plate on our 2011 Honda CR-V. All my research has narrowed down my choices to Blue Ox and Roadmaster. After reading the installation manuals for both of them I feel more comfortable installing the Roadmaster since it doesn’t require any cutting of the existing frame structure of the CR-V whereas Blue Ox does. Both require taking off the front fascia which I admit seems a bit scary but doable.  Both require drilling new holes and fitting new components. Those who have installed them their selves suggest the Roadmaster is easier and will take about 3.5 hours to install.

So it looks like I will purchase the Roadmaster baseplate and then decide on the tow bar and brake system later…

Which tow bar and brake system would you recommend for the CR-V with a roadmaster base plate?

Introducing the new toad…

As I had mentioned in a previous blog we have been in the market for a toad.  After we test drove one of the Honda CRV’s at a local dealer we pretty much knew this was the car we wanted. We had contacted dealers and inquired on the internet about the Honda CRV and got bids from four car dealers.

We had asked each of them for their best written “drive out” offer We also told them what we were expecting to pay based upon our research. As I mentioned before the costs from our research stated that the average paid price was about $24,791 (before ttl). Further research suggested that these cars were highly demanded thus I didn’t expect much of a discount like I had experience on other cars I had bought on the internet before.

So the four bids from the Honda dealers ranged from 26,265 to 26,430… wow not much difference at all and this really surprised me. Not much of an incentive to drive the 100 miles to Houston to save a couple hundred dollars. However, one Houston dealer had an additional incentive of a $500 gift card to Academy (which could come in handy in our future lives :) ). So I sent emails to each vendor except the lowest priced one. I told them each where they were in this “bidding war” and asked if they wanted to make a better offer since they were still in consideration. Not much changed after this round of emails but after notifying our local dealer that we were going to go to Houston to make our purchase he submitted a new offer about $700 lower… so can you say SOLD!!!!!

We now own a new Honda CRV EX all wheel drive. The dealer brought the price down to 24,000 making the total drive out about 25,700 and we didn’t have to make the trek to Houston. The CRV is hiding out in our garage until we sell our 2007 Toyota Camry.

One more thing off the list…

Buying a car via the internet…

Buying a car has become easier since the internet came about since so much information is now easily at our fingertips.   After reading reviews, safety reports, and bloggers who atoll the virtues of this car as the toad of choice for RV’ers we are looking to replace our current vehicles with a 2011 Honda CRV EX.

So how do we now shop for this car?  First the bride and I, being short in stature, needed to test drive one of these so we went off to the local dealer.  Here we looked at the CRV and actually found one exactly as we wanted one.  We test drove the car and we loved it easy handling and it was very drivable for the two of us. After letter the sales agent know of our intentions we gave him the opportunity to give us his best written offer before we hit the web in search of deals (we told him what we were expecting to pay based upon our web research).

So how did we do our web research? The best starting place in my opinion is to go to Truecar’s website where one is able to get a thorough price report on the car that they want.  In our case we are looking at a 2011 Honda CRV EX where according to our zip code the costs are as follows:

• Dealer Cost $24,015
• Factory Invoice $24,520
• Average Paid $24,791
• Sticker Price $26,025

They go on to point out that in our area the prices one should expect are as follows:

• Great Price $24,337
• Good Price $24,925
• Above Market Price more than $24,926

Other sites such as edmunds.com and kbb.com give further details:

• kbb suggests a fair purchase price of $25,504
• Edmunds projected five year cost of ownership ^®  suggests our fuel costs to be $8,429 and insurance to be $5,491
• Edmunds suggested True Market Value^®  $24,603 or between truecar’s great and good price
• Edmunds projected five year cost of ownership for maintence and repairs is $2,783 and $671 respectively (great for budget forecasting)

Further when comparing the true cost to our our second choice model, a 2011 Jeep Wrangler, we learned that it would cost us more than 11,000 dollars more to own it. With $2,000 per year more in our budget I think we will just rent a Wrangler for those occasions when we want to do some hard core 4WD off roading.

So we sent off many an email to many a car dealer and are starting to get some prices in.  The best one so far is slightly above the average price of truecar’s prices, however, this one does have an incentive of a $500.00 gift card thus lowering it to below average in pricing… time will tell who we buy from…

Toad odds and ends… the analysis…

My toad choices for now are as follows:

- 2010 Wrangler Unlimited Sport RHD 4x4- Net MSRP $28,680 15/19 MPG (or older used model)

- 2010 CR-V EX Total MSRP as built $26,499 21/28 MPG (or older used model)

So the analytical and practical side of me does the following comparison based upon this assumption--> If I drive 8000 miles per year in the city and 12000 per year on the highways the costs of each will be the following based upon $3.00 per gallon fuel costs:

 

	MPG	Miles	$ per Gal	Cost	Total Cost
Jeep Wrangler	15	8000	3	1600
	19	12000	3	1895	3495
Honda CRV	21	8000	3	1143
	28	12000	3	1286	2429

So the total cost of ownership for just fuel is $1000.00 per year more for the Jeep. Now we all know the lighter the tow vehicle, the better since this helps decrease the stopping distance since more weight makes it more difficult to stop and requires more gas to tow.  So lets just say that it costs an additional $300 in fuel per year to tow the heavier jeep.  Let’s also assume about $100.00 more to insure the slightly costlier Jeep. Total annualized cost to own the Jeep over the CRV then is my best guess estimate of $1400.00 per year.

So if it costs $35.00 per day to rent a Jeep when we are in serious 4 wheel drive country then we could rent one for 40 days and it would result in a breakeven amount of $1400.00.

So it sounds like I am going to be the proud owner of a Honda CRV as my toad since I can’t imagine I will do some serious four wheel more than 40 days in a year… will I?

Talk me out of it…

Toad - Jeep Wrangler 4WD…

I mentioned in an earlier blog that for us a toad had to have the following:

1. It has to be able to go off the road – not extreme off-roading but capable of going on neglected dirt roads
2. gas mileage should be over 20
3. it has to be light weight
4. it has to be readily towable with all four wheels down
5. it needs adequate storage
6. it needs to be capable of carrying two kayaks

  So why am I considering the Jeep Wrangler 4WD as a towable vehicle? Well in a nutshell because it could be the most fun toad available that meets most of my criterion.. The biggest problem with a jeep is when it gets stuck… baybee it is STUCK!!!

The Jeep Wrangler 4WD can be towed with all four wheels down without any major modifications. This is according to what the manufacturers specifications say. Like the Honda CRV all we would need is a tow-bar and base plate along with a suitable brake system and we are set. The specs are as follows:

• Base Curb Weight : 3760 lbs
• Towable with both a manual and automatic transmission
• Mileage (City/Hwy) : 15/19 
• Retail price range is  : $20-30 K

See the official site for more information.  I will end this blog with a picture of the jeep I once had when I was a college student living in a trailer house… sure wished I had it now…