Mods and Repairs Roundup
We were so excited to return to one of our favorite, most scenic campgrounds, but we ended up spending a week and a half tackling a sudden laundry list of repairs. What's Zen about that?! The plus side is, we were able to get a lot done all at once, as to not impede our overall travel life too much. It's a common notion in the RV community that, at any given time, there will be things that need repairing or maintenance. Ideally, it won't be anything that derails your camping experience, but it is true. Our experience at Las Vegas Bay Campground was not a common one, fortunately, but it did mean that we needed to triage repairs that piled on top of an already in-progress list.
Catch up on our posts!
We got 99 problems but the view ain't one
We got 99 problems, continued
RV life yields many benefits, but it's not easy. We don't discuss all our problems in the blog or on social media because then we'd feel like we were constantly airing our grievances. Other times, we'll mention a problem, but it takes so long to find a solution that we never give a conclusion. And so, in the spirit of RV problems galore, here is our mods and repairs roundup since we launched on the road for our second season of travel. Typically, "mods" refer to any voluntary modifications we decided to do, and repairs are fixes that we needed to do for our safety or the integrity of our RV.
We won't rehash all the repairs we talked about in the previous two posts, but instead we'll pick up at the end of our stay at Las Vegas Bay. Surprisingly, even after all the time we spent on the roof, hovering over the toilet, and more, we still had some stamina left in us. Since our brains were already flooded with RV chores, we couldn't find a reason why we wouldn't just continue down our list, tackling some more voluntary mods.
The first priority was to "stealthify" our truck bed. We would be bringing the truck into Las Vegas at least once, and since we store a lot of our belongings in the back of our truck, we feel more comfortable covering up the windows so people can't see what we've got inside. We'll often not take our truck into big cities due to its size and auto thefts, and so last time we went to Vegas, we actually rented a car for a few days. We did the same when we went into New Orleans earlier in the year. This time, though, we didn't want to spend the money on a rental, and we clearly had other fish to fry, and so we fashioned some curtains for the truck cap windows.
We wanted to get the curtains up quickly because we'd be going into the city that evening, and so I just cut the curtain fabric to size and hung them up with adhesive Velcro. It's not a permanent solution, but it did the trick for our trip into Vegas. Later on, we plan to use the bolts that already hold the window frames in and just punch holes in the fabric and bolt them.
Side note: The oversized parking lot at Miracle Mile in Vegas not only has space for big trucks and small RVs, but it also has 24-hour security. Score!
The next order of business was to end our stuck door woes once and for all. Ever since we got our new steps, we've been brainstorming ways we can get the door to stop sticking on the base plate. Things got complicated. The door is partially riveted in, so we couldn't easily move it higher or re-shim it. We considered trimming a small part of the bottom of the door off, but this could cause a lot of irreparable damage. Then one day, with my brain already well immersed in handywoman mode, I thought of what could possibly be the simplest solution - so simple that if it worked, we'd feel like idiots for not trying it sooner. I figured, before embarking on a major fix, why not just spray some WD-40 around the door and see if it would help? You may recall that we had already changed out the screws in the bottom of our door to ones that don't protrude as far. This helped about 60%. One of the three screws wasn't screwing in tight and seemed to be the biggest culprit, and so I removed that one altogether. The frame is held on by the two other screws and some glue, so I don't think it's necessary. Then, I took the WD40 and sprayed away. We're talking at least half a bottle, probably more, the whole time me thinking "There's no way this'll work." I crossed my fingers and tried the door, and to my pleasant surprise, it was now about 80% better. I opened and closed it several more times and discovered that the door was also sticking a bit on the side where it latches. I sprayed that area too. WD40 really is a miracle solution. Without any big projects or irreversible defacing of our door, we got our door to stop sticking probably a good 90%. Did I feel like an idiot for not trying such a simple solution in the first place? A little. But I figured it out eventually, so that makes me at least a reasonably smart idiot.
We'll likely have to lube the door every so often, but that's a very small price to pay for a door and steps that are finally working as they should. I often say that the best solution is the simplest one, and that was definitely true in this case.
On one of his many errands to pick up supplies, Anthony found a steal on a roll of heavy-duty mesh screen material at Wal-Mart. We use the material to cover our furnace vents to keep bugs and critters from setting up camp in them. Most people use these things, but we've tried using them and hate them with a fiery passion. They just won't install well for us. So we started using plain old mesh screening, which is cheaper and works great. As long as there's room for airflow, it shouldn't be a problem.
With a giant roll of screen material lying around, I could think of no better time to replace the screen on our front door. The top screen has had a hole in it for months. Both the top and bottom screens came from the manufacturer pretty loose, and last winter the top screen couldn't hold on anymore with all the slamming of our front door that was getting stuck on our old steps, and it tore at the bottom spline, leaving a gap of a few inches. Bugs could definitely get in if they wanted, but we tend to not keep our front door open often anyway. Unless we're boondocking and want extra airflow, like the exact circumstances at Las Vegas Bay. And so I got to work researching ways to replace a screen without taking the entire door down. I bought myself a screen rotary tool at Home Depot and got to splining. Our days were long, so the most tedious part was reinstalling it past sundown, as the bugs started coming out and I needed a flashlight to see the crevices of the frame. But, what a world of difference when it was done! The screen material is leaps and bounds better quality than the manufacturer screen, and I was able to get the screen nice and taught. It looks better, and now we can keep our front door open without worrying about bugs coming in through the screen.
Towards the end of our stay at Las Vegas Bay, we bought some materials to set up a sun shade for our patio. Summer weather was rolling in, and until this point we were just using our sunbrella to provide some shade on our patio. It's cumbersome, though, needing to get the umbrella out of the truck and also fill the base with sand or water. When we're boondocking, we don't have a lot of water to spare. We always talked about getting a sun shade, but we didn't want to drill into our trailer's roof to install D-rings to hold the shade. That problem was solved when we got solar. The panels are bracketed in, and so instead of drilling more holes in our roof, we could just bolt the D-rings to the brackets.
We completed our project a week later when we had time to put our patio down and figure out the shade's positioning. We bought an 8x8 shade which is a little large and droopy, but it was way less expensive than the other sizes. Someday we might upgrade to a size that fits better, but for now, the 8x8 does what it should. We bought clamp-on brackets for our railing so we didn't need to drill any holes, and also purchased a couple of flag poles so we could attach the sun shade higher. The setup works great, but for reinforcements on breezier days, we plan to double the brackets and get extensions for the flag poles. It's a work-in-progress, but it should be an easier setup than the umbrella, and it's a welcome reprieve from the hot sun.
That about sums up our voluntary mods that we tacked onto the end of our Las Vegas Bay fix-it list. That left our continuous list of "when we get to it" repairs, but that doesn't mean they're not important. When we got our solar install, our contractor pointed out a couple of problems he noticed. First, he saw uneven wear on one of our rear tires. He said it's possible we have a bent or misaligned axle. The wear was so gradual that we didn't notice during our routine checks of the tires, but we racked our brains and remembered when we started hearing creaking that wasn't there before. It was in Niagara Falls last September. We thought maybe the lightning strike had damaged our frame, and so we went to ATC to get that looked at. Turned out nothing was wrong with the frame, but it didn't even dawn on us that we might have an axle problem. We're not saying it is a result of the lightning strike. We think it's just a coincidence that we noticed the creaking a few weeks after.
It was surprisingly difficult to find someone who would look at our axle without us needing to derail our travels too much, but we finally got in touch with a guy in Utah who came to us at one of our campsites. We found out that both of our axles were bent and would need replacing. Our axle dude Garret told us it wasn't a safety issue and we could keep driving on them for the time being, but we wanted to get this squared away as soon as possible. The uneven wear on our tires was getting worse, and we didn't want to replace them until we got new axles. Little did we know that the very next day after Garret came out, the axle replacement would jump from "important" to "urgent" on our list. But that whole story will definitely require its own blog post.
The other problem our solar contractor pointed out was our weight distribution. He guessed we were too heavy on the front/tongue of our trailer. That's not a surprise to us because we tow a toyhauler but have no toys, and most of the storage is in the front of the trailer/back of the truck. We had weighed ourselves before on a CAT scale and everything came back fine, but we wanted to make sure we weren't uneven to the point where maybe that was causing the uneven wear on our tires. Obviously, you already know it wasn't. But, we were heading to an Escapees RV rally at the end of that month, and they offer Smart Weigh technology, where they do a comprehensive four-corner weigh of truck and trailer. We decided it was worthwhile to get definitive answers.
Our Smart Weigh actually came back really good, so much so that they asked us if we had done a Smart Weigh before because it looked like we had balanced ourselves with conscious effort. The only small red flags were, as Boondoctor John suspected, more weight on our front, and a little bit of unevenness from left to right, which is very common in RVs. There isn't much we can do about where the bulk of our storage lies, but we've been making efforts to load more towards the back of our rig on travel days, while also sliding one of the ottomans across the trailer for better left-to-right distribution.
We've already repositioned our truck hitch once, after discovering that the guy at our dealer put ours on wrong, but that was before we were fully packed for full-time travel. Now, we're thinking we might sit better if we change the hitch one notch. We'll need a professional with the right wrench and some expertise to consult with on this one, but it's on our list for the future. Until then, we're happy to report that our weight distribution is within normal range, and we have room to spare on our overall trailer weight.
Before Las Vegas Bay brought the host of problems, we were in touch with ATC regarding a broken line heater. When we were staying in Williams, AZ, a winter storm rolled in and our lines froze. We ended up not having water for over 24 hours. When we checked our trusty new panel for power intake, we noticed that the line heater wasn't drawing power. In our talks with ATC, we discovered that there are actually three line heaters and we don't know which one is busted. They wanted us to do some troubleshooting right away and deduce the problem, but other repairs ended up taking priority...like a broken toilet and our inability to get adequate electricity to our RV. So, we're putting that on our list to tackle before winter, when we'll need the line heaters again.
Just when we thought we had a handle on the bulk of our repairs and mods, we got one last surprise. Our headboard had started coming off. That part wasn't the surprise because it seemed to just be held on with screws, but eventually the entire top row of screws popped off, and it revealed the actual surprise, and our worst nightmare: mold. The very thing that ATC brags we don't need to worry about in an all-aluminum trailer, except the back of the headboard was cheap particle board, a material that is definitely not moisture resistant. We immediately pulled the headboard off and threw it away, and then began cleaning and scrubbing the wall behind it. We were able to get the mold and grime off and now have a blank slate for our own headboard design. It's something we've already discussed but never prioritized. We'll mull it over in the upcoming months. Perhaps we'll design and install a new headboard towards the end of the year when we're back at our home-base. Until then, besides the screw holes in our wall, we're fine not having a headboard.
Now let's travel back in time, to a few issues that we experienced during our blitz west.
We mentioned a while back that we noticed our gas gauge was reading incorrectly. What didn't make the cut in that post was that we were also having low oil messages while we were in Big Bend. We assume that dust got in the oil and compromised it, because we weren't actually low on oil, though we did top it off just in case. When we took the truck to get serviced in Las Cruces, they did a full oil change, and we haven't had an issue since. The gas gauge problem, however, continued. The GMC service department washed their hands of the issue, and we didn't press it because we needed to continue west anyways. It wasn't until the RV rally that Anthony had an epiphany on what was going on with the gauge. He attended a seminar on tanks, and during a discussion on how tank sensors work, Anthony connected the dots and realized that our gauge sensor was getting stuck. Typically there are detergents that can help keep the sensors clear of crud. Only we were in the Big Bend boonies and had to fill up at some pretty dicey gas stations. Between that and dust getting into every nook and cranny of our truck, maybe the sensor had build-up. We noticed that it would read too high, and then all of a sudden catch up to itself. Anthony's theory has proven plausible. Since getting back to civilization and filling up with more quality (albeit lower octane) fuel, our gauge has started sensing our gas level more accurately.
Somewhere between Las Cruces and Tucson, another problem reared its ugly head. The left blinker on our truck started working at rapid speed, as though something electrical had been malfunctioning. It took us a while to realize that it only happened when we were connected to the trailer, and that the trailer blinker wouldn't read at all. So we spent a few drive days without a left blinker on the trailer and a warp-speed blinker on the truck. When we were at Boondoctor Ranch getting our solar installed, we had some extra time to troubleshoot. We needed to figure out if we were having an issue with the truck or trailer. We checked/replaced the left blinker fuse in the truck, to no avail. We then borrowed John's truck to see how it would react to being plugged into our trailer. The trailer's blinker still didn't work. This meant that we were dealing with an electric malfunction in the trailer, not the truck. The fast blinking on our truck is actually to warn us that the connection isn't reading between truck and trailer. Kind of cool, now that we know what it is. And so, after leaving Boondoctor Ranch, we knew an RV tech appointment would be in our near future.
We called a mobile tech to come out to Las Vegas Bay (the first time we stayed there), and he found wiring that had been worn away near the trailer blinker. His best guess was that it was rubbing against something sharp like a nail, and during travel it wore away more and more in the motion. He replaced that part of the wire for us and warned us that it might not have taken care of the root cause, so it might happen again. But for now, all the connections are reading, and when we do our signal check on drive days, we no longer take for granted being able to say "Yep, the connections are working!"
So with all of this, why do we RV? It's clearly a lot of stress, and some problems create either immediate or eventual safety hazards. We always make a comparison to our life as homeowners. We had a huge list of repairs and renovations to get done on the house. Most didn't need to be done in as timely a fashion, but the downside to that is, we'd wait to get them done. Some items on our list we didn't tackle for 7 years and then decided to sell the house anyway! Even though we need to deal with the immediate stress of getting the RV repaired, there's less room to procrastinate. And, for the most part, the repairs are cheaper than they were at our house. Even when we had the house, we still had vehicles that also needed maintenance. Now we've roped our house and vehicle costs into one. Between that and the fact that most RV repairs are minor, we're still saving money living on the road.
The most important answer, though, is that we purposely wanted to become handier when we hit the road. Back when we owned a house, we barely did any repairs ourselves except for a few small ones. We had our plates piled so high with other life obligations, that to sit down with instruction manuals and learn how to fix things was extremely low on our priority list. Now, we've simplified our lives so that there is room to renovate and repair. As stressful as things can get, we try to embrace these moments as learning experiences. We are much more knowledgeable about the mechanics of our rig, which helps us keep it running better. This is a familiarity with our home-on-wheels that we never achieved with our house in 7 years. With the familiarity comes the ability to do work, and that work comes pride. We have the time and desire to instill that pride into our RV. We hope that whatever we learn on the road, we can take those skills and apply them to our future home one day.