Daily Archives: December 28, 2010
Burnt Eagles and Tortilla Soup . . .
Since we’re just a little over month before we plan to leave here, it’s time to start going thru my to-do list for the RV.
One of the things I started today was removing the three damage wheel well flanges and replacing them with new ones, or at least new to me.
Here’s what one of the damaged ones looked like. Note the broken off white section to the right of the tire.
The flanges are held on by 9 steel rivets, and because they’re steel they’re pretty tough to drill out. In fact, I was only able to do two of them today because I ran both batteries down on my drill. I’ll have to finish the 3rd one tomorrow after I recharge.
At some point things are loose enough that I can just break off the flanges by hand.
The flanges that I’m installing came off this burnt-out American Eagle that we found at last November at Colaw RV Salvage in Carthage, MO. If I had bought these new from Fleetwood, they would have cost me over $500 each. This was because they would have had to pull the mold out of storage and make them from scratch.
But I got these for $100 each, much, much better. Of course they didn’t match our coach, so I knew I would have to get them repainted.
But that didn’t happen until this past August in Elkhart, IN when I had them painted by Michele Henry of Phoenix Commercial Paint when she did the damaged cargo bay doors. Michele did a great job on the doors and the flanges. If you want any paint work done on your coach, she’s the one to see.
I’ll bring the new ones over from the storeroom tomorrow, and hopefully, by then I will have found the hardware I need to remount them. I want to use stainless steel bolts and not rivets this time.
Jan said when she saw this burnt hulk that looked so much like our rig, it made her knees go weak. Based on the burn pattern and the hotspot, it looks like this started as a refrigerator fire. That’s one reason that I bought a refrigerator compartment fire extinguisher from Mac McCoy, the Fire Guy, as soon as I could.
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Nick Russell called a little after 2pm to talk about whether he should upgrade his 3 year old computer from Windows XP to Windows 7. I told him with a computer that old it’s usually better to just get a new one.
The old one is more and more likely to have something fail, and you’re going to get a faster, better machine under warranty. It normally just makes sense.
We left the rig a little about 5pm to meet Bob and Maria at Monterey’s Little Mexico before Jan and Maria headed out to play bingo. I can’t get enough of their Chicken Tortilla Soup. It’s great and I really miss it when we’re on the road.
After I left the restaurant, Bob and I went by Lowe’s before I dropped him off at his house. I was looking for some screws to mount the wheel well flanges, but they didn’t have what I needed.
Jan is really doing well at bingo and I think she’s getting hooked. She won a $100 a few weeks ago, and then last week she won $750.
But tonight she only won $125. Bummer!
No, not really. 
She’s worked her way up to playing 24 cards at a time. You can get cards in sheets of 9 or 12. She started out playing two 9’s, then a 12 and a 9, and then two 12’s. I told her she should add another 9, but she’s afraid she’ll lose track of the numbers and miss one.
Nick called again a little before midnight to say he was having trouble accessing my blog, although his wife Terry could see it just fine on her computer.
I told him I wasn’t having a problem here, and that I hadn’t had anybody else say they were having a problem either.
If anyone else is having a problem, please let me know.
Otherwise I’ll just have to believe the problem is really just with Nick, and not the blog.
More tomorrow…
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Thought for the Day:
The real reason you’re so jealous is that the voices talk only to me.
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