Our RV Adventures

Installing Nick’s new Smart Light 1000 a few days ago reminded me of something. Last September at Nick and Terry’s last Gypsy Rally that was held in Celina, OH, I purchased two Smart Lights to replace the old ones on my coach. I had originally installed a set of the lights in 2009, and overall I’ve been pretty happy with them, except for a couple of things.

They don’t stay on long enough, and can’t be adjusted. When they are triggered, they only stay on about 15 seconds before they shut off. Then you have to wave your arms to turn them on again.

Also, the white model’s plastic case starts yellowing within a few months. So this looked like a good time to replace them. Plus the new ones come with a much brighter LED bulb rather than the incandescent one. So I bought two black ones to replace my old ones.

But after the rally was over, we spent the next couple of months traveling along with Nick and Terry, so I packed them away planning on installing them after we got back to Houston right before Thanksgiving. But by that time I had forgotten about them.

So, as usual, it was Nick’s fault. Anyway since we have a couple of free days here before we leave, it seemed like a good time to take care of that.

Our American Eagle coach uses two of these lights, but it only took me about 45 minutes to get them both installed and checked out. There’s really not a lot to do. Just connect the wires using crimp splices and screw it on using the same holes as before. These newer models come with a strip of caulking to place around the inside lip of the case so it does not need to be caulked after installation.

A little after 5pm we all headed out for dinner. After some back and forth, we ended up going back to Humphrey’s once again. This time, rather than a burger like last time, I had something similar, but different. A Bacon Cheeseburger Salad, with hamburger meat, bacon, and shredded cheese, on top of a good salad mix with spicy ranch dressing. And of course, sliced pickles and a small side of fries.

Really good.

Later, after sundown, I went outside to check out my new lights. And I was really surprised how much brighter and whiter the LED bulbs are compared to the old ones. And it stays on for about a minute, just like I wanted.

Here’s the latest pic of Landon’s 2nd cousin, Zoe Nadeau. A real cutie, and growing every day.

Tomorrow I have a few more chores I’d like to get done before we leave here on Monday.

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Thought for the Day:

“Getting married for sex is like buying an airline to get free peanuts.” – Jeff Foxworthy
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Jan was up early this morning because she wanted to attend an 8:30am seminar. Lucky for me, she took the golf cart shuttle taxi over to the Cam-Plex so I didn’t have to get up early.

That’s my sweetie!

I got up at my usual 10am, and after coffee, I went next door to Nick’s rig to replace his towing light connector plug. The other one had come apart and corroded inside so I wanted to replace it with something better.

Looking around I found this Hopkins 6-Pole Round Plug that looked like it will fill the bill.

The best thing about it is that the wire end is not open like most of these, but it’s sealed with a housing and a rubber grommet. Since the wires on the old plug had some corrosion on them, and since there was plenty of slack, I cut all the wires back about an inch and started over.

After trimming back the insulation, I sprayed both the plug connectors and the wire ends with an anti-corrosion spray and after slipping the grommet on first, I connected the wires to the plug. Next up, before I put the housing back together, I had Nick cycle through the rig lights while I checked the voltages at the plug. Then when everything checked OK, I filled the inside of the plug with terminal grease before putting everything back together. The terminal grease is thick like Vaseline and will keep moisture out of the connector and cut down on any future corrosion.

Some time in the next day or so I’ll have Nick pull behind the rig and we’ll check the lights out all the way through before we all head out on Monday.

By the time I finished up with the connector, Jan was back at the rig for the afternoon. We both ended having nice naps, before we all headed over to the Cam-Plex about 5pm for the closing ceremonies and the dinner buffet.

It was after 7:30 when we got back to the rig, but the night wasn’t over. Fireworks were scheduled for either 9:30 or 10:00, depending on which brochure you wanted to believe.

We had all planned to meet over at Charles and Chris Yust’s rig to watch the fireworks from there, but Mother Nature had other ideas. A little after 9pm, a light rain and a lot of lightning moved into the area. After checking the weather radar, we decided to just sit in our truck and watch the lights through the windshield.

In fact it seems like they started the show early because of the oncoming weather.

The really spectacular part of the show was the fact that the fireworks were interspersed with a lot of big lightning bolts, many of them cloud to cloud behind the fireworks. It was kind of like dueling banjos, but with fireworks. A really neat sight.

Brandi sent over these pics of Landon’s 4th, watermelon and all.

Love those Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) swimming trunks he’s got on.

Not sure what we’re doing tomorrow. It kind of depends on the weather. I’ve got a couple of things I want to do around the rig, but that might have to wait. We’ll see.

Last up, a big Thank You to Daryl and Cheri Lawrence of Lawrence RV Accessories for their usual great customer service. Cheri had given me some replacement caps for the sensors on my TireTraker Tire Pressure Monitoring System since I had a couple that were cracked.

But on one of them, the top part of the cap broke off but the threaded part was stuck on the sensor. I used successively more force trying to get the stuck part off until I broke the battery clip on the sensor. Oops.

I called Daryl and Cheri to see if they left the area yet because I wanted to buy a new sensor to replace the one I broke. They were still in the area, and a little while later appeared at our rig door with a new sensor at no charge. Now that’s what I call service.

Every RV’er should have a tire pressure monitoring system for both his RV and his vehicle, and the TireTraker is one of the best. Check it out.

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Thought for the Day:

“You can all go to Hell. I’m going to Texas!” —David Crockett

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