Our RV Adventures

or 79.2 pounds, anyway.

Once again today started way too early, as I was up about 6:15 so we could leave for Brandi’s at 7. Jan’s going to be Landon-sitting today through Wednesday, since Brandi and Lowell are working this week while Landon’s out of school.

We didn’t have time for coffee, but we had picked up Supreme Croissants from Jack in the Box last night on the way home, so we just had those on the way.

I had allowed an extra 45 minutes for the normal hour and 15 minutes trip, assuming we would hit a lot of morning rush hour traffic, but we saw absolutely  none. The traffic moved along with no slowdowns whatsoever. Which meant we got there early enough to stop for coffees before we got to Brandi’s

Since I went to bed late and got up early, I decided to take a nap for a couple of hours at Brandi’s before heading back to the rig, getting back home a little after 1pm. Then it was time to get to work.

First up I wanted to install my new transfer switch and power converter under the bed. But first I had to get the Source Manager Inverter/Converter/Transfer Switch out. Which turned out to be a lot more trouble than I figured.

The first thing I did was to disconnect shore power outside at the pedestal. Then I started looking for how the Source Manager was fastened down. The only two bolts I could find were just inside the air vent. But when I removed them I still couldn’t pull it out.

Pulling the cover off the unit, I could see the problem. It was being held down by the wiring coming up from the bottom. In this case, the heavy duty 12 volt cables running to  the house batteries. But before I disconnected them, I went out to the battery bay and pulled the 300 amp fuse that’s in the line.

This let me safely unhook the cables without worrying about shorting something.

Next I removed the end panel to allow me better access to the shore power and generator cables coming into the unit.

So now all the power cables were disconnected and I should have been able to lift it out. But something was still holding it down. It would come up about six inches but that was it.

Reaching all around underneath, I discovered a bare ground wire about the thickness of a pencil that was the culprit.  And after a lot of struggling I was able to get a pair of lineman pliers under there to cut the wire.

So now it should be easy to lift out, right?

Wrong!

It was like trying to lift a box of boat anchors. Part of the problem was that there was no good way to grab hold of it, but the real problem was that it was just heavy as hell. And taking the screws out and lifting up the relay panel showed me the reason.

This thing had a big, hulking transformer in the size of my head that must weigh 40 pounds all by itself.

But finally as I listened to my back scream for mercy, I manhandled the thing out and on to the bathroom floor.

I had to know how much this thing weighs, so I set it on the bathroom scale. This blankety-blank thing is 24 inches long, 12 inches wide, and 14 inches high, and weighs 79.2 pounds.

No wonder I had trouble lifting it. Well, that’s 79 pounds gone, at least it will be when I figured out how to get it out the door and into the truck. And I have no idea how I’m going to get it into the dumpster.

And it’s all going to be replaced by three boxes this size or smaller.

This one is the new transfer switch, all wired up and ready to go.as soon as I put the cover back on. I was running out of daylight so I wanted to get it up and going. I’ll get it mounted tomorrow when I install the power converter. I’ll also fire up the generator to be sure it’s switching over like it’s supposed to.

Tomorrow I’ll finish up with the power stuff, and then install the new bathroom faucet and the kitchen sink hose.

Hopefully.

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Thought for the Day:

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. – Arthur C. Clarke

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Today was one of those cold, wet stay-in-the-rig days that just begs for huddling around a roaring fireplace and drinking hot chocolate. Unfortunately we only had a Lasko space heater to crowd around, and we were out of hot chocolate.

At 11am it was still only 38 degrees, but finally made it up all the way to 41 today, with 33 forecast for tonight.

And not much better tomorrow, except for maybe drier. We can hope.

About 1pm I drove over to the ‘E’ ring here at the park to check in with our friend’s Garland and Valencia Scott. They weren’t there so I left a note about getting together tonight for dinner.

Back at the rig, I started changing my previous smartphone, a Samsung Droid Charge, from a phone to an MP3 player for Jan. She’s got a couple of smaller ones that won’t hold all our MP3’s (over 20GB), and are hard to control because they don’t have a screen on any kind. I thought about getting her a new one, and then remembered my old phone. It has a 32GB SD card in it, and it already had some MP3’s on it.

I first stripped a lot of the old apps from it, freeing up more space and then started copying over our music library, which took the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening, partially  because I was trying to weed out any duplicates as I went. As it is, it’s probably going to take a few days to finish it up.

Since Garland had called back earlier saying we wouldn’t be able to get together until Friday, Jan and I drove over to Vernon’s Kuntry Katfish about 4pm for an early dinner. We ate here a couple of times in the past and have always enjoyed it, so we were back

Every table gets an order of hushpuppies and pickled tomato relish to munch on while we waited for our catfish dinner.

We’ve both learned to get the small catfish platter and not the large one, because even small one is pretty big. And very filling.

And by getting the small platter, we had room enough to share a dessert, a piece of ‘Good Pie’.

‘Good Pie’ is made with a cream cheese crust, then layered with pineapple and bananas, more whipped cream cheese, and then finished off with a meringue topped with pecans and chocolate drizzle.

Just typing this makes me want another piece. We’ll go back.

Tomorrow we’ve got another early start, (7am early) so we can be at Brandi’s by 9am so Jan can Landon-sit. Both Lowell and Brandi have to work this week, but Landon’s school is out of the holidays. so Jan’s going watch Landon until Wednesday afternoon. I’ll be coming back to the rig tomorrow so I can work on some projects before going back to pick up Jan Wednesday afternoon.

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Thought for the Day:

The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet. — William Gibson

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