Daily Archives: November 15, 2015
Seven More Days . . .
Jan says giddily.
And More Chores, I say kind of giddily.
Jan had a hankering for Chicken Express chicken today, and I always had hankering for their catfish, so a little after 11, I drove into Carthage to pick up lunch.
I also made a stop to pick up some more of the Hot Hands foot warmers, since I only bought two packs the other day to try out, and now I wanted more. But I discovered last night that after I stuck the foot warmers further toward my toes, that my toes were what was really getting cold and needing warming. So instead of the full foot warmers, I got their toe warmers, which were a good bit cheaper.
$5 for a pack of 7 vs. $2 a set for the full foot warmers.
I’ll see how they work tonight.
This afternoon the first thing up on my chore list was to fix my Brake Buddy toad braking system.
We’ve had this one since our very first day of RV’ing almost 8 years ago and it’s been a real workhorse. The only problem I’ve had with it was that the cigarette light power plug started falling apart about 3 years ago. When I called Brake Buddy they sent me a new one for free. In fact they sent me a whole new power cable, which is what makes today’s job easier, since I had to open up the Brake Buddy then too.
The problem today was that the large plastic nut/ring that holds the pressure regulator adjustment knob in place had come off, which let the regulator fall down into the case.
It still worked just fine, but I didn’t want to take a chance on it getting in the way of the pneumatic piston that pushes the brake pedal.
Getting the case open is not difficult, but hey, do they really need 9 screws with 3 different TORX sizes?
Inside it looks like this.
On the right is little air compressor that runs everything, and the big black tank is the air tank that supplies the pressure to the piston. And the black/silver at the bottom left is the pressure regulator that came loose.
Behind that, the green circuit board is the brains of the thing, including the accelerometer that senses that the rig is braking and applies the brakes on the toad.
And on this side,
the big silver tube at the bottom is the pneumatic piston or ram that physically presses the brake pedal on the toad.
Not really complex when you break it down, but a nice clean design anyway.
Once I had the case apart it only took me a couple of minutes to put the regulator back in place and lock it down. Then it was the 9 screws again, with the 3 different sizes.
When I’ve got a job to do that requires several different bits, this is my goto case.
It’s got just about every different type of drill bit and screwdriver bit that you could want, so I had no problem with T10, T15, and T20 sizes that I needed for the Brake Buddy.
Before I stowed it away until next Sunday, I plugged it into the power socket on the truck, and after it aired up, rocked it back and forth to be sure the piston was still operating.
Next up was to top off the antifreeze in the rig. The green diesel type is getting harder to find since everyone is using the red now. But I had the NAPA Auto Parts here in Carthage order me a couple of gallons.
I had bought some at the Cummins dealership back in Amarillo earlier this year, but ending up using it in the leaky radiator in the truck before I could put any in the rig.
Getting the engine compartment open I was glad to see that my coolant tank repair was still going strong after 6 years.
It had cracked down the side back in 2009 when we were doing the east coast. I check with Cummins and found a new one costs $275.
IT’S A DARN PLASTIC JUG!
Made out of the same polypropylene that they make milk jugs from. My next thought was to glue it, but I found that pretty much only a special industrial glue made by 3M would stick to it. And a tube of that was almost as expensive as a new tank.
I had heard however that Eternabond Tape would stick to just about anything, and once you put it on, it wasn’t coming off.
Checking out the RV department at a Wal-Mart before we first hit the road, I had seen a package of this and picked up a couple.
So I decided to give it a try. After cleaning the tank with alcohol and letting it dry, I peeled the backing off a piece and stuck it on.
Six years later and it’s still stuck. As the package says, “Peel – Stick – Stuck!”
And I saved $275. Neat!
FYI Wal-Mart doesn’t seen to carry this anymore, at least I haven’t seen it in a long time, but it is available at Amazon above.
Around 3:30 this afternoon I went back around to the generator trailer to check to see if we have enough diesel to last us until Sunday when we leave, and our service guy, Todd, will be here to hook up our replacements. Turns out we don’t, so Todd will come by earlier this week to top us off.
But in check the level, I found we had another diesel leak, this time from the diesel-water separator attached to the side of the diesel tank. Kinda look like this.
At first I thought the petcock drain at the bottom was loose, since that was where it was leaking from, but tightening it didn’t help. Next I tried to tighten the nut that locks the petcock in, but that didn’t help either.
About then I touched the plastic bowl and discovered it was wet with diesel all the way around. Due to the coloring of the plastic it was hard to see, but easy to feel.
I got some paper shop rags, and after drying the bowl off, tried to tighten it down. And it did snug up a good bit. Hoping this was the fix, I dried the bowl off again and left a clean piece of paper rag underneath to check for any more drips.
Coming back about 10 minutes later, I found not a single drop of diesel on the paper. Since it had been dripping about one drop every ten seconds or so before, I decided this problem was fixed.
Wrapping up, although we’ve got Scattered Thunderstorms forecast for Monday, and Heavy Thunderstorms for Tuesday, the weekend still looks good for us packing up and getting on the road to Lake Conroe.
Hope it holds.
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Thought for the Day:
Tilting at windmills hurts you more than the windmills.
fasdfads
