Our RV Adventures

First off, Jan and I want to send out our “Get Well Soon” wishes to our good friend, Nick Russell of Gypsyjournal fame.

Well, it looks like we dodged a bullet on most of today’s rains, with it never getting very heavy, and pretty much over by 2pm. And even tomorrow’s ‘Heavy Thunderstorms’ have been downgraded to ‘Storms/Wind’. It would be nice to have it ‘downgraded’ to ‘Sunny’ for tomorrow, but that’s probably not going to happen.

But on the upside, this weekend is still looking nice.

Todd, our GGS service guy, came back to top off our diesel tank. I figured he’d wait until he came back on Sunday to service the generator, but he went ahead and did it today. He said he probably won’t be back on Sunday since our replacements, Donna and Joe Shelton, were experienced enough to get themselves hooked up.

Of course when you think about it, with everything already here, and set up and running, it’s no different than pulling into an RV park and getting hooked up.

I  had mentioned a while back that as of right now, we’ll be moving back and forth between the Lake Conroe TT park and the Colorado River TT park in Columbus, TX for the rest of the year, into next, depending on park openings down the League City area.

Since I originally set things up on a Friday for some reason, all of our 10 upcoming two week reservations start out on Friday. But since we’re leaving the gate this Sunday and going into Lake Conroe, I had to lop off two days of our reserved 14 days to make things come out right.

But I was thinking this morning that if I pushed everything back two days that it might make things a little easier in a couple of ways. First off, the traffic looping around the top of Houston on Beltway 8 should be a little lighter on Sunday, not that it’s usually that bad in the middle of the day when we travel. But maybe more importantly, by coming in on Sunday when a lot of weekend campers are leaving, it might give us a better choice of sites.

Anyway, rather than me starting at the last of my ten reservations and backing each one up two days, one after the other, going forward, I thought I’d just call Thousand Trails Reservations and let them do it.

Surely their sophisticated reservation software would be able to move all the reservations forward two days, automagically, all at once. But I quickly found that they would have to do it one at a time, just like me.

Geez!  I’ve seen cheap, badly-written campground software that would do this with no problem. So I ended up doing it myself, since the last time I let them change a bunch of reservations, they screwed it up.

Sometimes the only way to get something done right, is to do it yourself.

Of course sometimes I screw it up too, but at least then I know who to blame.

One chore I forgot to tell you about yesterday was to check the water in our rig’s house batteries

I was immediately surprised to see how much dust from the trucks going by, had accumulated in the battery compartment. When we get settled in after our move this Sunday, I’ll pressure wash it to clean up. I also noticed a little corrosion on the terminals that I’ll take care of at the same time.

Because of the internal bracing in the bay it can be hard to get distilled water into the back set of batteries, so I made up this water hand pump using a well rinsed out windshield washer fluid jug and this Pennzoil Gallon Fluid Transfer Pump

This lets me put the hose nozzle in the cell opening and just pump to top it off. No fuss, no mess.

I’ve given you a link to one on Amazon, but I think I got mine at Wal-Mart.

My engine batteries are sealed and on a swing-out tray above the house batteries. And since they’re sealed, they need no maintenance, just like the battery in our truck.

One less thing to do.

As far as today was concerned, I didn’t schedule anything major since the weather was supposed to be pretty rainy. But it actually didn’t turn out bad. So I took care of some small stuff that had been pushed down on my list by bigger stuff.

First up, I wanted to install some grommets on the floor mats in the truck. Unlike a lot of vehicles, our Dakota doesn’t have any way to fasten the mats down and they get scrunched up under the pedals after a time.

So I got out my Lord & Hodge Grommet Kit and installed two grommets on each mat like this.

When we get back to Conroe I’ll stop off at an auto parts place to pick up some of the screw-in hooks that will hold the mats in place.

I’ve also used the grommet kit to put some additional grommets in our canopy tarp here on the gate to be able to put tie-downs exactly where I want them.

Finishing up, I liked the paracord boot laces I made for my Red Wing boots so much, I made up a set for my steel-toed boots too. I started wearing these boots again a week or so ago when it was so cold and rainy, and my other boots got wet.

I hadn’t worn them since last year’s gate when we had to wear all the Frack gear, and I’d forgotten how comfortable they are. Especially considering they only cost about $30 vs. $175 for the Red Wings.

The only real downside is that they are a good bit heavier than my others, but I certainly feel light on my feet when I take them off.

FYI the little American Flags are called ‘lace keepers’. They keep your laces from gradually getting uneven over time. Most people are stronger in one arm than the other, usually on their ‘handed’ side, i.e. right-handed or left-handed. So they tend to pull harder with that hand than the other one, without even knowing it.. And so the laces gradually get mismatched in length.

But the lace keepers provide enough drag to stop that from happening.

And you can get them in hundreds of different styles, including military branch insignia, sports teams, car manufacturers, and many others.

A few years ago when we were on a drill rig gate, I was waiting to talk to the Company Man, along with another couple of guys. One of these guys was about 6’ 6’ and built like a pro linebacker.

I happened to look down at his boots and couldn’t resist a chuckle. Seeing where I was looking, he smiled at me and said, “My 6 year old daughter gave them to me for my birthday a couple of weeks ago.” And then I understood.

And I must say he did look resplendent in his well-worn boots, complete with large pink Hello Kitty lace keepers.

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Thought for the Day:

“The best way to teach your kids about taxes is by eating 30% of their ice cream.” – Bill Murray

dfadfds

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.

Eternabond Microsealant Tape

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