Our RV Adventures

At least I hope if is.

Today was another ‘errand/chore’ day, and luckily for me, it’s also my last full day of being Janless for a while.

Tomorrow afternoon after work I’ll drive up to Katy to pick her up from her Landon-sitting duties and then bring her home after we all have dinner together. It’s a good thing because both me and the cat are lonely.

Once I was up and had some coffee in me, I went outside to caulk some spots on the rig’s passenger side windshield. It had separated slightly at the top and rain would leak in.

This has been a problem ever since our blow-out in May 2015. The ironic thing though is that the windshield wasn’t damaged during the blow-out, but during the repair process.

They used one of these 10 ton lift jacks pick up the front of the rig about 4 feet off the ground so that they could remove and replace the damaged 150 gallon diesel tank.

And as they were letting it back down, the passenger side windshield cracked. They replaced it a couple of days later, but it’s never been quite right since then.

In fact I suspect that by lifting the rig like this it may  have torqued the frame because the glass has never quite seated right since then. In fact I even checked the part number of the new windshield to be sure it was the right one.

I’ve had a couple of glass places look at it and they all say it’s in no danger of falling out, so now I just want to stop the leaks once and for all.

Someone had recommended this Great Stuff Multipurpose Black Sealant. It’s very sticky, stays flexible, and resists UV rays.

So I thought I’d give it a try. Since the stuff expands about 50% I just sprayed a line of it on top of the gap and then once it expanded, I use a popsicle stick like a spatula to spread it into the opening and smooth it over. I’ll come back later when I know it’s good and dry and use a razor blade to level off any bumps or protrusions. But I guess I’ll have to wait for the next rain to see how it works.
Or there’s always the hose. We’ll see.

About noon I headed up toward the house to try once again to move some stuff from the house down to the new storage unit in Dickinson. My previous attempt was foiled by a rainstorm, but today looked to be clear. But looking over the stuff the other day, I saw it would be easier to move all this stuff if I had a hand truck. And after finding out that I could buy a hand truck cheaper than I could rent one for just 4 hours, I decided stop by Harbor Freight was in order.

Yeah, like I need an excuse.

And besides a nice 700# capacity hand truck for $38, I also found a cut-off tool on sale for $26.

I’ve had a couple of rusted bolts on the rig that I want to cut off, so I grabbed this too.

Finally getting to the house, I loaded up the truck and headed back down to the the storage unit and dropped the stuff off.

Only about 10 more loads to go.

I did a couple of things today that I hope I’ve done for the very last time. I paid the power bill for the house, and told the yard guy to mow it one more time.

For the last time, I hope.

See You Soon, Sweetie!

Thought for the Day: 

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” – Oscar Wilde

sgsg

Luv Ya Sweetie!

I spent most of the morning ‘degunking’ a laptop that my client brought in for me to look at.

He said the email didn’t work, but that was an easy fix and the least of the problems. He had changed the email password on the same account on a computer at work, so all I had to given it the correct password and off it went. But it hadn’t been been online since early 2017, so it was 37,201 emails behind. Which took about 3 hours to update. He gets a lot of Spam.

While that was going on, I uninstalled his expired Norton Anti-Virus and installed AVG Free. Next up I downloaded and installed both CCleaner and Glary Utilities to ‘degunk’ things but I didn’t run them until the email update was finished since using them often requires one or more reboots.

And when the email was finally done, it took about 6 or 8 run-throughs of both CCleaner and Glary before everything was cleaned out. My client said it was running faster now than he ever remembered it.

For a long while, and every time I work on our Splendide Washer/Dryer I’ve been unhappy with the way that the dryer vent hose connects up with the dryer. The Splendide, which is made in France, does not have a standard 4” flange like American units. where the hose slips over the flange and then is held in place with a circle clamp like this.

Instead the Splendide output looks like this.

And it’s sized so that the 3” hose that the rig uses just slips inside the ring. There is no way to fasten it down. The Splendide manual mentions something about a ‘special flange’, which nobody seems to know anything about. In fact the Splendide people out in Washington state have never seen one either.

In addition to the ‘flange’ the manual also mentions using duct tape to hold the hose in place. And that’s how mine came from the factory, as well as the 3 units I’ve worked on for friends. But the duct tape solution has a problem.

Over time the tape dries out from the heat, the glue hardens, and the hose can actually fall off. So every time I pull out the unit for another repair job, I try to come up with a better way to connect the hose.

But it wasn’t until a couple of days ago, as I was walking through A/C Duct area in Lowe’s, a piece of sheet metal caught my eye. It was a 3” to 2” duct adapter like this.

And it looked like it would be good fit.

So yesterday I pulled the washer back out of its cubby and tried it out. And the reducer was almost a perfect fit over the outside of the washer flange. But to make it a little tighter and seal it better, I did wrap a couple of turns of Gorilla Tape around the flange.

Then  with it in place I put a couple of sheet metal screws through the adapter and into the plastic flange.

The 2” end was a perfect fit for the inside of the 3” vent hose, and a circle clamp held it in place. In hindsight, and the next time I have the unit out, I’ll put a couple of pop-rivets through the clamp and hose into the adapter to make it even more secure.

So now hopefully, once and for all, that problem is fixed.

Tomorrow, if the rain holds off, I’ll be able to move some stuff down to the new storage room and get a couple of things done around the rig.

Hopefully.

Thought for the Day: 

“You can always count on the American People to do the right thing. Once they have exhausted all of the alternatives.” – – Winston Churchill

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