Our RV Adventures

I got an email this afternoon from Lowe’s saying that my new batteries had come in. Surprising because they weren’t scheduled to arrive until the end of next week.

To recap: Our house batteries are 4 years old and on the way downhill. I had looked at getting another set of 4 6 volt Interstate’s to replace the ones I have. Wired in series-parallel, this would give me about 450 amp hours for about $625. But then we don’t really boondock any more, and probably won’t in the foreseeable future.

So I ordered these two heavy duty 12 volt tractor batteries from Lowe’s.

Wired in parallel, this will give me 12 volts @ 2280 amp hours, and saving me about 140 # in weight.

And the cost is only about $250.

Bigger, better, and cheaper. Nice!

And again, I know these aren’t deep-cycle batteries, but we won’t be using them that way.

One thing I’ll have to do is make up some new cables to get the new batteries hooked up. And a while back I found the best place to do this is at a West Marine location.

They have the big 00 (2/0) gauge wire, the heavy-duty copper connectors, and the bench-mounted swaging tool

to crimp the connectors on with.

And even better, and cheaper, it’s do-it-yourself.

But just be sure they still do this, I’ll make a stop by there tomorrow to check it out after we pick up the new batteries, though I’ll have to do some measuring before I’m ready to make up the cables.

Under the heading, “How high’s the water, Momma?”, I still haven’t been able to get back to my Onan generator problem. Because it’s rained heavily each day for the last two weeks without letup. But things are looking up for next week, so we’ll see.

I did think it was really funny this morning as Jan and I were watching some North Carolina weather girl (woman/person?) gushing about all the rain they’d had in her area, saying that they’d had over 4 inches in the last 24 hours, and that another 2 or 3 inches were expected in the next day or so.

Laughing, I looked over at our LaCrosse Weather Station display which said that we’d had 5.1 inches just since midnight here at the rig with more expected during the day.

It’s all relative, I guess.

The rain is also delaying our plans to take our rig out on a test drive this weekend. Since we’ve been parked after we returned from our Illinois/Alabama trip in July, I want to take the rig out for a drive, and probably top off the diesel before we leave for Florida on Oct. 3rd. But I’d rather not do it when it’s pouring down rain, so with rain scheduled all weekend, but clearing next week, Tuesday looks like our next best bet.

Thought for the Day: 

Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

ghdg

I spent the morning trying to get Jan’s Viking sewing machine cleaned up and checked out.

It’s a Viking #1, a high-end one that Gina Ellis, a late friend of ours, gave Jan in 2009. I guess she gifted it to Jan because she got something bigger and better, though I can’t imagine what it could be, since this one seems to be able to do just about anything, including probably mowing your grass.

It comes with 6 programming cards like this one

that will do pretty much any embroidery stitch or pattern you can imagine, even monograms, words, or sentences in either block or cursive letters.

Or bears.

The reason his head is off a little is that the fabric got hung up while it was being stitched. Normally this is a hands-off function. Just push the button selecting the pattern, and press the foot pedal, and off it goes.

The machine automatically sets every thing – thread tension, stitch length, stitch width, presser foot pressure, etc. It’s all programmed.

Jan  used the machine for a year or so and then it was retired to a rig storage bay for the last 7-8 years. So I figured I might have to spend some time getting it going again.

But to my amazement, I took the cover off, wiped it down, plugged in and turned it on. And immediately ran a stitch forward and reverse, and then embroidered a pair of birds. And it all worked perfectly.

For a few minutes.

Then when Jan tried it, it would run a long stitch, and then when you stopped, it wouldn’t  start up again. Sometimes if you turned it off and back on, it would do another stitch of any length, but not restart.

I thought maybe I had set something up wrong, but no luck finding anything.

Finally it was time for us to head out so I thought I’d stop by the Viking dealer located in the JoAnn Fabrics at Baybrook Mall and ask some questions.

Our first stop was our local favorite, Pho 20, for lunch. Jan had the Lo Mein with

while I got the White Meat Chicken Pho, my usual.

Knowing I like it hot, Sherry, the owner, brought me out some really hot little Mexican peppers that one of the cooks got from his mother in Mexico. Jan even put some of them on her Lo Mein. And as usual Sherry send us home with a whole bag of extra goodies.

I also spiced things up by mixing in some of the Carolina Reaper paste I got at Aldi’s last week.

As I said before, it wasn’t as hot as I expected, but it does add a touch of good smoky flavor. Not bad at all.

Then, after Home Depot and WalMart stops, we went by JoAnn. I picked up a new ‘A’ presser foot, but they couldn’t help me with my problem. I did find out that I could bring the machine in for a cleaning and tune-up for $129.50. Might consider it.

Getting home I started fooling with the Viking again, and finally stumbled across the problem. Turns out that the cord that connects the foot pedal to the machine was flakey at the machine end of the connector. If you bent it one way, the machine got flakey, but if you bent it the other way, it worked fine.

So for right now I just left it bent the other way, so Jan could do her sewing project, which she did with no more problems. I’ll fix or replace the connector later.

Thought for the Day: 

Maybe November’s are a little quieter now that they don’t play each other anymore

asdfsd.