Our RV Adventures

Well, we did get our walk in this morning,  doing 1.15 miles, about 100 feet further than yesterday’s 1.13, since we took a slightly different route. Now we’re looking at 100% rain the next two days, so that’s probably it until Thursday, after our doctor appointments on Wednesday.

A little later I got back on my washer drain pump repair. I had planned to be back outside, but the rain started coming in early, so I stayed in. I had left some metal parts soaking in CLR overnight, and the plastic parts in a bucket with water, Dawn, and Awesome. So I retrieved those and rinsed them off in the shower, and then dried them.

Next I wanted lightly sand outside of the rotor and the inside of the stator to get rid of the gunky buildup on the parts. To make it a little quicker to do the rotor, I chucked into my drill and then held the 2000 grit sandpaper against the cylinder as I ran the drill.

This smoothed it out pretty quickly, but I had to be carefully not to sand down too far and damage the windings.

Then I wrapped sandpaper around a screwdriver and used it to sand the inside of the stator.

At this point I placed the rotor back in the stator and found that it turned much more freely now.

So now it was time to put it all back together and give a try. It took about 10 minutes to get it reassembled and ready to test. But when I put power to it, I still had the same jerky rotation, buzzing, and vibrating. And the coil was getting a lot hotter than it should after only a few seconds of power.

So now it’s back to the drawing board. I’ve got a couple of other things I want to look at first, but tomorrow I’ll follow up on my Plan ‘Câ€, which is to take my pump down to a local appliance parts place and see if I can find something similar that I can make work.

I did find several on Amazon that looked like they might fit the bill, but I’d rather see one in person and hold it in my hand.

And of course there’s always Plan ‘D’, which is to buy one off eBay for $185. Ouch!

A little after 5pm Jan and I headed next door to have dinner with Brett and Frankie. Brett had invited us over to show off his prowess with his smoker.

Brett was up about 5am getting the ribs going, and it certainly showed in the final results.

Frankie whipped up some fresh green beans and a batch of fried potatoes, while Brett did the ribs and also a pan of sautéed shrimp. Jan and I contributed a big bowl of her Heavenly Hash for dessert, and a bottle of Cupcake Moscato for lubrication.

And a good time, and a great meal, was had by all.

Brett and Frankie are just getting on the road in their toy hauler 5’ver for a year of traveling. They want to try out the full-timing lifestyle before they fully commit so this next year will be the test.

We had a great time getting to know them, and talking about places we’ve visited and want to visit, and things to see while we’re there.

Jan and I finally headed home about 8:30, after a really good time. We enjoyed getting to know Brett and Frankie, and are going to try to get together for dinner later in the week.

Tomorrow, hopefully I can wrap up my drain pump problem one way or the other. But we’ll see.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.

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We did our walk this morning, at least the first part of it anyway, for a distance of 1.13 miles, just making a complete loop of the park. We’ll try to walk again tomorrow since it’s showing 80% chance of rain on Monday, 100% for Tuesday, and then Wednesday morning we’re back down in the Clear Lake area for our yearly checkups. So after tomorrow, Thursday might be our next shot at a walk.

After our walk, we sat outside for a while with our coffee and some of the great pumpkin muffins that Sherry gave us at lunch yesterday. Really, really good, and Jan wants the recipe. Even though it was in the 70’s, it was pretty overcast so it was still comfortable.

Later in the afternoon I was back on pump repair. I wanted to try to completely disassemble it and see if I could figure out what was wrong with it. But before that, I hooked the pump motor up to 120vac to see if it would even run.

And it did, but very slowly, with a lot of straining. So it was obvious that there was a lot of drag on the shaft from somewhere. My first thought was bearings, but you never know..

So I started out with this.

As I figured the fan was just pressed on the shaft so I used a small gear puller to get it off. Then removing the two screws let me start to remove the motor shaft.

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So I kept at it, pulling pieces off,

until I finally ended up here, with a big pile of parts. As they say, parts is parts. Hopefully I can get it all back together.

There are no roller or ball bearings, just brass sleeves, and they all looked clean and smooth, as did the shaft, so that wasn’t the problem.

But when I inserted the rotor – shown below

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back into the stator – shown here

and tried to turn it, there was a lot more drag than normal. In fact there should be no drag at all. They shouldn’t be rubbing or touching in any way.

It looks like there is just gunk built up on both the outside of the rotor and the inside of the stator, and that’s causing the drag. At least that’s the theory I’m going with right now.

Tomorrow I’ll dig out some 2000 or 3000 grit sandpaper and lightly sand the two pieces to see if that makes a difference. If you ever try something like this, be sure you only use regular sandpaper, and not steel wool or metal oxide paper. Tiny bits of metal can get in the windings and short out the motor.

Finishing up for the day, I stuck the two metal pieces into a small bowl of CLR to clean them up and remove some of the rust. The plastic pieces I dunked in a bucket of a Dawn and Awesome mixture to let them soak overnight.

I do have a backup plan for all this, though. Besides the option of buying one of the pumps on eBay for $100 to $185, which I’m loathe to do . . .  because I’m cheap, this afternoon I had another idea.

All I really need is a washer pump that runs on 120vac (which I’m sure all of them do) and has a input/output hookup kind of like this.

It only has to be close because I’ve got plenty of room underneath there and I can reroute the hoses if I need to. And the size isn’t a problem either for the same reason. So if I don’t have a handle on all this by Monday, I’ll take the pump down to an appliance parts place and see if they have something close.

About 4:30 Jan and I headed over to Willis for a Whataburger dinner, great as always. Then coming home we made a quick stop at the nearby Kroger’s for a few things.

All in all, a nice day. But then isn’t that what RV’ing is all about?

Thought for the Day:

Student Essay Bloopers

During the Renaissance America began. Chritsopher Columbus was a real navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was known as Pilgrims Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by the Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porpoises on their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

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