Tag Archives: Nylok nut

2013/12/27 (F) Arcadia FL

Sandhill cranes at the Turner Agri Civic Center.

Sandhill cranes at the Turner Agri Civic Center.

We slept in this morning and did not get up until sunrise; very late for us.  I made a big pot of coffee and then went for a stroll to take some photographs in the early morning light.  I took photos in the afternoon light too, and I have assembled a gallery of images as a second post for today.  When I got back Linda made vegan blueberry pancakes with real Maple syrup and vegan breakfast sausage patties.  She does not use these fake meat products much anyone, but occasionally we like to have a more “traditional” breakfast.  Starting Sunday the rally provides coffee, juice, bagels, toast, and other breakfast items every morning.

After breakfast we drove into town to find a 10-32 Nylok (stop) nut and other items that had been accumulating on our list.  Our Garmin 465T GPS found the Walmart just 2 miles SE of the rally venue.  We spotted a Tractor Supply Company and a Do It Best Hardware store on the way to Walmart and made note of other local businesses as we passed by.  We found everything on our list at Walmart except for two items, one of which was the stop nut, so we stopped at the hardware store on the way back to the Turner Agri Civic Center.  Stop nut and drain stopper in hand, we started back to base camp and remember another item that we had not written down.  A quick U-turn back to the Sweetbay Market by the hardware store and we found a small (pocketsize) spiral bound notebook.  I needed something I could carry around easily to record various details of the rally for my BCM article.

Back at the coach I replaced the two regular nuts I had used to fix the main patio awning yesterday with a Nylok stop nut.  We let the awning sit for a while longer to make sure it was dry and then rolled it back up.  We are parked with the passenger side of the bus facing north so the awning wasn’t providing any shade but merely blocked our view of most of the rally.

We then decided to give the coach a quick wash.  The temperature was around 70 degrees F and there was a high overcast; plenty of light but not a blazing direct sunlight.  We closed up the roof vents and windows, got out the hoses, sprayer, collapsible bucket, brush, dish soap, and microfiber cloths and went to work.  The coach had picked up a film of road grime over the last 8 days and 1,300 miles and unlike most campgrounds, there was no problem with washing it at our site.  We had planned on doing this at the designated RV/Car Wash station at Williston Crossings when we got back, but now we won’t have to.  It still needs more hand detailing, but that can be done at our long-term site.

The washing done we opened the coach back up as it was getting warm inside.  We had lunch around 1:30 PM; tofu hot dogs with mustard, onions, and relish along with fresh grapes.  Apparently this was a comfort food day, but it was also an easy preparation meal.  While we were eating I got a call from Chuck Spera.  He was on his way from Naples to Ft Meyers and wanted to come to the rally site to visit and check it out.  His ETA was still two hours out, so we went for a walk.  I then took the camera and went out again as quite a few rigs had arrived during the day.

Barbara was back in Detroit for the holidays, so once we knew Chuck was coming we knew we would be going out for dinner and did some online research.  There are plenty of places to eat in Arcadia, but it is not a dining destination.  The Magnolia Seafood Grill appeared to be our best option; rated number one on Trip Advisor.  Chuck arrived at 4:25 PM as estimated.  Linda opened a bottle of our 2009 Egri Merlot and we settled in for a chat.  He had a mobile mechanic (Mustafa, seriously) in Naples replace the water pump, connecting hoses, and thermostat on his Detroit Diesel 8V92TA engine (the same one we have) that morning and had to go to Ft. Meyers to return the old water pump to avoid the $165 core charge.

As the sun set and it started to get dark it also got very cool as there had been a strong breeze from the northeast all day.  We headed for the heart of Arcadia’s historic district and found the restaurant.  Linda and I split a very nice salad and a very mediocre pasta marinara.  Chuck had a blackened Corvina (Cilus gilberti, similar to sea bass) with a baked potato and broccoli all of which he said was excellent.  Our waitress, Jackie, was delightful and attentive.  She even had the cook prepare our garlic bread with olive oil instead of butter.  Chuck had a 90 mile drive back to Pelican Lake in Naples, so concluded our visit around 7:30 PM, made plans to meet again, and went our separate ways.  We rounded out our meal back at the rig with some vegan chocolate cake and settled in to read, process photographs, work a few puzzles, and watch a little TV before going to bed.

 

2013/12/26 (R) Our Recent Travels

We left Williston Crossings RV Resort in Williston, Florida at 10:15 AM and traveled to the Turner Agri Civic Center in Arcadia Florida for the Arcadia (Bus’in) Rally 2014.  Our route took us down US-27 to I-75 to FL-70 to US-17 and over to the rally venue, covering 200 miles in 3 hours and 45 minutes.  I-75 had a lot of traffic and a few construction zones, but US-27 and FL-70 we excellent roads with very few vehicles.  I have not been posting maps of our daily travels, so here is the route we have traveled starting on the 19th.  We have traveled about 1,300 miles in that time.

View Larger Map

We were met at the check in station by Bill and Brenda Phelan who now run the Arcadia Rally.  Linda took care of the paperwork while I introduced myself, indicating that I had been asked by the publisher of Bus Conversions Magazine to do an article on the rally.  We unhooked the car and were escorted to our back-in site.  We immediately recognized the bus parked behind us as belonging to Bill and Karen Gerrie.  They always travel with Karen’s sister Katherine and her husband Mike, and sure enough, they were here too!  By the time the rally starts on Sunday we expect there to be other converted bus people here that we know.

We were escorted to our site, backed in, straightened out, and leveled and then went through our usual arrival routine; Linda setting up the inside while I hooked up the electrical shoreline and checked the house battery state of charge and that the inverter/charger was working.  We then deployed the awnings.

While opening and securing the main patio awning the front rafter arm started to come off of the awning shaft.  Closer inspection revealed that there was supposed to be a retaining pin or bolt holding these two pieces together, but it was missing.  Yikes!  I looked down and there was a black bolt of approximately the right diameter and length on ground in front of me.  Was it possible that this had just fallen out?  I looked at the other end of the roller tube and there was the matching part, but with a Nylok nut on the end.  I went back to the other end and looked for the nut, but didn’t see it.  It probably fell off a long time ago, if it was ever there in the first place.  No one has worked on these awnings since they were installed by the Zip Dee Factory outside of Chicago, Illinois in October 2012.  It would have been very, very bad if these two parts had separated while we were traveling on the highway.

I managed to get the bolt back through the mating holes, but I did not have a Nylok nut of the correct size in my parts kit.  The Gerrie’s have a 1965 GMC bus that they converted.  Bill is a very knowledgeable and resourceful guy when it comes to buses, but he did not have an 8-32 Nylok nut either.  I did have some regular 8-32 nuts, however, so I double nutted the bolt and snugged it up nice and tight.  We added 8-32 Nylok nuts to our growing list of supplies we needed to buy and things we need to do.

With that chore out of the way, we pulled up the chairs and settled in for a chat.  I mentioned the Check Engine Light issue and erratic speedometer problem we’ve been having, and quick as a wink Bill had his ProLink/NexIQ engine diagnostic tool out, hooked up to our bus, and we were reading codes.  The DDEC II engine computer did not have any active codes set and only one inactive code.  The inactive code was for a fuel temperature sensor high voltage.  Joe Cannarozzi (our mobile mechanic) and I had replaced the fuel temperature sensor back in the spring but I never got around to hooking up my ProLink and clearing the old code.  That little oversight has caused me way too many anxious moments.  My bad.

Bill also had a special card for his diagnostic equipment that allowed us to look at the error codes from the ATEC transmission computer.  No codes were set, indicating that the vehicle speed sensor was sending a good signal at least as far as the transmission computer.  We assumed that was the case as the transmission was working great and the cruise control was working as it always has.  The erratic speedometer appears to be either a wiring problem between the computer and the dashboard or the speedometer gauge itself.  The easiest/cheapest thing to do would be to clean the connectors on both ends.  The next easiest thing would be to replace the speedometer and hope that’s the problem, but that will not be the least expensive solution if turns out not to be the gauge.

Although I had stopped worrying about the Check Engine Light, it was a great relief to know that there were no active error codes being generated by the engine or transmission computer.  One of the great things about rallies in general, and converted bus rallies in particular, is that many converted bus owners have done their own conversions and have a special sense of community about their machines.  They know their way around buses, travel with tools and parts, and are usually willing to help each other when there’s a problem.

With a potential awning disaster discovered and averted and the Check Engine Light issue resolve, we finally settled in to our chairs for a long, well-deserved, chat.  While we were talking four Sandhill Cranes walked by about 50 feet away.  These magnificent gray birds have a distinctive red cap on their heads, and can stand almost 4 feet tall.  Although they tend to spend summers much farther north in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Canada, we have them on our property in southern Michigan during the late spring to early winter.  We also saw kildeer, and several other birds we did not recognize.  On the drive down today we saw pelicans and egrets plus the usual raptors that can often be spotted along highways.

By 5:30 PM it was getting dark and mosquitoes started to appear so we wrapped up our conversation and headed inside for the night.  With all of the activity and socializing we had managed to skip lunch.  Rather than take an hour to prepare something, we had the chickpea salad Linda made the other day.  It’s one of our favorite cold dishes and reminds us of egg salad.

Linda turned on the TV and scanned for channels.  We are parked facing west with the front OTA TV antenna pointed slightly north of our nose.  That’s somewhat in the direction of Tampa St. Petersburg although they are actually northwest of our location.  The scanner found 60 digital stations, so she flipped through them to see what was there.  We had the PBS trio, a weather station, the usual commercial offerings, and lots of Spanish language stations.  Impressive really; if you look at a road atlas Arcadia is 40 miles east of I-75 and appears to be in the middle of huge swamp.

We could not find a usable Wi-Fi signal so we turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi device and got online.  If you need to be online while traveling, you need to have more than one way to get there.  (Technomadia has the definitive book on the subject for RVers.)  We checked e-mail and I worked on this post.  We took a few minutes to have vegan chocolate cake with fresh strawberries.  We finished up our online work and went to bed early.  Although the rally does not start until Sunday, I have to start acting like a reporter tomorrow so I can write a really good article on this event with lots of good photographs.