Tag Archives: PressurePro TPMS

2015/02/01-05 (N-R) Another Month in Q

2015/02/01 (N) Hola February

Yesterday would have been an excellent day to continue cleaning and waxing the outside of the bus—cool and cloudy without a lot of breeze—but it was also an excellent day for the inside computer work that we both needed/wanted to do.  I downloaded the free version of the Simple:Press forum WordPress plug-in the day before yesterday and was going to make a priority of installing it today on the FMCA Freethinkers website I have been developing until the activation of the Jetpack Site Management feature caused the admin panel (app) to crash.  We have had a problem for a while with one member who was unable (or unwilling) to interact appropriately online via our e-mail reflector.  The reflector does not require a login and does not have any way to moderate discussions or block/remove posts, so our options as a chapter were very limited.  A WordPress-based forum would give us all of those features.

I had an e-mail reply from support@ipower.com indicating that the Wordfence plugin had caused the problem.  They needed the answer to the security question in order to authenticate my support request and fix the problem. Bob Pelc provided me with that information which I supplied back to ipower.com.  Later in the day I got an e-mail indicating that the problem was resolved and I was, in fact, able to log in without any problems.  The e-mail said the Wordfence plugin had caused the crash and that they disabled it, but after I logged in it was still activated.  I did not, however, take the time to check if it was functioning correctly.  I also did not install the Simple:Press forum at this time.

For breakfast Linda improvised a potato tofu scramble with nutritional yeast, garlic, and other seasonings.  It was a hearty and flavorful start to the day.  After breakfast I called Jim A. back to discuss the FMCA seminar listing categorization document we have been working on.

I settled in to work at my computer on the consolidated blog post for November 10-16 while Linda settled in to work on accounting for the bakery.  She is also approaching the time of year when she has to pull tax returns together.  She uses Turbo Tax and needs an updated version each year.  The products she needed were on sale through Amazon Prime.  She purchased and download them, which also placed them in her Amazon software library, and they installed and opened without a hitch.

I got an e-mail from Harvey Carter (AC8NO), president of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC), asking me to update the officer listing on the club website.  I took care of that and also changed that contact form (Contact Us page) to e-mail him instead of former president Mike Sharpe (WX8H).

By 2:30 PM I was tired of sitting in front of my computer so I changed into my work clothes and spent an hour trying to clean and wax a couple of windows on the bus.  The passenger side, which faces south, was so hot I cloud not touch it for very long, so I worked on the north side in the shade.

Jim/Flo L. and Jim/Barb B. disassembled the Select Comfort air mattress we had put in the park model trailer and divided up the parts.  We were going to donate it to the Salvation Army but did not get it done fast enough.  Jim B. would like the pump and controllers but Butch and Fonda need them to replace the defective unit on the mattress in their guest bedroom.  Since that is where I sleep when I am there, it is in my best interest to give it to them.

We invited all of our neighbors to come over for happy hour at 4 PM.  Barb B. came over with a glass of wine at 4:20 PM, so I poured a glass for Linda and me.  Jim B. was taking a nap as were Butch and Fonda.  (Hey; retirement is hard work!).   Butch and Fonda eventually shook the cobwebs out and came over.  Jim and Flo L. arrived but busied themselves with dinner preparations.  They were joining Jim/Barb B. for a belated Christmas dinner.  Jim B. eventually awoke and Barb left to join the other three for dinner.  Fonda left just before 6 PM to go to church but returned a few minutes later.  Apparently the evening service had been cancelled because of the Super Bowl.  She and Butch visited as the sun set and eventually it got chilly enough that we all decided to go inside.

I e-mailed Chuck Spera and my long-time friend John (J. C.) Armbruster earlier in the day but had not gotten responses from either of them by bedtime.  During the evening I had e-mails going back and forth with Steve Willey regarding the upcoming informal FMCA Freethinker gathering at the Liar Peg Leg Smith Monument boondocking area in Borrego Springs, California.  I also e-mailed Jim Ellmore regarding the same event.

A typical sunset in Quartzsite, Arizona.

A typical sunset in Quartzsite, Arizona as seen from our campsite on the north end of town.

2015/02/02 (M) Market Day

The last 24 hours have brought into focus why we are here for the winter.  It will be sunny and 80 degrees F today.  Detroit got 16.7 inches of snow from the storm that hit over the weekend, with 12 inches in Ann Arbor and similar amounts in Dexter, Howell, and Brighton.  When we checked this morning it was 7 degrees at home and going up to a high of 14.  Yeah, we are not missing that.

Breakfast was the bland store-bought bulk granola we have had to eat since running out of Linda’s homemade granola some weeks ago.  I wish we could carry a five-month supply of her granola; it’s that good.  Right after breakfast Linda started putting together menu ideas and a shopping list while I reviewed the latest seminar listing from Jim A. and e-mailed it back to him.  He called later to discuss it briefly.  I started working on yet another consolidated blog post for 17-23 Nov 2014 and did that until I could not stand to sit any longer.  The antidote for was go outside and work on cleaning and waxing the rear cap of the bus.

Butch and Fonda left around 9 AM and drove to Parker to go shopping at Wal-Mart.  Back home they shop at the Wal-Mart in Logansport and are familiar with the items there.  Not long after they left Linda drove to Blythe, California to do our grocery shopping for the week.  Of the supermarkets available to us we prefer the Albertson’s in Blythe, followed by the Smart & Final Extra at the same intersection.

Butch and Fonda returned from shopping and so did Jim and Barb.  Butch asked if I had ordered the coil for the MAC solenoid air valve that controls the a-c shutters behind the front bumper.  I hadn’t, so I took a break from cleaning and waxing the outside of the bus and called MAC Valve to order a replacement coil for the 111B601BAAA solenoid valve.  (I still have the old valve but I do not think I have it with us in the bus.)

Jim L. stopped by with some very fresh grapefruit and we got to talking about automotive detailing.  He recommended Finesse from 3M for polishing paint without leaving marks.  He said it works so well that the paint looks “wet” when you are done.  Butch had also suggested that I look at the Cyclo 5 dual head orbiting buffer/polisher.  Apparently this machine can finish paint with no swirl marks.

The FMCA Freethinker website /WP-admin/ panel was back up and running.  I logged in and checked the plugins.  They were all there but they had ALL been deactivated.  Tech support at ipower.com had indicated that they were going to disable the Wordfence plugin.  I re-activated most of them, but not all, and specifically did not re-activate the Jetpack plugin.  It is a large, feature rich plugin and the only thing I use is the Carousel feature to manage native WordPress image galleries.  Unfortunately I need that feature and have not found another plugin that does what I need.

I worked for most of the evening on the consolidated blog post.  By the time I finished it was too late to start selecting and editing photos, so I will do that tomorrow if I have time.

2015/03/03 (T) Wax On, Wax Off

I knew there was something else I was supposed to do yesterday, but I could not remember what it was.  I sometimes put “tasks” on my calendar, but that does not help if do not check it.  I remembered this morning what it was; I needed to call Sunset Sportswear in South Lyon, Michigan and follow up on an e-mail I sent last Thursday regarding our order for personalized SLAARC jackets.  I made that call and Pam took our credit card information.  Barb handles sales but had not made it in yet due to the snow.  Sunset Sportswear was closed yesterday because of the storm so if I had remembered to call them it would have been for naught.  Things often work out like that.

I also got an e-mail from the Escapees RV Club regarding the upcoming Escapade rally.  It indicated we could extend our stay until Sunday noon.  I called Lou Petkus, the head staff photographer for the Escapade, to let him know.  The rally ends on Thursday with normal departure on Friday and staff departure on Saturday.  Lou is trying to arrange a photography field trip for Saturday so the fact that anyone can stay until Sunday should help with participation.  I called the SKP headquarters and booked the extra night.

I confirmed which RV Park Lou and Val will be in on March 5th and I think we will try to get in there as well.  That location will position us close to the rally venue and allow us to caravan in together and park together.  (We have to be in by 11AM on the 6th.)  That, in turn, should make our staff photography work more convenient.  We plan to hang out (dry camp) with RVillage founder Curtis Coleman for a couple of nights before this at his rental home near Casa Grande, which will put us a lot closer to Tucson than we are here in Quartzsite.

We had also mentioned to Lou and Val at Quartzfest that we were thinking of heading to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument after the Escapade.  They had been discussing it and decided they would like to go there as well so we will probably caravan there with them.  After OPCNM we plan to head to Big Bend NP (BBNP) in Texas and Lou and Val would also like to go there.  That is a three day drive for us, and we may take six or seven days to get there depending on where we might stop and what there is to see long the way.  Whether we travel together or separate will be determined later.  Our friend, Mara, and another women from the WINs are also headed to BBNP sometime in March and we have tentatively agreed to meet up with them if we can work out the timing.

I checked my e-mail and had a reply from Jetpack tech support at WordPress.com. “Happiness Engineer” Jeremy said that Wordfence has been known to cause issues with the Jetpack plugin.  He acknowledged that Wordfence is a powerful and important plugin but can be very aggressive in protecting websites.  Given that Wordfence appears to have caused the crash of the FMCAA Freethinkers WordPress /WP-admin/ Jeremy said I probably did not need to reinstall the Jetpack plugin.  I filled out a support ticket yesterday for this issue on the Wordfence website as I have a premium (paid) membership.  They acknowledged the support ticket right away but an actual response will likely take longer.

I had all of these communications chores done by 11 AM and decided to continue cleaning and waxing the outside of the bus.  I started with the rear, as it was still in the shade, and finished the lower half.  It was tedious as that is the engine hatch and it has numerous horizontal indentations that run the full width.  These indentations are open on the inside top for airflow and have screens to keep things from getting in (like fingers).

Another view of the sunset from our campsite in Quartzsite, AZ.

Another view of the sunset from our campsite in Quartzsite, AZ.

I continued on around to the driver side of the bus which faces north.  The temperature this afternoon got up to 80 degrees F, and it was very hot in the sun, but it was pleasantly cool in the shade of the bus.  It was near perfect conditions for the work I was doing.  I worked most of the afternoon and did not quite get the back half of the bus cleaned and waxed.  A couple of bay doors and I will be past the half way point on that side.

I am going to try to work on this at least a few hours every day, otherwise it will never get done and this is an ideal place to work on it as long as I am not working in the sun.  The south facing passenger side is going to be more of a challenge and I will have to limit my work to the morning before the body panels heat up.

UPS showed up today with my coil for the MAC valve which turned out to be an entire new valve.  Rather than try to remove the solenoid coil I may just install the whole valve.  UPS also brought Fonda’s new sewing machine.  It only weighs 13 pounds.

Butch got back from a rock hunting field trip late in the afternoon and we stood around chatting as an amazing sunset developed around us.  As I have mentioned before, sunsets here are often 360 degree events and this one surrounded us with color before finally fading into another starry night.

Linda made a wonderful dish for dinner last night and we had it again this evening.  She pan-grilled polenta and served it on a bed of dark leafy greens topped with puttanesca sauce made from scratch.

After dinner I selected photographs for my November 17 – 23, 2014 blog post and processed them.  I uploaded the text to our WordPress site and then uploaded, captioned, and integrated each photo in turn.  I also had to enter all of the tags, which I figure out as I read through the post.  If there is one thing I would like to have at this point it is the ability to highlight key words and phrases in my Word document and have them automatically become tags when the text is uploaded.

By the time I published the post and went to bed to finish this one it was midnight.  At eight minutes after midnight MST I was one hour into my 63rd year as I was born on this date at 00:08 in the Central Time Zone, where eight minutes past midnight happened an hour ago.

2015/02/04 (W) 63 and Counting

I finished my blog post for yesterday late last night and e-mailed it to myself at eight minutes after midnight, the hour and minute of my birth, or so I have always been told.  Linda and the cats were all asleep and I observed the moment in quiet solitude.  As I noted at the end of yesterday’s post I was actually an hour late in my observance as we are currently in the Mountain Time Zone and I was born in the Central Time Zone.  But it was the thought that counted.

Sixty-three is not a milestone birthday anniversary, other than making it that far.  On my 60th birthday I became eligible to retire, and did so four months later.  On my 62nd birthday I became eligible to start drawing social security, but didn’t.  On my 65th birthday I will become eligible for Medicare.  The year I turn 66 Linda will apply for Social Security benefits and immediately suspend them.  I will be eligible for my full Social Security benefit but will not apply for it.  I will apply for the spousal benefit instead.  Our monthly Social Security benefits continue to increase by 8% per year until age 70, a solid and guaranteed return, so Linda will start taking her benefits then and I will file for, and take, my benefits when I turn 70.

Having thought through the complexities of birthdays, we had breakfast and then I got to work cleaning and waxing the outside of the bus.  My plan was to finish the driver side but not spend all day at it.  As it turned out, I spent most of the day at it, taking breaks to check e-mail.  It is just slow work, especially since so much of it has to be done on a step ladder.  I have no idea how many trips I made up and down that ladder, but it was a lot.  It is only a seven foot step ladder so I have to stand near the top to reach the top of the sides which are over 12 feet from the ground.  I cannot reach very far to the side either, so I work from one side of the ladder then climb down and climb up the other side and work from there.  I then climb down and move the ladder about three feet and do it all again; over, and over, and over.  But as Long as I keep going it eventually gets done.  I am, however, seriously considering getting a Cyclo 5 dual head orbiting buffer/polisher.  There is simply too much bus to do this by hand.  I am also considering getting a platform to put between two ladders and/or a four-wheel elevated work platform to use in the barn if/when we get it built.

I got a call from our daughter wishing me a happy birthday and had a nice chat with her.  I asked if Katie had made a final college selection but she is not done with interviews yet.  Perhaps we will know in a few weeks where she is headed in the fall.

Yesterday Linda invited all of our camping neighbors to come over today at 4 PM for happy hour to celebrate my birthday.  In preparation she spent part of the day making cupcakes with chocolate frosting.  When she wasn’t cooking she did accounting and tax return work for Butch and Fonda.  Around 3 PM she prepared bruschetta using what was left of a loaf of Barry’s Basic Bread and the puttanesca sauce she made a couple of nights ago.  Larry/Sandy, Jim/Barb, and Butch/Fonda all brought chairs and beverages of their choice.  Butch and Fonda brought chips, salsa, and hummus and the peanut and dried fruit mix they make.  We sat around talking until the sun set at which point the air temperature cooled off and we all retreated to our rigs.

I got a call from our son during our happy hour and excused myself for a few minutes to chat with him.  It was 7:40 PM back in Ann Arbor and Madeline was getting ready for bed.  I got to “chat” with her and she wished me a happy birthday.  With encouragement from her mom she asked me “How is Arizona?”  I told her it was very nice here.

We skipped lunch today and did not have dinner because we filled up on happy hour snacks.  Linda played online word games while I started assembling the consolidated blog post for November 24 – 30.  She turned on the MiFi and trundled off to bed to watch an episode of Downton Abby on her iPad.  I finished editing the post and selected two photos to go with it.  When I checked I found that I did not have photos for most of the days covered by the post.  I thought about uploading it but decided against it as it still takes time to upload the text, upload and insert the pictures, and create all of the tags and I was too tired to maintain the needed concentration.  Somewhere in there I read through a reply from Chuck Spera and sent him the next volley in our e-mail conversation.

Overall it was a good 63rd birthday.  Given our winter travel lifestyle I face the interesting prospect of celebrating my birthday somewhere different every year for many years to come.

Our fellow campers gathered by our bus for my 63rd birthday happy hour.  L-2-R: Sandy, Larry, Barb, Jim, Butch, Fonda, me.   Photo by Linda (not shown).

Our fellow campers gathered by our bus for my 63rd birthday happy hour. L-2-R: Sandy, Larry, Barb, Jim, Butch, Fonda, me. Photo by Linda (not shown).

2015/02/05 (R) A Screwy Tire

The overnight lows are now dropping into the upper 40’s at night and the coach cools off just enough that I turn the heat on in the front of the bus while I make coffee in the morning.  Soon enough the sun starts heating up the coach and we are pulling the accordion shades down to keep it out and opening windows and turning on ceiling exhaust fans to draw cool air in.  A couple of days ago we finally put the awnings out on the south facing passenger side of the coach.  Between the patio awning and the bedroom awning they shade more than half of the upper portion of the coach and help keep the interior temperatures in check.  We have not had them out much, however, because of the somewhat persistent winds in the La Paz Valley.

After breakfast I wanted to setup the TireTraker TT-400C TPMS.  Once I started I would need to install the sensors on all 13 tires.  In order to install the sensor on the spare tire in the car I had to empty out the back so I could get to the tire.  Linda was helping me and noticed a screw in the passenger side rear tire.  It was right at the edge of the tread but not technically in the side wall.  The tire was holding pressure but when I started to back the screw out it started to hiss so I screwed it back in.  Nuts.

Linda got online to look for tire repair shops in Quartzsite.  The first three numbers we tried were out of service and the Love’s Truck Stop only repaired big tires, not small ones, so I called Jim Liebherr to see if he knew of some place in town.  Flo answered the phone and could not locate Jim so I asked for a return phone call.  Butch then offered to drive me downtown where he thought he remembered seeing a tire shop.  As we were pulling out of our camp it occurred to Butch that the RV Pit Stop, just south of us on Central Avenue, might do tire repairs.  Before we even got that far we saw the sign for Best Auto and Tires.  We have walked or driven past this place dozens of times but never paid any attention to the fact they sold and serviced tires.  At the time we did not care.

They said they would have to see the tire so we drove back to camp and I drove back in the car.  They said they could repair it properly with an internal patch and they would get right on it if I wanted to wait for it.  $14.  Deal.  I could easily have walked back to camp from there but I was back with the car within an hour.  If the tire had not been repairable we would have had to take it off the car and use Butch’s Chevy Suburban to drive it to Yuma or Lake Havasu City where there are Discount Tire Locations.

Jim L. returned my earlier phone call while I was waiting for the tire.  He and Flo use a dentist in Los Algodones, Mexico and are very satisfied with the service and price.  I have a tooth that is bothering me just a bit and was giving some serious consideration to making an appointment with someone in Los Algodones.

I installed the batteries in our new TT-400C sensors and programmed the baseline pressures into the monitor (receiver).  I then installed the sensors on the bus and car tires, linking each one to the monitor as I went.  Programming the baseline pressures first is the easier way to install the system.  In setup mode the monitor displays each tire position in turn.  While the position is displayed a sensor is screwed onto the valve stem.  The application of pressure to the sensor “wakes it up.”  When the sensor starts transmitting the monitor associates it with the displayed tire position.  After exiting setup mode only the programmed tire positions display on the monitor.

In addition to the overall setup procedure there are several things I like better about the TT-400C system compared to the PressurePro system we have had since the 2008 FMCA national rally in St. Paul, Minnesota.  A major one is that the baseline pressures are programmed into the monitor.  On the PP-TPMS the baseline pressures are determined by the pressure in the tire at the time the sensor is put on.  Another thing I like is that the TT-TPMS monitor is powered by rechargeable batteries and is not plugged in when in use.  That makes it much more convenient to move it between the bus and the car, but especially to carry it around while installing and associating the sensors to wheel positions.  Finally, I like the sensors, which are much smaller and only weigh 0.4 ounces each.

Linda helped me reload the back of the Element and sort through all of the “stuff” that was “stuffed” in the glove box and the passenger side dashboard trays.  (When was the last time someone actually stored gloves in an automotive glove box?).  With everything sorted out and repackaged in ZipLock bags I stored it back in the glove box and locked up the car.

Linda spent part the morning working on accounting and tax returns for Butch and Fonda and talking on the phone to Dave, the controller at Metropolitan Baking.  I got a call later from Jim Ammenheiser and then did a final proofreading of our Education Committee recommendation to FMCA staff for how to restructure the categorization and listing of seminars and activities in the national rally programs.

We took a break and had the last two cupcakes from yesterday with some vegan Mocha Almond Fudge coconut “ice cream.”  We were supposed to have these last night for my birthday but we were not hungry after snacking at the happy hour birthday gathering.  Linda then went for a walk.  Linda got me a birthday card and a towel with an elastic edged hole for my head.  I tend to get food on my shirts when I eat and the towel is basically an adult bib that can be easily laundered.

Our fresh water tank was a bottle cap shy of empty so I filled it.  It usually takes about 50 minutes to fill the tank starting from empty so I set the timer on my smartphone for 40 minutes.  When it signaled me to check on the progress the tank was already overflowing.  (It has a vent tube on top of the tank that runs through the floor of the bay.)  I don’t think I wasted more than a few gallons of soft water so it should not throw my water usage and softening calculations off by much.  The good news was that the post-fill hardness test showed the water coming out of the softener at 0.0 to 0.5 gpg total hardness (0 to 10 ppm.)  That was better than the reading I got right after I recharged the softener, so perhaps it still had some residual salt in it initially.

At 4 PM I was getting ready to upload a blog post when the UPS truck showed up and dropped off two boxes for me.  It was the Chemical Guys microfiber products I had ordered recently, including two microfiber auto detailing aprons.  Butch returned a few minutes later with a small package for me.  It was the lens hood I had ordered for my Sony zoom lens and it had been mailed USPS.  He also had eight (8) Full River 6V L16 AGM batteries.  I helped him unload them from the Suburban onto the concrete pad on the driver side of their bus.  Fonda emptied out the driver’s side of their battery bay and she and I then moved the batteries to the bay where Butch positioned them.  He left them in their boxes and will install them when they get back to Twelve Mile.

At 5:15 PM I finally got around to uploading the consolidated blog post for the last week of November (2014).  I then started thinking about what to do with my December 2014 posts.  As of today I am still 67 posts behind and putting up daily posts is not realistic.  In looking through my photos I was surprised to find that I took very few from the time we left the house until we arrived in Quartzsite.  I decided to do consolidated posts for Dec 1 – 4 (Twelve Mike, IN to Alvarado, TX), 5 – 8 (visit with Donn Barnes), and 9 – 12 (travel from Alvarado to Quartzsite, AZ).  I have more pictures for the rest of the month, so I will have to figure out what makes sense.  I compiled the posts for December 1 – 4, selected and processed one photo, uploaded it, selected the categories, and entered all of the tags.  I posted it and then realized I wanted to edit the URLs slightly so I logged back in and found that I was unable to type anything.

It took me a while to figure out that the problem was the built-in keyboard on my ASUS G750JM ROG notebook computer.  I got it at the end of April last year, so I have only had it for eight months.  I decided to run a full scan using ESET Smart Security since I could do that with just a mouse and the Bluetooth mouse was working just fine.  It found 18 threats and dealt with 16 of them.  I then ran CCleaner, after which I enabled the onscreen keyboard.  Although intended for use on touchscreen computers, at least I could type things into a search box using my mouse.

I found some references to similar problems on answers.microsoft.com with the suggestion to examine the keyboard device properties.  If it indicated the device was installed and working correctly it was probably not a Windows 8.1 problem.  The other suggestion was to try an external keyboard.  If that worked it would confirm a keyboard hardware problem.  I had already gotten my Gigaware wireless keyboard out so I plugged in the USB dongle, turned on the keyboard, and voilà, I could type again!

Another post on the Windows forum listed website links for ASUS support so I started following those.  One ASUS website wanted the serial number of my computer, which I had to get off of a tag on the bottom of the case with really small type.  Once I had that entered correctly I was able to go to a download page with 81 files available, including bios and chipset code.  There were two files that seemed to have something to do with the keyboard.  By 1:15 AM I had a half dozen tabs open in two different browsers with no definitive understanding of what had happened or what to do to fix it.  I then realized that the Shift Lock key on the keyboard was illuminated and I could toggle it on and off.  I could also toggle the Number Lock, so I tried typing and the keyboard was working once again.  That, however, did not give me any confidence that it would continue to do so.  I decided I was not going to shut the computer down for fear of not being able to log back in on startup.  I was not about to start downloading and installing anything at that hour so I went to bed tired, annoyed, and, frankly, a bit discouraged by this unwelcomed turn of events.

 

2015/01/22-26 (R-M) Q 2015 W4

2015/01/22 (R) Sister Marilyn

Marilyn & Linda in front of Beer Belly's "adult day care" outdoor bar.

Marilyn & Linda in front of Beer Belly’s “adult day care” outdoor bar.

The temperature dropped into the low 40’s last night in the wake of the cold front that brought strong winds to Quartzsite yesterday.  We were up at 6:30 AM to give us time to eat breakfast and enjoy our coffee before Linda left at 8 AM for the Phoenix airport to pick up her sister.  Marilyn was scheduled to arrive at 11 AM MST and the airport is a 2 to 2-1/2 hour drive from Quartzsite but Linda wanted to take her time getting there and be in the cell phone lot before the flight got in.  The plan was to go to lunch and then drive back to Q so she was going to be gone most of the day.

I had turned off the diesel burner on the Aqua-Hot last night so this morning I turned on the three electric toe-kick heaters and the Broan cube heater to take the chill off of the interior.  With the coffee pot also turned on we were drawing 26 A at 115 VAC on leg 1 and 15 A at 118 VAC on leg 2.  That was more current than we were able to draw before Jim L. changed the shorepower connection from 30 A (120VAC) to 50 A (240VAC) and the first time we have had reasonable voltage levels since we arrived here.

I rode over to the RV show with Butch at 9 AM to look at tire pressure monitoring systems and we both ended up buying TireTraker TPM Systems from Darryl Lawrence.  We have both done business with Darryl in the past and trust him as a vendor.  I also bought three products from the Carnu-B booth.

Back at the coach I checked the coolant level in the Aqua-Hot expansion reservoir.  It was right at the maximum cold level so there was nothing else to do for the moment.  I needed to redo the overflow hose, but not today.  I then used two of the Carnu-B products on the driver-side side window and surrounding painted body surfaces.  It removed the hard water stains and polished everything up very nicely.  I then did a test patch on the front of Butch and Fonda’s bus and it appeared to clean the stainless steel nicely.  They later cleaned an adjacent patch with straight food-grade vinegar and it seemed to work just as well although it did not provide a wax finish.

While I was fiddling with the Aqua-Hot and the cleaning/waxing process Butch started reading the manual for the TT-TPMS and found information that indicated the system did not work the way we thought it did and needed it to.  The manual more than implied that the sensors were activated by motion and stated that readings would appear “… within 20 minutes of starting to drive.”  Say what?!  We both want to use the system to check our tire pressures BEFORE we start to drive, as would most RVers.

Although there are things we do not like about our current Pressure Pro TPM systems they certainly give us the current pressure in the tires without having to drive the vehicle.  They also allow us to monitor just the bus, just the car, or both.  Most systems do this, including the TireTraker, but the Truck Systems Technology (TST) does not.  That was Butch’s first choice system until he found that out.

At 12:45 PM I rode over to the Quartzsite Senior Center with Butch and Fonda for a 1 PM meet and greet with Chuck Woodbury of RV Travel and the Geeks On Tour.  It ran until 4 PM but we were anxious to get back to the RV Show tent and talk to Darryl.  We took our TT-TPMS units with us with the intent of returning them but Darryl assured us that they do work the way we need them to so we decided to keep them for another day or so to test them.

Fonda had not been to the RV Show yet so we walked the entire tent.  I spent a little time talking to the guy at John Carrillo Hydronic Heating.  He had a brand new, never been fired, Webasto DBW2010 burner (with the controller) for $1,800 (cash).  I have seen them online for $3,300, so I knew that was a good price.  I wish I needed one, but we already have a spare.  He also had a new combustion chamber for $200 and I may go back and get one of those.  They wanted $450 for an ignition coil, which I also need, but I can get one from Sure Marine Service for $303.  We spent a long time looking at flag poles at the Flag Pole Buddy booth and Butch bought a 22′ model with an extra set of mounts.

Linda was texting me her status on a regular basis and by the time we got back to camp she and Marilyn were already there and relaxing on the porch of Joe and Connie’s park model trailer.  We sat outside until the sun kissed the tops of the southwestern mountains and then moved inside to escape the chill.  While we were sitting in the coach visiting and cooking Butch installed one of the TT-TPMS sensors on the driver-side front tire of their Suburban, programmed it into the monitor, noted the readings, and went for a test drive.  He noted the readings when they got back and plans to check it again in the morning before moving the car.  That will be the real test.

For dinner Linda made a nice green salad and a lovely mushroom kale risotto with Arborio rice.  We then went to the apartment so I could light the pilot flame on the wall-mounted propane heater.  I visited for a bit and then went back to the coach and Linda followed a bit later.  We were both tired and turned in early.

240 degree panorama from atop 'Q' Mountain, Quartzsite, AZ.

200 degree panorama from atop ‘Q’ Mountain, Quartzsite, AZ. Left edge is N, right edge is SSW.

2015/01/23 (F) Q Mountain

We were up by 7:30 AM and Marilyn eventually arose and joined us for coffee and toast.  The only bread we had was a package of whole wheat pitas, but they toasted just fine and were very good with orange marmalade.  I am not, however, thrilled with the Soy Delicious Almond milk coffee creamer.  It is not as ‘creamy’ as Silk soy creamer and it tends to separate into tiny bubbles in the coffee.  I do, however, like the Almond milk that we sometimes buy, especially on granola type cereals.

Butch called just after breakfast to let me know that the TireTraker TPMS works the way Darryl said it does.  That was welcome news as we both like the system, including the small sensors and the rechargeable monitor, and we both like Darryl.  He and Fonda had things to do today so I borrowed his hose crimper pliers before they left.

Linda and Marilyn left shortly after Butch and Fonda and drove to Blythe, California to do some grocery shopping and sight-seeing.  That left me with some alone time to concentrate on getting some things done that I have needed to work on for a week, such as categorizing FMCA seminars, and have just not found (made) the time.  I value and enjoy my work with the FMCA National Education Committee but we have a significant personal investment in our presence here in Quartzsite, and although we will likely return here again in the years to come that is not guaranteed, and this could turn out to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  The FMCA work took about an hour to complete and e-mail too Jim A., with who has been the lead person on this.

I also needed to make a minor change to the Aqua-Hot expansion tank plumbing and turn the burner back on.  I removed the overflow hose, shortened it, re-routed it, and re-connected it to the drain tube on the tank.  I also tried to tighten the clamp on the middle zone pump hose.  I noted that the coolant level was at the ‘minimum cold’ mark on the expansion tank.  I will check everything again tomorrow.

With the Aqua-Hot project done I decided to replace the old Sentry turbo boost gauge with the new VDO gauge.  I removed the dashboard cover, disconnected the lightbulb connectors, removed the retaining bracket, and pulled the gauge out the front of the dashboard.  I removed the lightbulb socket to give me better access to the main air fitting and undid that, completely freeing the unit from the dashboard.  I pulled the light socket out of the new gauge to give me more room to put the air fitting on and to check the bulb type.  It was a miniature glass wedge base 12VDC 3W and will need to be replaced with a 24V, 3W bulb.  I then slipped the gauge into the dashboard from the front and secured it with the supplied bracket on the back side.  Linda and Marilyn returned at this point so I quit working on the gauge, put the cover back on the dashboard, and helped bring in the groceries.  I will have to get the 24V bulb and also rewire the leads to match the harness connectors.

We had a light lunch and then drove down to the market area and wandered through the big tent RV show.  We got new Ballisti-Tech screen protectors for our Samsung Galaxy S III smartphones.  We also strolled through a small part of the Tyson Wells and Prospectors Panorama areas.  When we left the RV show we headed south on US-95 to the BLM Roadrunner STVA so Marilyn could see the Quartzfest RVs in the desert.  We found Lou and Val Petkus at their 5th wheel and visited briefly before heading back to town.  The light was good and the sun was still high enough that I made an impromptu decision to climb Q Mountain and try to get pictures of the RVs spread across the desert around Quartzsite.

I got my pictures, and got off the mountain before it got dark, but missed the best color, which we saw while driving back to camp to close up the rig before going to dinner.  The Geeks were out viewing and photographing the sunset before walking to the Grubstake restaurant for dinner so and we chatted with them briefly and then drove to Crazy Jerry’s for our evening meal.  The very thin crust mushroom, onion, and tomato no-cheese pizza was excellent and the French fries were also good.  When we got back to our coach Linda prepared some fresh strawberries for desert.

After visiting with Jim and Chris on Wednesday we decided that we would join the Quartzsite Yacht Club, which claims to have the largest membership of any yacht club in the country (world?, universe?) at over 7,500., although we later heard that it was more than 9,000.  Membership is $30 which gets you a hat, T-shirt, membership card and certificate.  Apparently the membership is good at other (real) yacht clubs that honor reciprocal arrangements.  We had planned to join today but did not fit it in.  It may be Sunday or even a day next week at this point.

I spent some time transferring photos from my camera to my laptop computer and our NAS unit.  I processed three panoramas and three individual images taken on Q Mountain, checked my e-mail, and went to bed.

Sunset glow looking NE from 'Q' Mountain.

Sunset glow looking NE from ‘Q’ Mountain.

2015/01/24 (S) Lake Havasu City

We were up at 7:15 AM and I brewed a pot of coffee while Linda showered.  I took my turn and also trimmed up my beard a bit.  Marilyn came over around 8:25 AM and we all had coffee followed by breakfast.  Linda and I had granola while Marilyn had toast and jam.  She is not that found of breakfast and does not care for milk or milk substitutes.

I removed some of the parts boxes from the back of the Element to eliminate the rattling just in case we decided to drive in to the Desert Bar on the way back from Lake Havasu City (LHC).  We left around 9:15 AM and headed up AZ-95 towards Parker.  It was a cool morning with clear skies and the sun lit up the mountains to the west and north.  When we got to Parker we decided to cross the Colorado River into California and take the Parker Dam Road 17 miles up to Parker Dam, drive across back into Arizona, re-connect with AZ-95, and continue north to LHC.

We knew that the stretch of the River from the dam downstream to Parker had quite a few RV Parks, campgrounds, and mobile home communities because we caught glimpses of some of them from AZ-95, or saw signs for them, the last time we were in LHC.  The drive from Parker to LHC is very scenic but you do not have a view of the river most of the time.  Much of the drive from Parker to the dam on the California side, however, was close to water level so we were able to see the resorts on both sides of the river.  We had also heard that there were wild burros along the California route and indeed there were.  We saw five total, two of them just before the dam.  They appear to be docile animals, but they are wild, and you are not allowed to feed or harass them.

Once we got to LHC we followed the signs for the London Bridge and found the parking lot and visitor center.  We watched a video on the history of the London Bridge, which was actually the second most recent in a long succession of bridges across the River Thames dating back before Roman Times.  The Bridge was purchased, disassembled, moved, and reconstructed in LHC.  It was placed at the entrance to a peninsula and then a channel was dug out under it and connected to the Colorado River on either end, turning the peninsula into an island.  There is an “English Village” at the base of the bridge on the mainland side, which was not very special, but a wonderful pedestrian path winds along the channel all the way down to Rotary Park.  The air was cool and the wind was very strong, but the sun was very warm and we had a lovely stroll.

After walking the path we drove over the bridge and around the island, stopping at one of the reproduction 1/8 scale lighthouses.  The LHC Lighthouse Association has erected some two dozen scale replicas of U. S. Lighthouses.  The ones on the island are all replicas of lighthouses from the Great Lakes while the ones on the Arizona shore are east coast replicas and the ones on the California shore are west coast replicas.  While we were driving Linda researched places we might be able to eat lunch and settled on The Black Bear Diner.  She and Marilyn had garden burgers with French fries and I had the Sweet Garden Harvest Salad.  All of the food was very good, and I was particularly pleased with the salad, which had raisins, dried cranberries, nuts, fresh strawberries, and shredded coconut with a honey Dijon dressing.

The restaurant was in a corner of the parking lot for the Albertson’s grocery store so we went in looking for regular Silk soy creamer.  They did not have any so we started back to Quartzsite and stopped at the Basha’s market on the south end of town.  They had the Silk Vanilla Soy Creamer, not the regular, but I got some anyway.  They also had a nice selection of Daiya cheeses and vegan sausages.  We picked up some sourdough bread and preserves on our way to the checkout.  Of all the food stores we have been in Basha’s was the nicest so far.

By the time we got to Parker I was getting tired so I pulled into the casino parking lot.  I switched places with Linda and she drove the rest of the way to Q.  Back at camp she and Marilyn went to the apartment and started assembling a 500 piece puzzle on the dining table.  As I do on any day that I have taken a lot of pictures I transferred them from my camera to my computer and backed them up to the NAS unit.  I used the Microsoft Image Composite Editor to create two panoramic images of the California mountains just south of LHC.

None of us were hungry enough to warrant fixing dinner so we snacked on hummus and chips (vegan junk food).  Marilyn went back to the apartment at 9 PM and we went to bed shortly thereafter.  A long day of fresh air and sunshine had once again worn us out.

2025/01/25 (N) Visitors

Linda& Marilyn at the London Bridge English village.  It's a real London phone booth, but no phone.

Linda& Marilyn at the London Bridge English village. It’s a real London phone booth, but no phone.

Today was basically a stay at home day.  Marilyn is officially “on retreat” and spent part of the day by herself reading and contemplating.  I made coffee for breakfast, as usual, and Linda made her amazing vegan cinnamon rolls for brunch.  They were brunch because they take hours to make and she did not feel like getting up early enough to have them ready by breakfast and we did not expect her to.

Butch dropped Fonda at church and then came back to get me on his way to the Big Tent RV Show.  Today was the last day of the show so I bought a 2″ wide roll of rescue tape and got three smaller rolls in the deal.  I bought more of the Carnu-B wax but the vendor was out of the Metal Shine cleaner.  That’s the risk one takes waiting until the end of a rally or show.  I also bought two small LEDs that looked like the might work in our spotter/downlights.  We then stopped by Mac McCoy’s booth to chat.  He was busy with customers but Charles Martin was there so we chatted with him instead.

We got back to camp just after 11 AM as Linda was putting the finishing touches on the cinnamon rolls and Marilyn joined us for brunch.  I tried one of the new LED bulbs but it would not fit in our fixtures.  I dealt with some e-mail and thought about spending the rest of the day writing but decided to work outside instead.  My outside task today was cleaning some of the bus windows using the Carnu-B Metal Shine to remove hard water stains.

Chris and Jim of Geeks On Tour did their weekly live broadcast from their rig and then started making preparations to leave.  We had two cinnamon rolls left so Linda took them over as a going away gift.  Charles and Connie Martin dropped in and a short time later Mara and her friend Michael arrived.  Marilyn came over followed by Butch and Fonda so we circled the chairs and had quite a gabfest.

Eventually everyone left and I returned to my window cleaning while Linda and her sister started preparing dinner.  Linda made her wonderful warm Farro dish with kale and dried cranberries while Marilyn made a shredded Brussels sprout dish with pistachios and dried cranberries.  Both dishes were excellent and the use of dried cranberries in each one tied them together nicely.

Linda and Marilyn went to the apartment to watch Downton Abbey but the satellite receiver was not activated so they worked on the jigsaw puzzle instead.  I stayed in the coach and took a call from Lou Petkus who had questions about RVillage.  I then consolidated my blog posts from the first seven days of October (2014) into a single post, selected five photos to go with it, and uploaded it to our WordPress site, the first post I have done since September 30, 2014.  If I do one consolidated post each evening I should be caught up to our arrival in Quartzite on December 12, 2014 in about two weeks.  After that I may go back to daily posts or continue to consolidate three or four days at a time.  I would like to be caught up and making current/daily posts by the time we pull out of here on March 1st.

London Bridge in Lake Havasu City (LHC), AZ.

London Bridge in Lake Havasu City (LHC), AZ.

2015/01/26 (M) A Plethora of Jims

We had toast and jam (strawberry preserves and orange marmalade) for breakfast along with our usual coffee and juice.  Jim A. called just after breakfast to update me on work we are doing for FMCA HQ.  Jim G. (&  Chris) pulled out yesterday.  Jim B. (& Barb) are here for the winter.  Jim L. (The brother of owner Joe L.) manages this place and stops by almost every day.  I think we have met several other Jims along the way.  When we meet someone new I just assume their name is Jim until I learn otherwise.  This winter has truly seen a plethora of Jims.

Jim and Barb let me know they were headed to Blythe, California to go grocery shopping and offered to pick up anything we might need.  Butch and Fonda also left but Larry and Sandy did not, which was unusual for them.  Linda and Marilyn wanted to walk around Tyson Wells so I drove them down to Kuehn Street and Central Avenue, stopping at the Post Office on the way.  I stopped on the way back at Herb’s Hardware store to get some 000 steel wool and then topped off my fuel tank at the Union 76 station.

Connie Martin visiting us at the Camp Liebherrvile / Brocker.

Connie Martin visiting us at the Camp Liebherrvile / Brocker.

Back at our coach I started assembling my blog posts from October 8 through 15 into a single post and selecting photos to go with it.  I do not like to sit and do this kind of work for long stretches of time so I got out my cleaning supplies and worked on the outside of some of the bus windows.  I tried using straight vinegar to clean them followed by rubbing with the steel wool, and tried it in the opposite order.  I decided to stick with steel wool first figuring the vinegar would help clean it off.  I did not apply wax to the outsides of the windows as I want them as clean as possible before I wax them.  Rain was forecast for today and it eventually started so I moved indoors and cleaned the insides of several windows on the passenger side of the coach.  These were clean enough that I used the Carnu-B spay wax that I bought yesterday on them.  The rain let up so I moved back outside and worked on the upper windshields.  I got both of them steel wooled and wiped down with vinegar and got a coat of wax on the driver side glass before it started drizzling again.  I put my supplies away again and headed back inside.  Linda called and asked to be retrieved so I drove back down to Kuehn and Central to pick them up.

Linda put out some hummus, chips, and grapes for lunch and we heated up the leftover Farro dish and divided it up between us.  Marilyn went back to the apartment to take a nap and Linda laid down to read and snooze while I continued working on e-mails and blog posts.  Gary Hatt, publisher of Bus Conversion Magazine, sent me several photos of himself standing in front of his Eagle.  I selected the one I thought would work best to go with his “Publisher’s Letter” in the January 2015 issue, post-processed it several different ways, and sent it back with an explanation of what did and why.  I also got the blog post for the second seven days of October completed and uploaded before dinner.

Mara Culp and Charles Martin visiting us at Camp Liebherrville / Brockner.

Mara Culp and Charles Martin visiting us at Camp Liebherrville / Brockner.

As the afternoon progressed the rain settled in.  Although not heavy, like a thunderstorm, it was steady well into the evening.  Jim and Barb returned and Marilyn eventually came back over to the coach.  That got Linda out of bed and working on dinner.  She made a dish that has become a standard; pasta with onions, garlic, mushrooms, and sun-dried tomatoes lightly sautéed in olive oil.  Instead of wheat noodles, however, she used “zoodles.”  Zoodles are long slender pieces of zucchini made with a hand operated SpiraLife spiral slicer.  They get added to the sauté just before serving and are simply heated rather than cooked.  We had a green salad with Ken’s Steak House Asian Sesame dressing, dried cranberries and pistachios.  We had slices of a sourdough baguette with pepper spiced olive oil for dipping and Linda and I had a glass of Franzia sangria.  Fresh strawberries for desert completed a nice meal.

Marilyn helped with the dishes after which she and Linda checked on the developing storm out east and then played Scrabble and other games while I stayed out of their way and worked on this post.  Hey, it’s a small kitchen.

The rain stopped at 7:38 PM but started again in earnest around 8:30 PM.  It was still raining at 9:15 PM when Marilyn went back to the apartment and the forecast said we could have rain overnight until 5 AM tomorrow.  We have had very little rain here this winter so I am sure this is welcomed.  It will be interesting to see if the precipitation triggers any sort of desert bloom tomorrow on our drive to Yuma or perhaps the following day.

Linda’s iPad battery was down to about 10% at 9:45 PM so she retired to the bedroom, where the charger is located, and continued to read for a bit longer.  I am usually very sleepy an hour after dinner but get my second wind a couple of hours after that.  I had an e-mail from Gary at Bus Conversion Magazine regarding the use of soft water in the Webasto-based Aqua-Hot in his Eagle and sent him a reply.  I then went through the article on Butch’s main engine air-compressor failure, finalized all of the changes, and uploaded it to our Dropbox along with the photo files.  I updated my BCM Article Status Sheet and uploaded it to the BCM folder in our Dropbox.  I then e-mailed Gary and editor Mike Sullivan to let them know that the new material was ready and available.  By the time I finished it was going on midnight.

 

2014/12/01-04 (m-r) Westward Ho!

2014/12/01 (M) Back in Twelve Mile IN

As I indicated in yesterday’s post we are back in Twelve Mile, Indiana for a couple of days before heading on towards the southwest United States.  Butch and Fonda are scrambling to get ready and although there isn’t much we can do to help, we have made ourselves available.  If nothing else we can cheer them on.

We went to bed early last night, tired from our final departure preparations and 270 miles of travel yesterday, and slept in this morning.  Once we were up we had our usual granola with fresh fruit for breakfast and then walked over to Small Town Brew for coffee and conversation with owner Lisa Paul and whoever else happened in while we were there.

Well caffeinated, and pushing 9:30 AM, we checked in on Butch and Fonda.  There wasn’t anything we could help with so we both set up our computers and got online.  Linda paid bills while I updated the spreadsheet I use to track cross-purchase costs.  I hooked up their small Canon iP90 inkjet printer and printed out a copy for Butch and wrote him a check for the balance we owed them.  I showed Linda the MFJ-998 full legal limit antenna tuner that Butch wanted to sell and decided to buy it, resulting in a second check.  We plan to (eventually) use this in our base station, but it was a good enough deal that it was worth buying now and transporting to Arizona and back.  Buying it now also helped out our friends.  I logged in to RVillage and updated our location while Linda walked down to the Post Office two buildings to the west.  (Twelve Mile is a pretty small, compact town.)

Bill and Butch finished repairing Brittiny’s car this past week and she and Rock showed up mid-morning to pick it up.  We visited with them for a while and then Rock headed back while Brittiny visited with her mom.  While they were talking someone stopped across the street and off-loaded a camel.  They had three on the trailer but I’m not sure where they put the other two.  The three wise men, however, were nowhere to be seen.

Although the air temperature was in the upper 20’s it was sunny most of the day, which kept the front of the bus comfortable and well lit.  Given those conditions I decided to work on some projects in the center cockpit area.

First up was (finally) mounting the inclinometer, which turned out to be quite the little project.  I had to remove the mounting bracket from the case in order to attach it to my mounting blocks on the center windshield pillar.  That, in turn, required me to take the case apart and remove the mechanism so I could get to the ‘C’ clips that prevented the bracket retaining screws from coming all the way out of the body.  But I got it apart, mounted, and reassembled, minus the retaining clips.  Really, why would I put them back in?

Linda split the one remaining Tofurkey brand Italian sausage and served it on a couple of hotdog buns for lunch along with a couple of Clementine oranges.  A quick and simple but tasty lunch.

The inclinometer and the compass both have light bulbs in them and needed to be wired up to 12VDC accessory plugs.  The inclinometer already had a power cord but the compass did not, so I got some scrap wire from Butch and fashioned a 2-conductor power cable.  I only have four accessory outlets and three of them were already in use so I attached both power cables to a single plug using wire nuts.  I then dressed all of the wires to make for a neater looking installation that would keep them out of the way and prevent snagging and/or tripping problems.  All of this was a long-term temporary solution; I plan to eventually install a 12 VDC PowerPole distribution system for all of these accessories and hide the wiring to the extent possible or enclose it split cable loom.

I removed the four screws that hold the panel with the 12 VDC house system switches so I could get to the back side of them.  It took a while but I eventually puzzled out how the three air-conditioner switches were wired.  I removed the wire that feeds +12 VDC to the Rear A-C switch and checked for voltage at the loose end of the wire.  There wasn’t any, as expected, so I put a 2 Amp blade fuse in the 12 VDC distribution panel and checked again.  This time I had +13.2 VDC, so everything was good down to that point.  I removed the line and load wires from each switch in turn and checked to make sure the contacts opened and closed the way they should.  They did, so I checked each pin to ground to see if any of them were somehow shorted to ground.  They were not, so the problem was probably downstream from there.  I did not, however, specifically check the bulb circuit for each switch, so I don’t know if there’s a problem there or not.  The bulbs, however, get their power from the load side of each switch, so in the next paragraph the tests I did included the bulbs in parallel with whatever other loads existed.

I tested each load wire for continuity to ground and was surprised that they each appeared as a short.  I did this test with the DC- lead to ground and the DC+ lead to the wire.  When I reversed the leads each wire tested as open.  That suggested there was a diode, or something, acting as a one way current check valve.  I switched the VOM to measure resistance and rechecked each wire.  Where I had previously seen short circuits I saw 0 ohms; where I saw open circuits I now saw about 630 ohms.  Those readings might be a problem, but I don’t yet understand them well enough to know.

The bulbs are incandescent, so their resistance should measure the same in either direction.  If they are 0.6 W they would draw ~0.047 A and have a resistance of ~265 ohms (when illuminated), not the 630 ohms I saw with the red test lead grounded.  Regardless of the exact value, if a bulb was shorted I would see 0 ohms whichever way the test leads were connected.  With the black test lead to ground the 0 ohm readings were, therefore, presumably through the load wires not the bulbs.  If the relay coils were very low resistance (and protected by diodes) they would determine the meter reading in the forward direction, but I would have expected something more than a zero reading.  It seems very odd to me that all three of these loads tested as short circuits in one direction.

I had a weak Verizon 4G/LTE signal at the front of the bus so I tried calling Donn Barnes in Alvarado, Texas.  I got his voice mail and left a message indicating he could TXT message me back.  He did later and I replied that I would call him from Logansport a bit later.  Butch needed a 1/2″ x 1-1/2″ NPT male nipple so Linda and I drove to Logansport to buy one at Home Depot.  While we were there I called Donn and confirmed that he would be home this weekend and that we were still welcomed to visit and spend Saturday and Sunday at his place.  The timing looks like it will work out well as he has to work on Friday and Monday, so we will take our leave on Monday morning.

When we got back to the coach we had some pita chips with hummus while Linda prepared a green salad and started heating some lentil soup.  While we enjoyed the soup she reheated some pita bread and the leftover Koshary.  A small glass of Moscato went nicely with the meal.  After dinner we went in the house to visit with Butch and Fonda for a while and transfer some PDF files onto a flash drive for Butch.  We returned to our coach for the evening at 9 PM.  It was certainly an easier day for us than for Butch and Fonda, but we were tired nonetheless.

We were sitting quietly, reading and writing, when things suddenly got exciting.  Juniper made a sudden movement near the food bowls and I immediately glanced in her direction to see that she had caught a mouse.  We knew at least one was probably still living in the bus because yesterday we found a partially shredded blue paper shop towel in the tray where we store the shore power cords, along with two nuts that had been chewed open.

Juniper is a very skillful huntress but I was surprised that the mouse attempted to get to the cats’ food bowls, which are not in a really safe place for a mouse, with two cats on board.  Juniper is very protective of her catches, so she headed off towards the bedroom, trying to find someplace where we could not try to take it away from her.  We wanted to get it from her and remove it from the coach but our main concern was that she not kill it and try to eat it.

I got a container to try to capture it and Linda managed to get hold of the scruff of Juniper’s neck which caused her to drop the mouse.  It immediately ran further under the bed, a direction from which there did not appear to be an escape path, but we could find no sign of it save a few stool pellets.  I would have needed a much deeper container, like the trash can, to capture it.  Our best guess is that it disappeared into the OTR HVAC duct on Linda’s side of the bed.  Once in there it could travel the length of the bus with impunity, including moving from side to side and between the house and the bay’s.  With any luck it took the hint and moved outside.

Juniper took up her post by the rear corner of the dinette, where she originally caught the mouse, to wait for its reappearance.  A black cat sitting quietly on black tile at night is a pretty effective camouflage.  The problem for the mouse is that it needs to eat and even in its natural (outdoor) environment constantly takes risks to obtain food.

2014/12/02 (T) Tire(d) Pressures

Some nights we sleep better than others.  Last night was not one of our better nights.  The cats were still wound up because of the mouse and I suspect we were anticipating its return as well.  Because neither of us slept well, we slept in this morning.  By the time we were up and dressed it was 8:30 AM.  Linda was pretty sure she had left her gloves and knit hat at the coffee shop yesterday so we decided to go have coffee at Small Town Brew before we ate breakfast.

Linda’s things were there waiting for her to claim them.  We had a nice long chat with proprietor Lisa Paul and invited her to stop over after she closed the coffee shop for the day and get an inside tour of both buses.  We also inquired as to whether she had any post cards of Twelve Mile.  She did not but thought it would be nice to have a few available.  She has a friend, Derinda, who is an artist and thought she would ask her to make a few.  We were interested in one we could mail to our grand-daughter, Madeline, who will be two years old in less than three weeks.

Breakfast was raisin toast and grapefruit, simple but yummy.  We were both dressed to work and went in search of Butch and Fonda to see if we could be of any assistance.  Linda took her computer in the house to transfer some PDF manuals to Butch and then take care of some bakery-related issues.  I used Butch’s MFJ-269 SWR Analyzer to check the VSWR on his 2 meter ham antenna and his (11 meter) CB antenna.  Both antennas are glass mount.  The 2m ham antenna was tuned fairly well, showing a VSWR of 2.1 at the low end of the band (144.000 MHz) and 1.8 across most of the band (up 148.000 MHz).  That is certainly a usable range.

The CB antenna did not test nearly as well.  The CB band is channelized, with channel 1 just below 27.000 MHz and channel 40 just above 27.400 MHz.  At 27.0 MHz the VSWR was greater than 6.0.  It declined steadily as I went up in frequency but was only down to 2.9 by the time I got to Channel 40.  A reading greater than 2.0 (a ratio greater than 2:1) becomes problematic for a transmitter and readings greater than 3.0 are generally unusable.  Both of Butch’s antennas are tunable but we did not take the time to adjust them today.  Butch is taking the analyzer so we can work on the antennas while we are in Quartzsite.

Their bus is parked in between our bus and their house as a consequence of which our WiFi Ranger is not able to pick up their WiFi network signal which is already weak outside the house.  I am having a problem with the unit that has me concerned, but I won’t be able to sort it out until I can get it connected to a working Internet connection.  The problem is that the WFR finds their network and tries to connect to it, requests an IP address, and while it is waiting for a response disconnects from my iPad, which serves as its control panel.  This annoying at best since the WFR and the iPad are only 10 feet apart.

We had lunch at 1:30 PM.  Linda heated up a couple of Thai Kitchen brand hot and sour rice noodle soup bowls.  It had been cold, damp, and dreary all day and we were both feeling a bit chilled so the soup was very soothing in addition to being very tasty.  By 2 PM it was obvious we were not going to get the mid-to-upper 30’s temperatures that had been forecast and there was no advantage to waiting any longer to check/set the tire pressures.  I bundled up, put on my mechanic’s gloves, and set about the business at hand.

Butch turned the auto shop compressor on and I pulled the air hose out and connected it to our hose.  I removed the Pressure Pro sensors from all 12 tires and then worked my way around both vehicles in the same order.  When the sensors have been off for a minimum of one minute putting them back on resets the baseline pressure, which determines the pressures at which you get over- and under-pressure warnings.  I set the bus tires as follows:  front tires to 115 PSI, drive tires to 95 PSI, and tag tires to 85 PSI.  I set the car front tires to 32 PSI and the rear tires to 34 PSI.  I noted that the ambient temperature was 30 degrees F.  I then plugged in the Pressure Pro receiver and repeater and checked the pressures they were reporting.  The four car tire readings were essentially identical to the known pressures in the tires, but the sensors on the eight bus tires all registered low, in one case by 6 lbs.  As I indicated in a previous post I think the batteries are just about drained and are giving tire(d) pressure readings.  I know that I am tired of the discrepancies as I count on these readings to tell me it’s OK to drive or I need to add air to certain tires.

Bill and Bell showed up in his custom car hauler while I was working on the tires.  Bill and Butch worked on some stuff and Bell helped Fonda load food and sundries onto the bus.  Lisa Paul showed up for a brief visit and tour of both buses.  See also brought a postcard that her friend Derinda made.  It featured the building that houses Lisa’s Small Town Brew coffee shop.  Linda is going to post it to Madeline in the morning so it has a Twelve Mile, Indiana postmark.  It will be the first of what we hope are many such postcards from far away exotic places.  Being almost two years old we hope these mementos will provide a tangible connection to us while we are traveling.  I know her parents will use them as learning opportunities.

Linda and I took showers in the house to minimize the use of our stored water and waste tank capacity.  The six of us then drove down to The Old Mill restaurant just west of town for an earlier than normal dinner.  The restaurant also allowed us to use their dumpster to dispose of our accumulated household trash.  That was nice because Butch and Fonda had already suspended their dumpster service for the winter.

When we got back from dinner we got online and checked the weather forecast and road conditions along our planned route.  Bill had recently driven I-70 west of Indianapolis and strongly advised us to avoid going that way.  Our check of the INDOT website confirmed that we were well advised to avoid Indianapolis altogether.  We settled on SR-16 east to US-31 south to US-24 west to I-57 in Illinois.  From there we will take I-57 south to Mt. Vernon, Illinois where we will overnight at Wally World (Walmart).

Bill and Bell said they would be back in the morning to see us off (“watch this thing launch” is how Bill put it) and took their leave.  We hung out a while longer trying to be useful but mostly providing moral support and comic relief until it was time to winterize the plumbing.  Butch hooked up a line from his big shop air compressor, ran it through a pressure regulator, and attached it to the main plumbing line at the surge tank and pump.  Just like an RV he used air pressure to drain both water heaters and then had us open each fixture in turn and let the air blow the water out and down the drain.  We then filled the traps and toilet tanks with potable RV antifreeze.  The reason for using potable antifreeze is that it will eventually end up in the septic tank and drain field.

We finally retired to our coach leaving them to finish up some last minute things before retiring to their coach for the night.  We had some very tasty red grapes for dessert (and a couple of cookies) while we studied maps for our next few days of travel.  We had not really looked at them carefully before now and were surprised to find that we will not be in either Kentucky or Tennessee.  We had presumed that we would be, but I-57 runs into the extreme southwest corner of Illinois and then crosses the Mississippi River into Missouri, ending at I-55 in Sikeston.  From there we will continue south into Arkansas on I-55, which stays on the west side of the Mississippi river, until we intersect I-40 west of Memphis and head west towards Little Rock.  Thus we will never enter Kentucky or Tennessee and we will not drive through Memphis; at least not on purpose.

Fonda has to run to Logansport first thing tomorrow and while she is gone we will prep our bus for travel, hitch up our car, and give Butch whatever assistance we can.  We plan to be on the road by 10 AM and safely parked at the Walmart in Mt. Vernon, Illinois well before dark.

2014/12/03 (W) Finally On Our Way

We were up around 7:45 this morning anticipating a 9 AM departure even though we knew that was unlikely.  I turned on the Aqua-Hot engine pre-heat pump to start warming the engine.  There was a dusting of snow on the ground and on our car; a sure sign that our departure had been delayed long enough.

Bill and Bell arrived a little after 8 AM so we invited them into the coach and chatted for over an hour while Butch and Fonda got their morning organized.  Fonda left for her run to Logansport at 9:15 AM followed by Bill and Bell at 9:25 AM when they decided they needed to go to Logansport to get breakfast.  Fonda returned at 9:50 AM and we started making our final departure preparations.  We had hoped to leave by 10 AM but suspected that was optimistic.  It’s Butch and Fonda’s first extended use of their converted coach and they have had a lot to do to get ready to leave.

We straightened up the interior for travel as soon as Bill and Bell left so all that remained for us to do was unhook the shorepower cord and store it, start up the main engine, move the bus across the street, and hookup the car for towing.  We can do all of that in 15-20 minutes if absolutely necessary, especially in warmer weather, but it typically takes a half hour.  We do not like to rush this process; it’s important that we do it correctly each and every time.  It is also a commonly understood etiquette among RVers that you do not try to chit-chat with, or otherwise disturb, fellow road warriors while they are hitching something up.

Butch & Fonda's MC-9 getting ready to depart Twelve Mile, IN.

Butch & Fonda’s MC-9 getting ready to depart Twelve Mile, IN.

We were idling and ready to go by 10:25 AM but Butch had to make some final adjustments to his toad towing/braking setup.  Bill and Bell were back in time for Bill to help and Bell to take pictures and give us a good send off.  We pulled out a little after 11 AM and headed east on SR-16 with Butch in the lead but only got to the edge of town before Butch pulled off the road.  We pulled off behind him and Bill pulled off the on the other side.  We had noticed that their bus was smoking but they realized something was wrong before we could even call them on our 2m ham radio.  It wasn’t the engine; the brakes on the toad were partially engaged and he could feel the drag.  He readjusted it and we were on our way again, this time for good.

The trip to Mt. Vernon, Illinois was an easy and uneventful run.  From SR-16 we turned south on US-31 and picked up US-24 westbound.  We took this same route in June 2013 when we left Twelve Mile headed to the state of Wyoming so we knew it was a good route for us.  We had to slow down going through small towns, but that gave us a chance to catch a glimpse of these quaint little places.  A couple of larger towns had stop lights, but mostly we were able to keep rolling.

We stopped at a Pilot Truck Stop just west of I-65 for a quick walk-around and so Fonda could take the dogs out.  We continued west on US-24 into Illinois and eventually got to I-57 where we headed south.  We saw occasional construction signs but very little construction and did not incur any delays.  Butch lead most of the day and we just followed along with generally light traffic.

We stopped at the rest area just north of I-70 and took a stretch break, after which we took the lead.  A few miles later we got to the construction on the short stretch where I-57 and I-70 run together.  We had to drive 45 MPH but rolled right through.  After the construction zone we took the center lane knowing that I-57 would split to the left from I-70 and continue southbound.  Slow traffic is often worse than fast traffic as the cars end up bumper-to-bumper leaving no space for larger vehicles to change lanes.

Following the directions on our GPS we took exit 95 for Mt. Vernon, Illinois, drove a quarter mile, and turned left onto a road that ran down the west side of the Wal-Mart property.  Linda had called ahead and been told it was OK for us to spend the night in their parking lot.  The first two access drives, however, had crossbars at 12 feet so we could not turn in. The third driveway was for delivery trucks so we turned in there and headed back towards the north end of the lot by Ryan’s as Linda had been instructed on the phone.  There were signs posted prohibiting semi-truck parking so we parked temporarily while Linda went in to check on the situation.

A women at customer service confirmed that we could spend the night and asked that we stay near the periphery of their parking lot away from the main doors.  No problem.  The lot we had pulled into was not the Wal-Mart lot and was a little tight but were able to extricate both coaches without unhooking our toads and moved them to the northeast corner of the adjacent/connected Wal-Mart parking lot.  I leveled up as best I could, shut the engine off, and then closed the various air valves and switched the chassis batteries off.

The house batteries were at an 89% state of charge (SOC) when we arrived.  We locked the bus and went for a walk around the east end of the building to scout out an exit route.  We stopped in the store and bought a bag of Fritos and some popcorn oil.  When we got back to the coach I started the diesel genset and turned on two of the electric toekick heaters while Linda used the induction cooker to prepare vegan burgers for dinner.

After we had eaten Linda and I sent TXT messages to several people.  We then went over to visit briefly with Butch and Fonda and look at maps for tomorrow’s leg of the trip.  When we returned to our coach we noticed that the generator had stopped running.  Not good.  I was able to restart it but each time it shut down, so I got Butch to come look at it.

There’s a solenoid that holds a fuel valve open and we thought that might be the problem, but it wasn’t.  We checked the level of the oil but it was OK.  I started it again and Butch noticed that the squirrel cage fresh air blower was not turning so I shut the engine off.  Linda had been watching the gauges inside and said the water temperature was very high (off the end of the scale).  Butch checked the blower to make sure it wasn’t stuck. I traced the wiring back to a panel with a couple of circuit breakers and one of them was popped.  I reset it and restarted the engine and the blower came on.  Linda reported that the water temperature immediately dropped.  We suspected, but did not confirm, that the same breaker controlled the power to the large squirrel cage blower for the radiator, which is located in the inverter bay on the other side of the bus.  I let it run for another hour and brought the house batteries up to 95%.  It ran fine with normal water temperature and oil pressure so I think we found the problem and fixed it.

Linda read while I changed most of the clocks to Central Standard Time.  I turned off the electric heating element in the Aqua-Hot to unload the GenSet and then shut it down for the night.  I dialed the three Aqua-Hot thermostats back to 15 degrees C (59 degrees F) and turned on the Diesel burner.  It is only supposed to get down to 32 degrees Fahrenheit overnight but Linda put an extra blanket on the bed since we will not be using the electric heating pads as they would draw too much energy from the batteries.

It was a long day but largely uneventful except for the beginning and the end.  But all’s well that ends well, and this day did.

2014/12/04 (R) Roadside Repair

I was awake at 4:30 AM and got up to check on the SOC of the house batteries and turn on the Aqua-Hot engine pre-heat pump.  The batteries were at 68 SOC.  They were at 95% when I shut the generator off around 9 PM last night, so they had dropped 27% percentage points in 7.5 hours, a rate of 3.6 percentage points per hour or 10 percentage points every 2 hours and 45 minutes.  We did not go out of our way to minimize loads, leaving some night lights on (DC), the Aqua-Hot (DC), and the main inverter loads (refrigerator, auxiliary air-compressor, microwave clock, outlets with chargers, etc.). At that rate it would take just under 14 hours for the batteries to drop to a 50% SOC, starting from 100%.  I was satisfied with the performance of the system and went back to bed.

It started to rain off and on around 5:30 AM, the first sign of a wet day.  I got up to stay at 7:15 AM and got dressed.  I checked the SOC of the house batteries and it was 58%, so it had dropped another 10% in 2 and 3/4 hours, consistent with the 4:30 AM data.  I started the generator to provide power for hot water, lights, and additional engine pre-heating.  It would also start to bring the SOC of the house batteries back up before we started driving for the day, although the Zena power generating system on the main engine should be capable of recharging them in a couple of hours while we are driving.

Since we were not leaving until at least 9 AM we decided to have a light breakfast of raisin bread and grapefruit.  After breakfast I powered up our Verizon Mi-Fi device, got my laptop connected to it, e-mailed yesterday’s blog post to myself (from my iPad), and then checked my e-mail (on my computer).

We had the coach straightened up and ready to go well ahead of our departure.  Around 8:45 Butch indicated that they would be ready to go in 15 minutes.  That was all the time I needed to get the car ready to tow, switch the coach batteries on, open the various air valves, shut off the Aqua-Hot pre-heat loop, and start the main engine.  With the main engine running I turned off all of the loads on the generator, let it run unloaded for a few minutes to cool down, and then shut it off.

We pulled out at 9 AM and worked our way around behind the store and back out the unblocked entrance we came in yesterday.  Instead of turning on Broadway to go back to the Interstate we crossed over and pulled into the Pilot Truck Stop so Butch could top off their fuel tank.  We did not need fuel yet but I pulled in right behind him so we were positioned to pull out together.

We were back on I-57 headed south by 9:25 AM with Butch in the lead.  We ran at 60 MPH through light rain and fog with overcast skies all the way to the end of I-57 at I-55 near Sikeston, Missouri, where we continued south towards Memphis, Tennessee.  We eventually crossed into Arkansas and out of the rain, although the cloudy skies continued.  About 25 miles north of the junction with I-40 Butch called on the radio to let us know that he needed to get off the road at the first safe place I could find.  His air pressure had dropped to 60 PSI and was not building.  A couple of miles later I pulled off onto the shoulder of an entrance ramp and he pulled off behind me.  The brakes and suspension most highway buses are air-powered.  Without proper air-pressure the bus cannot be driven.

The pressure in the system was holding which indicated a supply issue rather than a leak.  The usual suspect in this situation is the “governor” (or less likely the unloader valves) on the main engine air-compressor.  Butch had a spare governor in his parts kit but we were not in an ideal spot for changing it.  He decided instead to hook up his portable air-compressor to his air system auxiliary fill connector.  He put the portable air-compressor in the bedroom at the rear of the bus and had Fonda run the air hose out the passenger side window were I took it and zip tied it to the side radiator grill.  Butch then ran it through a small access door by the passenger side rear lights and connected it to the fill valve.  The portable air-compressor is an AC powered device, so Butch had to start their generator to power it.  It gradually built the pressure to 100 PSI.  The pressure was holding so Butch dial it up to 110 PSI.  He left the portable air-compressor on for the rest of the trip and allowed us to get back on the road, making this a very clever emergency roadside fix.

After a 20 minute delay we pulled back onto I-55 and finished the run to I-40 with heavier traffic.  We exited onto westbound I-40 in West Memphis, Arkansas and completed the 38 miles to Forest City, Arkansas without difficulty.  We negotiated a tight turn onto the street where the Wal-Mart was located but had an easy time getting in at the far west entrance.  From there we pulled up parallel to a north-south curb that ran the length of the west edge of the parking lot.  We leveled up the coach (using the air springs), shut down the engine, and went through our usual dry-camping arrival routine.

As soon as we were set up Butch was back looking at his main engine air-compressor and then on the phone with Luke at U. S. Coach in New Jersey.  He decided to change the governor as it couldn’t do any harm.  I helped him (as best I could) but once the new governor was installed the compressor still would not build air pressure.  The unloader valves were the next most likely (easiest to fix) culprits, but neither of us had the parts.  There was an O’Reilly’s Auto Store across the main road from the Wal-Mart so we walked over there.  They did not stock them either, but at least we got some exercise.

The house batteries were at 78% SOC when we arrived which disappointed me as I expected them to be at least at 88% like they were yesterday at the end of our drive.  We were on the inverter from the time we started up at 9 AM until I turned the generator on at about 3:30 PM.  At our normal rate of 3.6 percentage points per hour we would have been at ~72% SOC without any charging from the ZENA system, so 78% did not seem very good to me.  It appears that I am going to have to adjust the charge voltage up somewhat on the ZENA power generating system as it should be supply enough current to run any AC loads while traveling (mostly the refrigerator) and fully recharge the house batteries.  I let the generator run through dinner until bedtime.  It brought the SOC back up to 91% with the charger in float mode supplying 10 Amps of current at 26.3 VDC.  Once the charger is in float mode it can take a surprisingly long time to finishing bringing the batteries to full charge.

Some weeks back Butch bought a grandfathered Verizon unlimited data plan on Ebay using the Assumption Of Liability (AOL) process.  He also picked up a used phone and a used Jetpack MiFi device.  Both devices can use the SIM card, but he had not had a chance to connect the MiFi through to the Internet.  We removed the card from the phone, installed it in the MiFi and powered it up.  It found a strong Verizon 4G/LTE signal right away.  The menu gave us the password and we were able to connect his laptop computer and my iPad.  He started searching the web while I downloaded e-mails.

Linda and Fonda had walked to the store to buy a few things.  When they got back we chatted for a bit and then went back to our coach.  Linda made popcorn for me (she wasn’t hungry) and we relaxed for a while before going to bed.

 

2014/11/17-23 Bus Work Wrapup

2014/11/17 (M) Bypass Extension

12VDC outlets on lower center cockpit console.

12VDC outlets on lower center cockpit console.

After my usual breakfast I decided to change the drinking water filter cartridge under the kitchen sink.  The new one arrived UPS on Friday but I wasn’t really eager to change it, given the difficulty I have had with it in the past.  As I expected, the old one did not come out exactly the way the instructions said it would and I fussed with the new one for 30 minutes without being able to get it in.  Butch popped into my bus to see what I was up to and I enlisted his assistance.  We fiddled with it for another 45 minutes and finally gave up and put the old one back in, although it did not go in easily.  Clearly we were doing something wrong but could not figure out what it was.

I am not exactly sure what Butch and Fonda did for most of the rest of the day but whatever it was they did not need my help.  I know they drained some coolant from a hose on the main engine and changed a short piece of hose.  Having gotten off to a bad start with the water filter cartridge I decided to pick the coach up a bit and then work on the 12 VDC outlets for the cockpit accessories.

There’s no such thing as a “small job” on a bus conversion; there are only big jobs and really big jobs.  The installation of the 12 VDC outlets involved mechanical and electrical considerations; I needed to mount them someplace that was accessible but out of the way, and I needed to be able to get 12 VDC power to that location.  There is a vertical panel about five inches wide just to the right of the driver’s right leg.  It runs from the floor up to the bottom of the dashboard and houses two thermometers, a cigarette lighter, and a swing out ash tray.  The panel comes out after removing six screws.  To the right of that panel is a house systems switch panel that was added by Royale Coach.  It is about 10 inches wide and comes down from the dashboard half way to the floor.  After checking to see what was behind the vertical panel I decided to mount the outlets to the passenger side of the floor-to-dash enclosure.  I mounted them below the bottom of the house systems switch panel and slightly back from the front plane of the dashboard.  They are very accessible in this location but tucked back out of the way enough to avoid getting kicked.

Just above the house systems switch panel is an enclosure for the CB radio.  I had previously removed the four screws that secure the front panel and pulled the CB radio out of its enclosure.  The power leads used spade connectors so they were easily disconnected and the incoming power harness was long enough that I was able to drop it through the speaker hole in the bottom of the radio enclosure and behind the house systems switch panel.  I also disconnected the antenna coax, as it is not connected to anything on the other end, and dropped it through the speaker hole as well.  I added compatible spade connectors to the wires from the 12VDC outlets including a 2-wire pigtail so I could connect both DC negative wires to the one available DC negative line.  I drilled a hole for the outlet wires to go through into the space behind the vertical panel as I would eventually like to power them from there and reconnect the CB (once I get an antenna mounted).  For now, however, this arrangement will do what I need it to do; power the various cockpit accessories while keeping the power cables out of from under out feet.

By 1:45 PM I had completed the installation of the outlets but I had not re-installed the various panels.  I locked up the coach and the three of us got ready to go to Logansport to run various errands.  Butch was wrapping up a conversation with International Thermal Research regarding the installation of his Combi unit and getting answers to a few remaining questions.  It turned out that the reason the coolant circulation pump was running was that we had left the bypass switch on the Zone Control Board in the ‘ON’ position.  That was also why the Summer Mode light was on.  Butch turned the bypass switch off and the various indicator lights all seemed to indicate what they were supposed to show.

I ended up buying the parts for a drinking water filtration system at Home Depot.  I got a GE Drinking Water Filter Housing and filter element plus a collection of hoses and fittings to connect it to the existing 3/4″” OD copper plumbing under the kitchen sink.  I also picked up a can of flat black spray paint to use on the accessory mounting board for the windshield center pillar.  We stopped on the way back in to Twelve Mile to pick up Daffy from the local veterinarian.  Fonda had taken her there earlier and dropped her off to have her teeth cleaned.  Daffy was still pretty groggy but glad to have the comfort of her owners.

When we got back to their house Fonda helped me set up some cardboard to catch any overspray and I sprayed one side and all of the edges of my center pillar board.  I then headed to my coach and finished putting the dashboard panels back in.  After that I turned my attention to the drinking water filtration system.  It took me a couple of hours but I got the old filter head removed, mounted the new housing, and made all of the connections.  I installed the new filter element and turned the water pump on, opening valves one at a time as I worked downstream looking for leaks.  The only leaks I saw were small ones between the 3/8″ brass pipe nipples and the 3/8″ female pipe thread sockets in the plastic filter housing.  Both leaks were easily remedied with an extra turn of the right angle shutoff valves.

I had not quite finished the water filter project when Fonda came out to let me know that Linda was on the house phone.  She answered some accounting/tax questions for Butch and then we chatted for a bit.  We decided that I would move the Martin Diesel appointment from this Thursday to next Monday, if possible, as the weather should be much more agreeable.  That will also give me four additional days to work on bus projects here, which I need.

I returned to the coach, finished up the plumbing, made a quick dinner, cleaned up the dishes, and went in the house for the evening.  Butch and Fonda had already gone to bed so I did the same and dealt with e-mails and this post.

New drinking water filter and hoses under the kitchen sink (in the bus).

New drinking water filter and hoses under the kitchen sink (in the bus).

2014/11/18 (T) Holes and LEDs

We were all busy all day today but did not have as much to show for it as we have on some other days.  That’s the way it goes with bus projects.  I worked on three separate projects for our bus and helped Butch and Fonda with one project on their bus.

The first thing I did after breakfast was to spray another coat of flat black paint on the oak board I plan to use as a mounting plate for various cockpit accessories.  I then went to work on enlarging the return air openings above the shelf in the rear closet.  This turned out to involve quite a bit of work.  On the passenger side I had to cut the carpeting on the inside of the closet and peel it off.  I then drilled a hole in each lower corner to allow access for a sabre saw blade.  I borrowed Butch’s cordless sabre saw, so that involved getting the saw from the parts room.  I cut from the back side, as I had access via the rear TV cabinet, and enlarged the opening to about 10″ x 10″.

I did not have access to the back of the panel on the driver’s side so I had to take a different approach.  I removed the lower panel which gave me access to the space and the various relays mounted on the floor of the cabinet.  I needed to make sure there wasn’t anything on the back side of the upper panel where I intended to drill and cut.  I borrowed Butch’s lighted inspection camera, which required another trip to the parts room, and used it to look up inside.  It was clear, so I cut the carpet on the inside of the closet and removed it.  Working from inside the closet I did not have room to use the sabre saw, so I used my oscillating saw to cut the opening.  Once the panel was cut through on both sides and the bottom it still had the metal mesh stapled to the top back side.  I was able to use that to pull the mesh loose from the fixed panel and remove it.

The next step in this project will involve installing a pair of 12″ x 12″ return air grills after I vacuum up the debris from the drilling and cutting process.  Home Depot carries these grills but was out of stock when we were there last night.  They are supposed to be in tomorrow or Thursday.  I already have a roll of 1/4″ grid hardware cloth and I plan to cover the openings with a piece of that to make sure mouse-sized critters cannot get through the slots in the grill, which will go over the hardware cloth.

By the time I got to this point it was time for a quick lunch.  After my meal I checked in with Butch and he was at a point where he needed assistance attaching an aluminum angle to the driver’s side front ceiling.  This angle would serve as the attachment for the vertical face of the chase that will hide the wiring running along the junction between the wall and the ceiling.  With Fonda’s help we held the first piece in place and secured it with one screw near the rear end.  We then measured down from the center trim of the ceiling and adjusted the other end to keep the angle as close as possible to parallel along its entire length with the ceiling centerline.  With that piece mounted Butch clamped another piece of angle to the mounted one, giving us a nice straight extension of the line, and then clamped the second piece to be installed to the extension angle.  I then secured the second piece to the ceiling with several screws.

Butch held 3″ Wiremold channel in place from the front air-conditioner trim to the gap between the two angles we just installed and marked it for length.  Fonda cut those while Butch cut a piece of plywood to the width and length needed and then installed them.  We talked about putting up the chase on the passenger side, or at least the Wiremold channel for the fluorescent ceiling lights.  Butch said they planned to make that chase deeper, and I suggested they bring it out as far as possible and build it as a cabinet using a face frame with several stiles (vertical pieces) and one long, top-hinged, door.  They both made note of the idea but did not want to get involved in that today.

I took a short break to call Martin Diesel and move my generator service appointment from this Thursday to next Monday.  I have more to do on the bus than I can complete by Wednesday afternoon and the weather Thursday morning is forecast to still be very cold.  The cold spell is supposed to finally break on Saturday with highs in the 50s and lows in the 40s.  I should be able to hook up the care and leave early Monday morning in 43 degree weather; much nicer than 18 degrees (Fahrenheit).

I now turned my attention to the LED replacement lighting for the F72T12 fluorescent light fixture in the hallway cove.  The first thing I needed to do was locate the 12 VDC positive and negative wires that were controlled by the pair of three-way switches; one by the pantry and the other in the bedroom.  In spite of having the wiring diagram for the old fluorescent ballast on a label attached to the ballast, I was not able to trace out the wiring.  Butch came over to see how I was doing so I enlisted his assistance.  The situation had us both puzzled for a while but we eventually sorted it out by removing the two 3-way switches from their junction boxes and checking for voltage to chassis (DC) ground at various points.  It helped that there is a second light fixture in the hallway ceiling just outside the bathroom door that is controlled by these same switches as this allowed us to know when there should or should not be voltage present at the main fixture.

With the wiring sorted out I made a short jumper wire with male spade terminals on each end and used it to jumper the red and white wires together in the base of the panty.  The white wire turned out to be DC negative (ground) and the red wire ran to the far (rear) end of the chase, so this provided a ground connection at the far end of the chase.  I recoded them with black tape.  The other red wire at the far end of the chase was the switched +12 VDC so I now had what I needed to power the LED rope light in that space.  I reinstalled the switches and cover plates and put the removable bottom shelf back in the pantry.  (The old ballast and wiring is still under this removable shelf.)

The LED rope light can be cut every few inches but I decided I should test it to make sure it worked before I started cutting it into smaller pieces.  I uncoiled the rope, which is supposed to be 52.5 feet long, as the instructions said not to apply power to it when it was coiled up.  I attached male spade lugs to the free end of one of the power cords, made my best guess as to the polarity of the rope, attached the power cord to one end of the rope, plugged the spade lugs into the two red wires in the chase, and turned on the switch.  Voila, I had guessed correctly on the polarity.  I checked the full length of the rope and all of the LEDs appeared to be working.  I need to check the length of the rope tomorrow to make sure it is the correct length.

The rope light came as a kit that included power cords (10), end caps (10), center connectors (10), and mounting clips (50).  This should be enough material to eventually redo all four of the fluorescent cove lights and add lighting around the inside face frame of a closet or two.  The lower portion of the center rear closet does not currently have any lighting and the main closet in the bathroom could certainly use more/better lighting.

I tried installing the mounting clips without much success.  It was night by this time and dark enough in the hallway that I couldn’t really see what I was doing.  As much as I wanted to the have this fixture functioning before I quit for the evening, I knew I had reached the end of this work for the day.  Rather than frustrate myself, and perhaps mess up something, I cleaned up my tools and materials and made dinner.  I had a Thai Kitchen Hot and Sour Rice Noodle Soup Bowl to which I added chopped up fresh mushrooms.  It was just the thing for a chilly evening.  I gathered up the day’s dishes and took them in the house to put in the dishwasher and then locked up the bus for the night.  I put another coat of flat black paint on my mounting board and then turned in for the evening to work on e-mail and this post.

2014/11/19 (W) Radio Woes

I was up a little earlier than usual this morning and rather than start the day with breakfast I sprayed another coat of paint on the oak board that I plan to mount to the windshield center pillar and use as a base for various cockpit accessories.  With that task completed I gathered up my cooking/eating utensils from the dishwasher and went out to my bus where I made a five cup pot of coffee and had some homemade granola for breakfast.  I then got to work on the LED lights for the hallway cove.

20141118-09586

The space in the driver side rear corner of the bus. Access is difficult and it is full of wires, relays, and the bedroom a-c evaporator and blower.

I still had trouble mounting the plastic mounting brackets due to the lack of room to work but eventually figured out that I could create enough of a hole with my center-punch to get the screw started by hand.  Because of the design of the chase I mounted two clips at each end and two in the middle.  I started from the rear end of the chase, laid the LED rope into the mounting clips closest to the wall, brought the tube around and laid it into the other set of clips and capped the end.  I inserted the two pins of the power connector/cord into the free end, turned on the power, and voilà, I once again had a functioning hallway light.  I reattached the fascia board and double checked that lights still worked.  They did, so I moved on to the next task.

The other three fluorescent ceiling cove light fixtures will be much more difficult to convert due to access limitations, but they are still working, at least for now, so I will leave them as is.  I decided to add some of the LED rope light to the lower part of the bedroom center rear closet as it does not have any lights.  (The only light is a single incandescent bulb fixture on the ceiling and the light from that is blocked by the self.  Duh.)  I mounted three clips inside the vertical stiles so as not to interfere with the door hinges.  I cut and mounted 32″ LED rope light segments, inserted the power cord pins, and mounted the rope with the power cord at the top.  An existing hole in the front corners of the shelf allowed me to pass the free end of the power cords up into the top part of the closet which has the aforementioned light fixture controlled by micro-switches on each door.  I un-mounted the existing light fixture from the ceiling and identified the +/- 12VDC lines feeding it.  I separated the two conductors on the free ends of each power cord and stripped them.  I then cut the two wires feeding the ceiling fixture and stripped the ends.  I reconnected all of the +12 wires with a wire nut and then did the same for the -12 (DC ground) wires. (This kind of work is easier to describe than it is to do, and probably takes less time.)

As long as I was working in this closet and had the access panel removed for the driver side rear corner I decided to mount the TuneTrapper FM antenna for the bedroom radio and connect it to the radio.  I mounted the antenna to the ceiling just aft of the ceiling light fixture using mounting tab cable ties.  I passed the coax through the a-c return air opening, down to the radio, and plugged it in.  I turned the radio on but only got static and squeals.  I scanned for stations but never heard one.  This radio worked the last time I used it, and did not even have an antenna connected to it, so I am not sure what has happened and will need to investigate this further tomorrow.

By the time I finished all of this it was getting dark.  I had complied a short shopping list throughout the day.  Butch needed to go to Logansport but Bill had shown up to work on Brittiny’s car so Butch felt he had to stay home.  There wasn’t much else I could do so I drove into Logansport and stopped at Home Depot, Rural King, O’Reilly’s Auto Parts, and Martin’s grocery store.  Home Depot finally had two of the 12″ x 12″ return air grills I needed for the bedroom air-conditioner return air project.

While I was in Logansport I was finally able to retrieve a voice message from Gary Hatt, the publisher of Bus Conversion Magazine, and call him back.  I also called Linda to see how her day went.  I got a call from Butch asking me to pick up an order from O’Reilly’s.  While I was there I looked at car radios but did not buy one.  The situation with the bedroom radio is that it is an old two-post automotive style.  They have not been made for years, having been replaced with the 1-DIN and 2-DIN form factor units, except for a couple of specialty companies that make “vintage style” radios for vintage vehicles.  Because that is a very specialized market the radios command correspondingly high prices.  I will modify the panel where the radio is mounted before I buy something like that.

When I got back I unloaded and stowed my groceries.  I then took one of the return air grills back to the rear closet to check the fit.  It was too big; way too big.  I measured it and it was 14″ x 14″.  Apparently the 12″ x 12″ on the label referred to the louvered area not the outside dimensions.  I will be making a trip back to the Logansport Home Depot first thing tomorrow morning.  I think they have a 10″ x 10″ grill which should measure 12″ x 12.” If that is the case it will fit perfectly.

When I got back to Twelve Mile I chatted with Butch and Bill for a while and then turned in for the night.  I got online and registered the Ridgid drill/driver I bought last Saturday.  It has a limited Lifetime Service Agreement, but only if properly registered.  I then wrote this post and went to sleep.

2014/11/20 (R) Instant-Hot (Not)

My schedule has been shifting gradually since I brought the bus to Twelve Mile, Indiana at the end of September.  In spite of it now getting dark by 6 PM I have been working on the bus later into the evening.  This is partly due to the fact that I am working on inside projects and usually have ample artificial lighting.  I did not get started checking e-mail and writing yesterday’s blog post until 11 PM and I did not turn the lights out until 2 AM.  I typically get 7 hours of sleep a night, and true to my nature, I work up at 9 AM this morning.  I had already planned to head to Home Depot in Logansport as soon as I got up, and by the time I was dressed I decided to skip breakfast and just go.

Center rear bedroom closet with LED rope lights in bottom and TuneTrapper antenna in top on ceiling.

Center rear bedroom closet with LED rope lights in bottom and TuneTrapper antenna in top on ceiling.

I returned the 12″ x 12″ return air grills (that actually measured 14″ x 14″) and bought a pair of 10″ x 10″ grills (which actually measured about 12″ x 12″).  It was 10:30 AM when I got back so I went across the street to Small Town Brew and got a cup of coffee rather than take the time to make my own pot and then have to clean it up later.  I had a nice chat with Lisa Paul (the owner) and Harold, who appeared to be an elderly farmer but I could not tell if he was “retired.”

I took the new grills inside to the parts room to see if the square pieces of 1/4″ hardware cloth I cut and painted flat black would fit inside the lip of the grills.  I had to trim about 1/4″ off of two adjacent sides on each piece.  I took everything out to the bus and got the passenger side cloth/grill installed fairly easily.  The driver’s side was another story.  First I had to drill a hole above the top edge of the grill for the TuneTrapper FM antenna coaxial cable.  The opening on this side was slightly larger than on the other side and I could not get both screws, one center top and one center bottom, to bite.  I found a piece of scrap 1×1 in the warehouse and cut a 6″ length on Butch’s chop saw.  I drilled two holes through it and used wood screws to secure it to the top of the opening.  I was then able to screw the grill in place with the hardware cloth underneath it.  I also had to work left-handed, which didn’t make the job any easier.

I vacuumed up all of the sawdust, wood splinters, and carpet fuzz from all of the cutting and drilling I had done in this area in the last few days.  The grills are white but I decided not to paint them as they are inside a closet.  I installed them with the louvers facing the rear of the closet so when the doors are open you cannot see through them into the space behind.  They look OK and, more importantly, will allow unrestricted airflow into the squirrel cage blower on the bedroom air-conditioner evaporator.

As long as I was working in the rear closet I coiled and secured the extra length of FM antenna coax.  I then located the speaker wires for the radio.  There were wires for four speakers, which I presumed were the two in the bottom of the overhead cabinet in the bedroom and the two under the wall cabinet in the bathroom.  All of the power wires were also part of that harness.  I was not able to determine why the speakers quite working, so I disconnected all of the wires from the radio, removed the knobs, retaining nuts, and faceplate, and took it out of the panel from the rear.  There are a LOT of wires behind this panel and it was not easy to get the radio out.  (The radio is mounted in a panel next to an alarm clock and under a row of pushbuttom switches.  This panel is installed under the main 240/120 VAC house electrical distribution panel, above which is the evaporator/blower portion of the bedroom air-conditioner.  That’s a lot of stuff with a lot of wires in a place that is difficult to access; another brilliant Royale Coach conversion feature.)

The evaporator is installed with the coils not centered in the opening.  In particular there is a 1″ gap along the bottom edge and a similar opening along the top edge.  The problem with this is that it provides a very direct path for air coming out of the unit to be drawn back in rather than coming from the return air grill.  I purchased two different sizes of foam weather seal at Rural King intended for sealing around the edges of a window mounted air-conditioner.  I cut appropriate lengths of this material and secured it in place using double-sided tape I got from Fonda.

I decided to mount the indoor/outdoor thermometer on the wall between the refrigerator and the house systems panel.  It only needed one small screw and a small piece of double sided tape towards the bottom to hold it to the wall.  It’s a nice location and should give a more representative temperature reading, being on an interior wall at eye level and not in direct sunlight or near the kitchen counter where the cooking gets done.  It’s also next to the refrigerator so it should have a strong signal from the outdoor remote sensor, which we keep on the middle shelf of the refrigerator compartment.  As long as I was fiddling with this, I changed the batteries on the remote sensor and the base unit.

I checked in with Butch and Fonda to see if they needed my help.  They were also working on inside projects, both bus and house, and did not need my assistance today.  If they do need my help they know where to find me and are not bashful about asking, but I still like to check in with them several times a day.

My next task was to remove the Insta-Hot water heater from the kitchen sink.  It has never worked since we got the bus, which is to say no water comes out of it when I depress the lever.  I also have no idea if the electric heating element still worked as we have had it unplugged.  I shut of the water pump and closed the primary cold water inlet valve and both the inlet and outlet valves on the new water filter.  I loosened the 3/8″ tube compression nut on the supply line and pulled it loose from the supply T.  I purchased two 3/8″ compression caps yesterday at Home Depot.  I applied Teflon tape to the threads on the T, screwed a compression cap on, and tightened it.  I re-pressurized the line, checked for leaks, and found some.  I tightened the cap more but I could not get the leaks to stop.

I again shut the pump off, closed all of the relevant valves, and opened the filtered drinking water faucet to relieve the pressure.  I borrowed Butch’s Teflon pipe thread sealant, cleaned the Teflon off the threads on the T, applied the sealant, and screwed the second cap on.  I tightened the cap and re-pressurized the system.  It leaked worse than before.  I tried to tighten the cap more and the leak got worse.  It was time for plan B.

The hose coming out of the new water filter feeds a T from which a line went to the Insta-Hot.  The other end of the T is connected via 3/8″ tube to a second T.  One line from that T supplies the drinking water faucet.  The end of the second T feeds the line for the ice-maker in the refrigerator, which we have valved off behind the fridge and unplugged.  The first T was no longer necessary and the second T wasn’t really either.  Given that I could not cap the first T successfully I decided to remove it.  That left the second T with a short length of 3/8″ tube with a compression sleeve and nut already in place.  The hose coming off the output side of the new filter housing was long enough to reach to the second T.  I snugged up the compression nut and restored pressure to the system.  No leaks!  Hurray.

My final project for today was wiring up a 120VAC outlet in the bathroom closet for the InterVac built-in vacuum cleaner.  The vacuum cleaner is installed in the hallway wall just to the left of the refrigerator and below the house systems panel.  The bathroom closet is on the opposite side of that same wall.  The closet has a false bottom with a removable panel that provides access to a 6″ deep space full of wires, hoses, and heaters.  Of particular interest to me was the Cadet electric toe-kick heater which runs on 120 VAC (~10 Amps) and is on its own circuit breaker.

I removed the access panel and then removed the thermostat knob and the front cover/grill (two screws) from the toe-kick heater.  I removed two more screws and the heater slid out the front of the toe-kick board.  I removed four small screws, took the top cover off, disconnected the power wires, and pulled them out the back of the unit.  I got a surface mount duplex outlet and a square metal junction box (with cover plate) from Butch.  I drilled a hole through the bottom of the closet next to the rear wall that was tucked under the shelves to the right.  I cut a two foot length of 14-2+g NM cable and used it to wire up the surface mount outlet.  I fed the wire down through the hole, and screwed the outlet to the rear wall.  I installed a strain relief in the back of the Cadet enclosure, cut a two foot length of 12-2+g NM cable, routed it into the Cadet, and completed the AC power connections.  I then put the top cover back on, slid the unit back into the recessed toe-kick, secured it in place, and put the cover/knob back on.  I routed the original power cable and the two new cables into the metal junction box, made all of the electrical connections, and put the cover plate back on.  I put the cover on the new outlet and plugged in the InterVac power cord, which comes out of a grommeted hole in the back wall of the closet.  I turned the circuit breaker on, turned the heater thermostat up, and it came to life.  I turned the thermostat back down to shut the unit off and turned the vacuum cleaner on.  It worked too.  I put the access panel back in place, gathered up all of my tools and supplies, and then swept up all of the construction debris.

The refrigerator has been running a bit colder than I would like so I made small adjustments throughout the day.  The unit was suddenly running at 44 degrees instead of the 35-37 degrees it had been indicating.  I removed the thermometer base unit from the wall and set it up in the refrigerator next to the remote sensor.  I will check it in the morning and see if they are in agreement.

Linda called around 8:30 PM and Butch came out to let me know.  We chatted briefly and I went back out to the coach to finish up and have a light dinner salad.  I wrapped up at 10 PM, locked up the bus, and went into the house.  Butch and Fonda had already turned in for the night.  Their oldest daughter, Gene, is getting married tomorrow in Indianapolis and they would be leaving early in the morning.

2014/11/21 (F) Wedding Bells

I set my alarm for 8 AM to make sure I was up and dressed before Butch and Fonda had to leave.  Gene, the older of their two daughters, was getting married at 4 PM today in Indianapolis and there were a few details I had to go over with Butch and Fonda before they left.  They were still getting ready so I went across the street to Small Town Brew to have a cup of coffee and chat with the proprietor, Lisa Paul.

The first of two return air grills that allow air to pass through the upper portion of the center rear closet.

The first of two return air grills that allow air to pass through the upper portion of the center rear closet. The TuneTrapper FM antenna is visible upper right.

When I returned to the house Fonda showed me how to operate their washer and dryer and the various additives she uses.  She pre-measured the food for the dogs and told me what time to feed them, when they needed to be taken outside, and the policy on “cookies” (dog biscuits).  Butch gave me a house key so I could come and go as needed.  He found some audio speakers that might be useful in diagnosing the problem with the bedroom radio.  He also found a multi-probe digital thermometer that I could use to check the temperatures of the bus refrigerator and freezer compartments and ambient room temperatures against the Indoor/Outdoor thermometer we use for that purpose.  They loaded up the car at 9:30 AM and left to pick up Bill Tharpe in Mexico (Indiana).  Bill was flying out of Indianapolis to meet a friend in Arkansas (state of) and drive her back to Indiana and the timing was such that he could catch a ride down to the airport with them.

As soon as they left I sorted my laundry into lights and darks and loaded the lights into the washing machine.  I used my own detergent, which is free of dyes and perfumes, as years ago I had a bad reaction (contact dermatitis) to a name brand liquid laundry detergent.  With the laundry started I took the digital thermometer to my bus and had breakfast.  I read the directions for the thermometer, plugged in the probes, and turned it on only to discover that the 9V battery was low (depleted) and needed to be replaced before I could use the instrument.  It was a cool but sunny day!—a nice day for a drive—so I locked up the bus, transferred the laundry from the washer to the dryer, locked the house, and headed to Walmart in Logansport.

I was back in an hour, by which time the dogs needed to be taken outside.  With that chore done I put the second load of laundry in the washer and restarted the dryer on the driest setting.  I put the new 9V battery in the digital thermometer, plugged in the three probes, and turned it on.  I put one probe in the freezer, left one buy the counter (for ambient air temp) and put one in the fridge next to the base station and the remote sensor.  The digital thermometer is accurate to 1/10th of a degree Fahrenheit.  It is a serious piece of test equipment that Butch used for professional HVAC work, so I regard the temperature readings as correct compared to our indoor/outdoor consumer unit.  For the rest of the day I kept a log of the time and temperatures each time the refrigerator compressor started and stopped.

After studying the manual for the bedroom radio, a Kenwood KRC 3004, I worked for a while on the bedroom control panel where it was mounted.  After struggling with getting the radio out yesterday I realized today that the wood bezel surrounding the panel was removable, allowing the whole panel to come out and providing easier access to its back side and the wiring behind it.  That did not change my opinion about the design of this aspect of the bus conversion; it simply was not done with the idea that it would ever have to be worked on.

I had disconnected the harness for the four speakers powered by this radio yesterday so I checked at the connector for proper resistance and shorts.  Each speaker measured around 4 ohms (DC) and none of the negative lines were shorted.  (Technically the 4 ohm rating on a speaker is an AC impedance, not a DC resistance, but the resistance reading told me there was a complete circuit from the connector through the two wires and the speaker coil.)  The power supply wires appeared to be in tact so I reconnected the radio and turned it on.  I heard some static and could “move” it from the bedroom to the bathroom with the front-rear fader control but as soon as I tried to turn the volume up the speakers went dead.

This was starting to sound like a volume control component problem so I removed the top cover of the radio.  The volume control was a component about 1/2″ square and 3″ long mounted to a vertical circuit board on the left edge of the chassis.  There wasn’t much I could do with that but tomorrow I may spray it with some De-Ox-it just for grins and giggles.

I interrupted my work around 4 PM to feed the dogs and take them outside.  I was thinking about what to work on next and remembered that the latch side stile of the left closet door in the bathroom was coming loose and was difficult to latch.  I needed two “L” brackets to reinforce the upper and lower corners on the inside of the door where the stile connected to the top and bottom rails.  For the second time today I locked the bus and the house and headed to Logansport.  This time my destination was Home Depot, but it’s adjacent to the Walmart so it was still the east end of town.  I also went to Radio Shack, in McCord’s Do It Best Hardware, looking for a replacement radio but they do not sell car radios anymore.

I called Linda while I was in town and described the work I was doing.  She sent me a TXT message with data on our refrigerator at home.  Over the course of an hour the compressor cycled 7 minutes on, 13 minutes off.  That was useful information. That’s a duty cycle of about 1/3 or 33%.  Our bus fridge duty cycle was ~60% (30 minutes ON, 20 minutes OFF).  I think our home fridge is more like what I would expect, but I will discuss this with Butch.  What bothers me the most is how long the bus fridge runs when it comes on; 4x as long as the house fridge.

By the time I got back it was dinnertime.  I heated a Tofurkey Italian sausage with some diced onion and used it as a topping for a plate of salad greens, along with some roasted peanuts and raspberry walnut vinaigrette dressing.  I then worked on the bathroom closet door while I continued to monitor and record the refrigerator and freezer temperatures.  I also repositioned the ball catches on the door so it now closes easily and latches securely.

I was watching the data from the digital thermometers and happened to be looking at the readings from the one in the freezer when the cycle ended.  The temperature was around 0 degrees F and as soon as the compressor stopped running I watched the temperature climb 1/10th of a degree every few seconds.  The compressor seemed to come back on when the freezer reached a temperature of 10-to-12 degrees F.  If I presume a 10 degree rise (to keep the math easy) and the off time is 20 minutes, the freezer is heating up 1 degree F every 2 minutes (120 seconds).  That’s 1/10th of a degree every 12 seconds, which seemed pretty fast to me.  I also noticed, however, that the temperature in the refrigerator compartment continued to drop a few tenths of a degree after the compressor stopped, so perhaps that’s where the cold from the freezer was going.

How a refrigerator cycles depends on a number of factors: the efficiency of the unit, the ambient temperature, where the controls are set, how much and what kind of stuff is in the freezer and fridge compartments, and how often the doors are opened and for how long.  I don’t have any food in the bus freezer but there is plenty of mass in the form of containers of frozen water.  I don’t have much food in the bus fridge compartment either, but I have a lot of bottled water, “milk”, O. J., salad dressings, mustard, etc. and I have it distributed from top to bottom, including the door shelves.  I have the thermometers on the second shelf from the top.

I had spent quite a bit of time earlier taking voltage measurements on the push-button switches in the bedroom control panel in an attempt to figure out why the aisle lights were not working.  I was fairly certain this was a 3-way circuit with a second switch.  I found the “other” switch by the dinette, changed its position, and voila, the aisle lights worked!  For some reason that switch, the rearmost switch by the fake plant, appeared to not be wired as a 3-way with the one in the bedroom but rather to be in series with it; both switches have to be on for the lights to work.  That may not be how they are wired, as there could be a relay involved, but that’s how they behave.

I wrapped up my work for the day at 8 PM, locked up the bus and went in the house.  I took the dogs out and then gave them each a treat.  I folded and packed my clothes and then settled in to write while I waited for Butch and Fonda to get home.  They arrived at 10 PM and we chatted for a while about the wedding/reception, refrigerators, and radios before finally turning in for the night at 11 PM.

Bus bedroom driver side rear corner house systems control panel with Kenwood KRC 3004 radio removed.

Bus bedroom driver side rear corner house systems control panel with Kenwood KRC 3004 radio removed.

2014/11/22(S) T Minus 2

…and counting.  Today was my second to last day to work on the bus in Twelve Mile, Indiana.  Except for a few days in October, the first full week of November, and some weekends, I have been at Butch and Fonda’s place since I brought the coach here on September 30.  We have gotten a lot done on both buses in that time, but not everything on either list.  As much as I wanted to avoid a last minute scramble, there was still too much to do to take the weekend off.  I was up at 7 AM, took a shower, got dressed, finished yesterday’s blog post, and got to work.  I stayed busy until 10 PM, with short breaks to have a bite to eat and one trip to Logansport late in the afternoon.

My major accomplishment today was mounting the oak board to the center windshield pillar and then mounting the magnetic compass and Pressure Pro TPMS receiver to it.  I needed a standoff to mount the inclinometer, so I cut two pieces of 1×1 and spray painted them flat black.  I will finish mounting the inclinometer tomorrow, and possibly the inside rearview mirror.

My other major project was the removal, disassembly, diagnosis, repair, testing, and reassembly of the driver’s side motorized windshield roller shade.  Fonda helped me remove it and Butch helped with the rest of the process.  It appears that the problem was a soldered connection to the internal motor that failed.  I will reinstall it tomorrow, probably with Fonda’s help, and try to correct some alignment problems in the process.

I sprayed the on/off/volume control in the Kenwood KRC-3004 radio with De-Ox-It and left it to dry.  I came back later, plugged the connector into the back of the radio, and turned it on.  Nothing, nada, zip; zero sound from the speakers.  I suspect the volume control or the final output transistors have failed.  Either way I am not likely to get it repaired.  While I tend to think of Kenwood as good equipment, both of the radios in the bus have something wrong with them.  The front radio is obviously newer as it has a 1-Din form factor.  This will also make it easier to replace when I get around to it.

The bedroom radio is an old style unit with two shafts that are used to mount it and control most of the functions plus a center section for the cassette player, LCD display, and a few buttons.  This style of radio is now considered “vintage.”  There are at least two companies that make modern radios in authentic vintage form factors, but they are very pricey and targeted at the vintage restoration market.  Putting a modern 1-Din form factor radio in the bedroom panel will require me to cut the appropriate size opening.  Since the panel has 10 switches mounted in it creating the opening will be non-trivial.  A better option would be a remote radio with a slim profile control head, like the one Butch has from Custom Autosound.  The control head would cover the center opening and I could mount switches in the two shaft holes.  I thought of that riding to Logansport.  Our trips to town are often useful that way.

Another thing I did today was continue to monitor and adjust the refrigerator.  Since I spent much of the day working in the bus I was able to log the time of day and various temperatures each time the compressor started and stopped.  I missed cycles, of course, as I was in and out of the house or gone to town, but I think I got enough data to determine if there is a consistent difference between the indoor/outdoor sensors and the more accurate Cooper Instruments SH66A digital thermometer, and if so, how much and in what direction.  I also have useful information about the settings of the refrigerator (thermostat) control and freezer (air control) for the temperatures I want to maintain in the two compartments.  I will continue to monitor tomorrow as I wrap up my last few tasks and organize the bus for travel.  I entered the raw time and temperature data into an Excel Spreadsheet but did not have time to analyze it.  Big day tomorrow; have to get to bed.

Bus bedroom DS rear corner house systems control panel removed.

Bus bedroom DS rear corner house systems control panel removed.

2014/11/23 (N) T Minus 1

Today was my final day working on buses in Twelve Mile, at least until we return here a week from today.  The temperature continued to be mild but by noon it was raining.  I had breakfast and got to work as I had a long list of little things to take care of today.

I continued to monitor the refrigerator/freezer temperatures and record them while working on other projects.  I taped a piece of cardboard to the back of the bedroom control panel to cover the holes where the radio used to be and reinstalled the panel.  I reinstalled the driver side access panel in the lower rear closet and then vacuumed up the sawdust and other construction detritus.  I started organizing the inside of the coach for travel, getting things in boxes and getting the boxes on the floor on the two front sofas.  Twelve Mile now has a large recycling container that accepts mixed recyclables, so I carried several bags of plastic, cardboard, and cans over there rather than haul them back to the house.

Automotion shade with motor removed from end of roller tube.

Automotion shade with motor removed from end of roller tube.

Steve showed up mid-morning and helped Butch install a new AM/FM radio and CD player in the MC-9.  They also came over and helped me reinstall the driver side windshield roller shade. We tested it and it worked.  I like it when that happens.  I wasn’t as lucky with my mounting arrangement for the inclinometer.  I ended up modifying one of the pieces and then had to repaint the two ends flat black.  I left it to dry and busied myself with getting the bus ready to go to Gallahan’s Truck Stop for fuel.  I had turned the electric block heater on earlier so I turned it off and turned on the Aqua-Hot engine preheat pump.

I used Butch’s portable air compressor to air up the chassis (suspension, brakes, and engine accessories) and used his auto shop compressor to adjust the inflation pressures of the tires.  I have the 12VDC accessory outlets in the cockpit powered off of the house batteries, so I immediately checked the Pressure Pro TPMS sensor readings against the known pressures in the tires.  The correspondence was as follows (actual:sensor):  DSF (116:112), PSF (116:111), DSOD (95:92), DSID (95:91), PSOD (95:91), PSID (95:91), DST (85:83), PST (85:83).  All of the sensors are reading low from 2 to 5 PSI.  I need to create a little card to go by the display unit with these calibration adjustments.

Butch had to take Steve to Rochester to meet up with his wife and I was just getting ready to lock up the buildings so I could drive the bus to Gallahan’s when Fonda returned from church.  I stowed the folding step stool in the back of the car, unplugged the electrical shoreline and stored it just inside the warehouse overhead door, disconnected the portable air-compressor and stored it in the parts room, and turned off the Aqua-Hot (anything with an open flame is a no-no at a fueling station).  I fired up the engine and was about to leave at 1 PM when Butch returned.

I drove to Gallahan’s in light rain.  The new speedometer/odometer worked as intended, and I did not get a Check Engine Light (CEL) during the trip out and back.  I discovered, however, that my transmission retarder was not engaging.  I suspect that has something to do with removing and reinserting the cable connectors on the DDEC II when I was trying to diagnose and fix the Fuel Temperature Sensor Voltage High code problem.  Not having the transmission retarder is not a good thing, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it today.  I will probably try to figure this out on Monday, December 1st while we are parked back at Butch and Fonda’s awaiting our group departure for the southwest U. S.

When I got back from Gallahan’s I pulled the bus in front of the automotive garage so I could pull the car up behind it.  A lake was forming behind the bus, so I pulled up farther.  Butch has a 30 A RV outlet on the front of the garage, which was plenty of power for the unoccupied bus.  I moved all of the stuff I had stored in the parts room to the overhead door for the woodshop, which is directly behind where I normally park the bus.  I backed the car up to the door close enough that I could open the rear hatch and load everything into the back of the car while staying out of the rain.  I packed up clothing I was not going to need and loaded that in the back as well.

Once the car was loaded I pulled it around behind the bus and hooked it up for towing.  By this time there was a hard, steady, rain but I just worked through it.  All of the lights tested as good and the bus/car combination was ready to roll tomorrow morning.  I turned on the Aqua-Hot and turned up the heat while I prepared a couple of tofu hotdogs for a late lunch / early dinner.

Magnetic compass mounted to the oak board on the center windshield pillar.

Magnetic compass mounted to the oak board on the center windshield pillar.

I re-mounted the inside rearview mirror high enough that I will not bump my head on it like I used to.  I retrieved the mounting part I had spray painted earlier and tried to finish the installation of the inclinometer, but could not get it to work.  I will either have to take the case apart to get the mounting bracket loose or I will have to rethink/re-engineer how I mount it.  That was my last project.  I would rather not have ended on a note of failure, but it meant I have at least one project to look forward to.  I gathered up a few cooking/eating utensils, my camera, and a notepad, shut off the lights, and locked the door on the way out.

Back in the house I took a hot shower and put on some dry clothes.  I loaded all of the wet/soiled clothes in the washer and Fonda did a small load of laundry for me, transferring it to the dryer as well.  The three of us chatted while they ate dinner.  Linda called at 8:30 PM and we discussed the weather forecast for tomorrow, which, while well above freezing (to start) was less than ideal with rain and high wind advisories.  I decided to try for an earlier start than I originally planned.  With any luck I can be at Martin Diesel by 9:30 AM and on the road for home by 2 PM.  That would get me back to the house while it’s still daylight.

 

2014/06/07 (S) D-Day Plus 70

Today was the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy; D-Day.  The youngest soldiers in that invasion, if they are still alive like my father, are now in their late 80’s.  The event is quickly slipping into history; in another decade, more or less, there will not be anyone left with a firsthand knowledge of the events of that day, or indeed of the whole of WW II.

As we do most Saturdays when we are home we went to our ham radio club breakfast in South Lyon.  We meet at a local Coney Island restaurant and we go for the company and conversation, not the food.  The service is excellent, however, as we have the same server every week and she knows everyone’s usual order and keeps the coffee flowing.  Linda’s standard breakfast is coffee and toasted rye bread with orange marmalade, although occasionally she has oatmeal.  My standard breakfast is coffee and a toasted English muffin with strawberry jam, but today I had a toasted bagel.  Sometimes you just have break with tradition.  On rare occasion I have the oatmeal, but it’s not really cooked the way I like.  When I want to splurge I have hash browned potatoes, cooked until a bit crispy, which I smother in ketchup laced with Tabasco sauce.  That dish is as much about the spicy ketchup as it is about the potatoes.

When we got back to the house Linda headed off to the grocery store while I put a load of laundry in the washing machine and got busy prepping the bus for travel.  The temperature had risen into the 70’s but all of the bus tires were in the shade, a good situation for checking and adjusting the tire pressures.  I removed the Pressure Pro sensors from all of the bus and car tires, checked and adjusted the cold pressures, and put the sensors back on, re-establishing the baseline settings for alarm purposes.

We had quite a bit of rain on our last outing and the bays were a bit musty so I opened all of them to let them air out.  I also opened all of my tool boxes for the same reason.  The inverter bay door has screened openings with shields on the inside that are open on the bottom.  The large shield by the GenSet radiator is secured with three screws across the top, none of which were holding.  I looked around in the garage for some suitable drywall anchors to put in the holes but I did not have (or could not find) any the right size.  A quick trip to Lowe’s, with stops at Walmart and Meijer’s for grocery items, and I had some viable options.  I had to fuss with it for a while, but I got it secured.  It was a small project to be sure but one that had been bugging me for quite some time and it felt good to put it in the done column.

Linda spent the early afternoon working on the accounting records for our GLCC chapter and then turned her attention to cooking meals for the upcoming week.  For rally situations, where we are away from our coach much more than we are there, it is easier for her to prepare dishes in advance that can be quickly and easily re-heated rather than cook from scratch.  I called Elkhart Campground and made a reservation for Sunday and Monday evenings.  Over the course of the afternoon and evening we selected clothes for the week, gathered up various items that travel with us, and loaded everything on board.  I positioned the Honda Element behind the motorcoach and connected them together for towing.  We will have a few last minute things to put on board in the morning but the final loading should be quick and easy.  It was a relaxed loading process and as we sat on the rear deck enjoying a glass of wine we reflected on how glad we were to have found this house and decided to move.  We had some of the vegetable chili for dinner and then watched Season 2, Episode 2 of Doc Martin before turning in for the evening.

 

2014/05/10 (S) Goin To Goshen

We were up at 6 AM with our sights set on a 7:30 AM departure.  Most of the supplies that still needed to be loaded onto the bus were staged in the front vestibule, on the dining room table, or the bathroom counter.  It took several trips to get everything on board, including the cats, but it was an easy final loading process.  We are getting better at this with practice but it certainly helped having the bus parked with the front door opposite the front door of the house.

With everything on board we did the final preparations on the car and bus, pulled the shore power cord, and stowed it away.  We finished closing up the house, checked the lights on the coach and car (they were all working), arranged a few things on the interior, and were ready to roll.

The cats had already sought the safety of their travel locations under the front passenger seat even before I sat done in the driver’s seat.  The big Detroit lit right up and as soon as the oil pressure came up I engaged the high idle to make it easier to build the air pressure and switched the suspension to drive mode.  When the air dryer “sneezed” (purge valve opened) I turned off the high idle, pulled up the tag axle (to shorten the turning radius), put it in gear, and pulled out of our driveway.  It was 7:30 AM.  We made our way up to M-59 and headed west.

It was a chilly morning, though not as cold as earlier in the week when I reset the tire pressures and the TPMS sensors.  I quickly discovered that I had cold air coming in by my feet and shortly thereafter realized that I forgot to open the air supply to the louvers for the air-conditioner compressor compartment behind the front bumper.  When the louvers are open that compartment allows outside air to get into the bay under the driver’s seat and from there into the cockpit, especially at highway speeds.  The louvers require air pressure to close and prevent this air intrusion.  Rather than pull into a business or shopping center I decided to continue on to I-96 west and stop at the rest area at mile marker 112 which would allow an easy off/on just before reaching the Lansing area.

As I suspected, the air supply to the louvers was closed.  I usually shut off this circuit when parked to minimize leaks and auxiliary air pressure run time, but this is (obviously) not part of my mental “to do” list yet.  Every trip I say we need to create written checklists, one for departure and one for arrival, but we get busy and never follow through; at least we haven’t yet.

From the rest area we continued on I-96 west along the southern edge of Lansing, picked up I-69 at the southwest corner of town, and headed south towards Indiana.  It was a downhill run from there, or so it seemed, as the pyrometers were often near the bottom of the scale.  We exited onto US-6 and headed west towards Goshen, Indiana.  We picked this route so we could pick up US-33 north and come into the Goshen area from the southeast.  Our initial destination was a Walmart supercenter at the southeast corner of town on the east side of US-33.  Our plan was to meet up with Butch and Fonda who were driving in from Twelve Mile, Indiana.  From there we would have a short, but slow, drive up US-33 into the heart of Goshen and then east on Monroe Street to the Elkhart County 4-H Fairground.  It’s only a few miles but it is slow because of the heavy traffic that always seems to be present on this high density commercial/retail stretch of a two-lane US highway.

The Walmart "stables" on  US-33 southeast of Goshen, IN.

The Walmart “stables” on US-33 southeast of Goshen, IN.

We were in phone contact with Butch and Fonda so we knew their departure was delayed by business and bus issues.  We arrived somewhat ahead of our agreed rendezvous time, and decided to wait for them at the Walmart as long as we could without getting uncomfortable about the possibility of not getting to the fairground before the 2 PM arrival cutoff.   We did some shopping, had a bite of lunch, took some photographs, and played some games on our iPads while we waited.  The Walmart had a “stable” for the Amish buggies and it was full, with additional buggies tied up to the fence line.  You just don’t see that most places, but this is one of the things that is uniquely interesting about north central Indiana.  Butch and Fonda eventually got on the road and were making good progress but we decided around 1:15 PM to go on to the fairgrounds and try to meet up with them there.  That meant they would not have to stop at the Walmart and incur additional time delay.

Like most rallies, the Escapade requires rigs that want to park together to arrive together.  They also want the rigs identified in some way as being together.  For small groups (four or less) they wanted matching ribbons tied to the driver-side mirror.  For larger groups they wanted the arrival planned in advance with a placard in the window of each rig that identified the group and the rig number, 1 of n, 2 n, etc.  Although the Escapade did not provide a rendezvous area the arrival rate had slowed down by the time we pulled in and they allowed us to unhook our car and wait for our friends, who pulled in not more than 10 minutes behind us.

We had a nice chat with the parking crew while we waited and found out that some of them were members of the SKP Chapter 6 – Great Lakes, which covers Michigan.  We joined the Chapter at the 2010 Escapade at this very same fairground but have not yet made any of the rallies.  Chapter 6 is one of the oldest chapters in the Escapees RV a Club and will celebrate its 30th anniversary at a Labor Day rally this year.  The rally will be in Michigan and perhaps we will be able to finally attend.

We were directed to our adjacent parking spots on the east side of the infield of the horse track and got backed in with the assistance of the parking crew.  The fairground was well prepared for RVs on parts of the property that are not set up as permanent RV sites.  Electrical cables emerged from manhole covers and ran to outlet boxes on the ground and temporary water manifolds were placed alongside the power lines.  We only connected the shore power for now, having arrived with a full fresh water tank.  I dialed back the charger section of our Magnum 4024 inverter/charger to an AC input of 25 Amps before connecting the power through to the coach.  This limited the amount of power the charger section would use, ensuring that adequate power would be available for other essential coach functions such as the refrigerator, auxiliary air compressor, lights, coffee maker, and television sets.

We put out our patio awning to shade the passenger side of the coach from the afternoon sun and sat around for a while enjoying a snack of pretzels and almonds along with a tasty adult beverage (us, not them).  Linda and Fonda went for a walk while Butch and I fell asleep.  We woke up hungry and eventually decided to go out to dinner.  We took our car and since I was driving I had to pick the restaurant.  We ended up at a Chinese buffet and all ate too much.  We were surprised to see a lot of Amish buggies tied up outside the restaurant and even more surprised to see so many Amish inside enjoying the buffet.  I thought it was actually pretty cool, just unexpected.  By the time we got back to our buses we were satiated and tired.  We retired to our respective coaches for the evening.

 

2014/05/05 (M) Towering Heights

It dropped into the upper 30’s early this morning.  Although I did not really want to go outside and work, it was the perfect time to adjust the pressures in the bus tires and reset the baseline pressures on the Pressure Pro TPMS.  I had a 10 AM service appointment for my car and wanted to take care of the bus tires before the air temperature warmed up or some of the tires sat in the sun.

I took the Honda Element to Brighton Honda for the 85,000 mile service which consisted of an oil change and multi-point inspection.  A quick trip to Best Buy to look for a case for my new ASUS laptop computer did not result in a usable case but I did discover a new Logitech mouse, the T630; very thin and stylish but unfortunately not in stock.  They printed out a sheet for me to take along.

I called Wayne (KD8H) and arranged to go see the Heights Tower he had for sale at 2 PM.  Mike (W8XH) came along to help me inspect it.  Mike has a Heights Tower so he is very familiar with them.  The tower was already down and disassembled into sections that were stored horizontally on saw horses.  The fold-over mount (FOM) was made of steel rather than aluminum and was rusty but very substantial.  Wayne had the motor for the FOM but no longer had the threaded rod.  The top tower sections had the mounting plate for a Ham II rotator and the bearing plate for the rotating mast.  He also had the Ham II rotator, and was willing to include that in the deal.  I wrote him a check and arranged to come back later in the week with a truck or trailer to pick everything up.  After I dropped Mike back at his QTH and returned home I e-mailed several SLAARC members to see if they might be have a truck and/or trailer and time to help me retrieve the tower parts.

I had been doing research on cases for the ASUS G750 series (ROG) laptop computer and found two on Amazon Prime from Everki that looked promising as they were designed to hold up to an 18.5 inch (diagonal) computer.  The Advanced was a padded top-load zipper case with a slender front zipper pocket.  The Lunar was also a padded top-load zipper case but had a larger zippered front pouch and a slender zipper pocket in front of that.  It also had a slot across the back that allowed it to be placed over the extended handle of a roller case.  The Lunar was 3x the price of the Advanced, but the Lunar looked like it would better accommodate the AC power adapter and other accessories I tend to haul around.  I had checked the ASUS ROG forum (Republic of Gamers) previously and the general opinion was that these two cases were both of good quality and big enough to hold my computer and related stuff.  I ordered one for delivery on Wednesday (2-day), no extra charge with Amazon Prime.

 

2014/04/16 (W) The Emerald Coast

Powell Lake at Grayton Beach SP, FL.

Powell Lake at Grayton Beach SP, FL.

As forecast, it dropped into the upper 30’s overnight.  By the time we got up at 8 AM the temperature had rebounded a bit into the low-mid 40’s.  I switched on the coach chassis batteries to power up the Pressure Pro TPMS and checked the pressures in all of the tires.  They were all 1- 2 PSI lower than the cold pressure readings I took before we left Suncoast Designers in Hudson, even after having Tires Plus in Spring Hill add air to all of the tires.  But the temperature in Hudson was in the 60’s at the time, and in the eight mile drive to Spring Hill the pressures had risen 5 – 8 PSI.  How much air to add to each tire under those conditions was an educated guess at best and I had not guessed as well as I had hoped.

The DS steer tire, in particular, was reading 107 PSI this morning.  My target was 110 PSI.  The forecasted low for early Saturday morning is 53, and it will likely be closer to 60 degrees F by the time we pull out, so the cold tire pressures will be fine for the next leg of our journey.  The issue, and the problem I was trying to solve, was to make sure we had adequate cold pressures for the colder overnight lows we may (will?) encounter as we travel north without having the tires overinflated for where we are currently traveling.  The overnight lows for next week at our home are currently forecasted to be in the low-to-mid 40’s through mid-week then in the mid-to-upper 50’s.  I really need to rig up a way to travel with an air compressor that is adequate for adjusting the pressure in our bus tires.  We are still at the point where bus projects seem to get added to the list faster than they get checked off.

After breakfast Linda was reading, and I was reviewing, the blog posts I had put up last night for the 12th through the 15th.  Between us we found a dozen errors.  The Note app on my iPad2 has an annoying tendency to change words in an attempt to correct my mis-typing and less-than-perfect spelling.  I usually catch the change, but not always.  I also have a tendency to miss little words such as “we” or use “a” instead of “an” or “were” instead of “where” (or vice-a-versa).  I think most of these are typing errors; I actually know when to use which word.  (I even know the difference between “farther” and “further”, a distinction that seems to elude even professional journalists.)  I upload my drafts to my computer and finish them in MS Word where the spelling and grammar checkers find most of these kinds of things, but introduce their own unique set of rules about what words should be used.

I logged into our WordPress site and made the corrections.  I also rearranged the layout of some photos.  The posts looked fine on my computer but resulted in very narrow columns of text next to left- and right-justified photos, so I centered them without text wrapping.  I am still trying to figure out the optimum width for inline photos that can be left- or right-justified with text wrapped around them on an iPad.  I think it is around 400 pixels, but at that size details can be difficult to see.  If I center them without text wrapping, they can be up to 600 pixels wide with the theme I am using.  This is not an issue with gallery posts, if course, where the limitation on the size of photographs is the how large of a data file I want to upload and store.

We left the coach around 10:30 AM.  Photos from today’s outing are in a separate gallery post.  Our itinerary was to head towards Panama City via US-98/Co-30/Co-30A (the Emerald Coast Parkway) and then work our way back as close to the Gulf of Mexico as possible, stopping at several state parks along the way.  Before we got to Panama City we saw the sign for Camp Helen State Park and pulled in.  Formerly a private retreat, and then a private vacation resort for a company in Alabama, it became a Florida State Park in 1997.  Camp Helen was yet another example of the FSP system acquiring formerly private homesteads and roadside attractions and preserving them for the historical, educational, and recreational use of the public now and into the future.

Besides the buildings that survive from the resort days, the park property extends from the Gulf of Mexico through white sand dunes and scrub forest along the west edge of Phillips Inlet to the other side of US-98 were it runs along the southwest edge of Powell Lake.  Powell Lake is a costal dune lake, one of the largest in Florida.  Costal dune lakes are rare, found only along the northwest Gulf coast of Florida and in Australia, New Zealand, and Madagascar.  A large number of different bird species have been recorded here by members of the local Audubon Society and American Bald Eagles and Osprey are often seen.

We hiked the nature trail through part of the dunes and the scrub forest which had a different mix of plant life than we have seen anywhere else.  The forest included Sand Pines, whose range is limited to Florida.  Unlike many other pines, the pine cones of the Sand Pine do not require fire to open and release their seeds.  We did not encounter any other hikers on the trail and this was one of the nicest little hikes we have taken in a Florida State Park.  Camp Helen is a little gem of a park amidst the over development of Florida’s Emerald Coast.

We put the address for St. Andrews SP into the GPS and then continued on towards Panama City Beach.  East of Powell Lake US-98 gets renamed the Panama City Beach Parkway.  We followed the signs to the park which took us past the Naval Support Activity facility and the Navy Diving and Salvage Training Center.  St. Andrew SP is at the tip of a peninsula that forms the south side of the Grand Lagoon.  Just past the tip is the entrance to St. Andrew Bay, which opens into East and West Bays, and forms the southwest edge of Panama City.

There was a costal defense battery installed at the tip during WW II to protect the bays from German submarines and one of the two gun platforms is preserved under an open-sided pavilion.  We hiked along the southwest edge of St. Andrews SP Pond, a short but excellent trail.  The pond, and the island in the middle of it, are home to many different birds as well as alligators, and is an egret rookery.  We did not see any alligators on our hike, but we saw and heard lots of birds.

We left St. Andrews SP and followed Thomas Drive to Front Beach Road (Co-30) and followed this along the Gulf until we were forced back onto US-98 just before Western Lake and Grayton Beach SP.  It was after 4 PM and we were getting a little tired but we pulled in to Grayton Beach SP to check it out because Chris and Cherie of Technomadia had rated it one of their top 10 + places to camp.  The campground was fully booked, but we were able to drive through and agreed that it looked like a charming place to put down the leveling jacks (if only we had some and if only we could have gotten a reservation).  Continuing west on US-98 we spotted the entrance to Deer Lake SP and pulled in.  The entrance road was in bad shape, one of the few times we have encountered this at a Florida State Park.  It led to a small parking lot that was right up against some large fancy housing on the east property boundary.  All of the park lay to the west and was only accessible by hiking.  It was probably lovely, but we were hiked out for the day.  We switched drivers and headed back to our RV park.

We got back to the coach around 5 PM.  I dumped the waste tanks and filled the fresh water tank while Linda got dinner ready.  We had skipped lunch today, so we were hungry.  She made a simple green salad with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing and seasoned couscous to go with the left over Tofurkey roast and steamed green beans.  A glass of moscato and some fresh pineapple chunks for dessert completed the meal.

 

2014/04/13 (N) To The Panhandle

I was up early today anticipating getting on the road again.  We had a little juice and took our vitamins, but did not have coffee or breakfast.  I generally do not eat or drink much in the morning on travel days.  The bus was mostly ready to go except for last minute details and around 8 AM we shifted into departure mode.  I opened the passenger-side engine bay door, opened the air supply valve to the engine accessories, unlatched the rear engine cover and raised it, and connected the coach chassis batteries.  Since the engine ran a bit warm on the drive from Williston to Hudson I wanted to visually verify that that radiator fan was spinning.

While I waited for the Pressure Pro TPMS to pick up the pressure readings from all of the tires I closed all of the ceiling vents and the side windows. The driver-side front/steer tire pressure was a little lower than I like, the drive and tag tire pressures were OK.  The passenger-side front/steer tire pressure was a little higher than I normally run, put not excessive and within the maximum cold pressure limits of the tire and wheel.  I wrote down the tire pressures for reference later.

L-to-R Nancy, Bill, and Linda at Suncoast Designers in Hudson, FL.

L-to-R Nancy, Bill, and Linda at Suncoast Designers in Hudson, FL.

While Linda secured the inside I shut off the AC power, disconnected the power cord, stowed it for travel, and closed up the utility bay.  Just before 8:30 AM I fired up the main engine, let the oil pressure build, and put it in high idle.  The radiator fan was spinning as it should and I closed the rear hatch and side door on the engine compartment.  Bill and Nancy were up and Bill guided me out of our parking spot while Linda kept an eye on the rear end of the bus.  I only had to back up once, and only a little bit, to complete the turn.  With the tag axle raised the turning radius of the coach is shortened enough to make a difference in slow, tight turns.

We need to find a large vacant parking lot, set up some cones, and practice maneuvering the bus in and out of tight spaces.  I have driven the coach enough that I generally have a good feel for how it handles but our visit to Suncoast Designers revealed that our individual and team skill sets were incomplete.  We do not have a good understanding of how to back it around into a narrow space starting from a perpendicular position.  In particular we do not have a good feel yet for where the front tires are as the nose swings.

The centerline through the front tires is behind the driver, five feet from the front bumper.  Bill had me pull much farther forward out of our site before turning the wheels hard left than seemed visually reasonable from the driver’s seat.  As the front end came around I completely lost sight of the curb that ran along the far side of the road as it disappeared under the front of the coach.  But Bill could see my tires and knew I was positioned correctly.  He said I could probably have pulled out of the site without backing up, but the passenger-side front tire would have barely missed the curb.  He had me turn the tires hard right and back up slightly, creating the additional space needed to complete the tight left turn out of the site and onto the road.

20140413-03807

Nancy gave us a couple of business cards with their contact information and we said our farewells.  I pulled out of Suncoast Designers at 8:45 AM with Linda following in the car.  We got to the Tires Plus store just before 9 AM and got parked parallel to the end of the building.  We checked all of the tire pressures again using the TPMS and recorded them.  The pressure in all of the tires rose about 5 PSI in the eight mile drive.  The technician was ready to go and was very patient as I removed each pressure sensor, checked the tire pressure with my gauge  (that I have previously checked against a known good pressure standard), compared it to the two TPMS readings, determined how much additional pressure to have him add, checked it again, and put the pressure sensor back on.  We thanked him for the service (no charge) and gave him a tip.

The sensors will have to be removed once we get to our destination and the tires have a chance to cool off.  The baseline pressure is determined by the pressure in the tire when the sensor is installed and the warnings are triggered by deviations from the baseline.  The overnight low from Tuesday into Wednesday is forecast to be 38 degrees F, so that will be the time to check and reset.  The Pressure Pro was one of the early TPMS systems and this how it was designed.  Newer systems permit the baseline pressure to be programmed into the receiver by tire position.  Our sensors do not have user replaceable batteries and when they finally need to be replaced we will put that money towards a newer system.

Linda guided me as I backed the bus around behind the service bays.  We hooked the car up for towing and did our light check.  Our left turn signal on the car was not working, but everything else was OK.  One of the sockets in the wiring connector on the car was slightly corroded so I cleaned it using the awl in my Leatherman multi-tool.  That fixed the problem when we left Williston, but not this time.  I examined the connector on the bus, and found that part of one of the pins was missing.  This was almost certainly the left turn signal and there was nothing to be done about it at that moment.  This is a standard 6-pin round RV/trailer connector.  It was a cheap piece of junk the day it was made and did not improve with age.  I will be replacing both connectors and the cable with products from EZ Connector.  Weather sealed, gasketed, and magnetically retained with integrated self-closing covers; primo.

We pulled out onto US-19 northbound.  The road construction workers had the day off and traffic was light so we had an easy run up to Crystal River, picking up the US-98 designation near Homosassa.  Even with light traffic it took a while to get through Crystal River where the speed limit is often 30 – 35 MPH and there are frequent stop lights.  Once we cleared Crystal River we were able to travel 60 MPH, plus or minus, for most of the rest of the trip except through Chiefland.

The Check Engine Light came on soon after we left Suncoast Designers and stayed on for quite a while.  It eventually went off and only occasionally came back on, especially under acceleration or climbing hills.  The engine coolant temperature gauge initially read below 195 degrees F, but morning temperatures were moderate.  The sun was behind us and the coach stayed comfortable without the OTR air-conditioner.  I don’t know how precise the engine temperature gauge is, but it does seem to be accurate.  (Precision is the extent to which it shows the true/correct temperature; accuracy is the degree to which it is consistent or repeatable in terms of its readings.)  The engine oil temperature came up to 186 degrees F on the gauge fairly quickly like it normally does.  The transmission temperature gauge eventually came up to the same temperature but took a lot longer, as it normally does, even with the use of the transmission retarder going through Crystal River and Chiefland.

The GPS wanted us to take I-75 and was very persistent in trying to get us to leave our chosen route.  It became humorous after awhile and we should have counted the number of times it said “recalculating.”  We obviously had the preferences set to “maximize freeways” or something like that.  It finally figured out what we were doing when we got to the US-19 US-98 split at Perry, Florida.  US-98 turns west to WSW and follows the Gulf coast where it becomes a designated scenic drive.  While probably beautiful, it would have been a longer route with lots of shore communities making it a long, slow drive.  US-19 turned NNW and ran up to I-10 east of Tallahassee, Florida, the state Capitol.

The terrain had been essentially flat up to Perry, but part way to I-10 we encountered a hill; up one side and down the other.  It just appeared out of nowhere as if someone had built it there just to get our attention.  But then there was another hill, and another one and …  we were north of “the bend” and officially entering the panhandle which, unbeknownst to us, was not flat like the parts of Florida where we had spent time this winter.

By the time we got to Perry the outside air temperature was in the low 80’s and the engine coolant temperature was indicating 195 or a hair under.  The engine and transmission temperature were staying in the 186 to 190 range.  The pyrometers came up to 700 – 900 degrees F on hills depending the grade and length.  The cruise control ran perfectly all day, as it always has, but the speedometer sat on zero and never budged (accurate, but not precise).

Once on I-10 west we made good time traveling due west across the panhandle.  The road was straight but had lots of ups and downs.  The highest point in Florida is in the northwestern panhandle near the Alabama border.  Just west of Tallahassee we stopped at a Flying J truck stop and travel center to top off our fuel tank.  We continued west on I-10 and crossed into the Central Time Zone before exiting at US-331 and heading south towards the Gulf of Mexico and the towns of Freeport and South Walton.  Fifteen miles from the Interstate we made our last few turns and arrived at Live Oak Landing RV park.  We had traveled 350 miles in 7.5 hours including the fuel stop, but still a little below our usual 50 MPH average.  We were tired when we arrived and Linda fixed a salad and pan grilled our last two tofu hot dogs.

 

2014/04/07 (M) Big Wheels Keep On Turning

The boots may have been made for walking, but the wheels were made for turning and it does not make much sense (to us) to own a motorhome and not use the motor to move the home around at least occasionally.  Checkout time at Williston Crossings RV Resort is nominally 11 AM.  We were planning to leave by then, but a call to Suncoast Designers at 9 AM caused us to push our departure time back.  They suggested we not arrive until about 4 PM to make sure we had a place to park with hookups.  That put our departure time target at 2 PM.  We walked up to the office to make sure this would be OK.  It was; we have been here a long time and been good residents, and no one was scheduled to go in to “our” site today.

Given some extra time we had not planned on, we went for one last, long walk around the RV resort.  How different it looked and felt.  The resort is turning over from long-term winter/seasonal use to short-term summer/vacation use and there were many empty sites.  Eighty-nine rigs left yesterday.  Many were Carriage 5th wheels that were part of the 70 rig Carriage Travel Club rally that was here all last week.  But some were winter seasonal residents who have been dribbling out since April 1st and will continue to do so into May.  We were not the only rig pulling out today.  Our other neighbor, Sharon, is leaving this coming Sunday.  A few rigs were pulling in, of course, but the departures currently exceed the arrivals on any given day.

When we returned from our walk I mixed up a batch of the concoction we use in the waste holding tanks (48 oz PineSol, 48 oz water, 1cup Calgon).  I dumped the black-water tank and back-flushed it, followed by dumping the grey-water waste tank.  I ran additional water through the drain hose and then disconnected the hoses and fittings and stowed them for travel.  I reconnected the water softener and filled the fresh-water tank.  Once that was done Linda helped me disconnect, clean, and stow the fresh water hoses and the water softener.

We tend to forego coffee and breakfast on travel days, but had a little of both this morning as we were not leaving right away.  Because of the delay in our departure we did not have lunch.  To pass the time I continued with travel preparations.  The last time I had the coach batteries connected I noticed that the Pressure Pro TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) was not reading one of the sensors (PS outside drive tire).  We have a repeater for this system that I plan to install in the rear of the coach someday, but for now it gets attached to the rear view mirror of the car.  I took care of that task and then decided to move the car up onto the patio next to passenger side of the coach.  I left the ignition on to power the repeater and connected the coach batteries to power the TPMS receiver.  After a few minutes all of the tire sensors were active and the tire pressures were OK for travel.  I disconnected the coach batteries and put the car back in front of the coach.

At 1:30 PM we started our final travel preparations, clearing off the counters and moving stuff from the cockpit to the sofa, the bed, and the bedroom floor.  At 1:45 PM I shut off the 240/120 VAC electrical power to the coach, disconnected the shoreline, and stowed it in the slide-out tray over the DS drive tires.  I installed the screw-in cover for the utility port hole in the bay floor, and closed/locked the bay.  I then checked the Magnum 4024 to make sure it had switched to inverter mode, which it had.

Once the shore power is cut we seem to develop an increased sense of urgency about leaving.  I think this is due, in part, to the fact that I do not have the ZENA power generator operational yet, so our house batteries do not get charged while we are driving.  That’s OK, up to a point; the battery bank was designed to be large enough to run the inverter and power reasonable loads for a reasonable length of time.  But the sooner we leave, the sooner we arrive, and the sooner we arrive, the sooner we can plug back in to shore power.  We have an auxiliary power plant, of course, so we always have the option of using that if needed.  The other reason we are probably anxious to leave is more psychological.  Once we are completely disconnected (physically) we are become disconnected mentally, although not necessarily emotionally.  We are no longer “tethered” to that spot, and that means it is time to go.

I connected the chassis batteries, fired up the engine, and set the level low system to the driving position.  While Linda moved the car to street I drained the auxiliary air tank using the nice dry air from the main engine air compressor.  With John’s assistance we got the coach out of the site and lined up on the street.  Linda pulled the car up behind the coach and we went through our procedure for hooking it up to the tow bar.  We did our standard light check and found that the turn signals on the car were not working.  A quick check of the connectors on both ends of the cable revealed a socket on the car end of the cable that was corroded.  I used the awl on John’s Swiss Army Knife to clean it up.  A recheck of the lights indicated that everything was working.  After a final “goodbye” with John and Ali we were on our way.

Our departure delay meant we would be traveling SSW into the sun at the hottest part of the day.  The air temperature was 85 degrees F when we left, and the engine ran slightly hotter than usual, indicating just above 195 degrees F on the coolant temperature gauge, so I decided not to run the coach air conditioning.  The drive to Hudson was warm, but not unbearable.  A cold front was approaching the gulf coast of Florida so we had increasing cloud cover as we progressed south and west towards the coast, which helped keep the cockpit from getting too warm.

We had a nice run from Williston to Hudson.  We headed south out of Williston on US-41/US-27/FL-121.  US-27/FL-121 split off to the west a mile south of town, made a sweeping turn to the left and then followed a nice straight line SW for 17 miles to its southern terminus at US-19.  This stretch of FL-121 is straight but hilly.  With the cruise control set the engine is very sensitive to hills.  I always know we are on a grade, however slight, by the reaction of the turbo boost gauge and the pyrometers.

Most of the rest of trip was on US-19 except for the last three miles.  Traffic was light until we got to Crystal River, which had slower speed limits, lots of stop lights, and lots of vehicles on the road.  It opened up a bit after Homosassa Springs, but got congested as we approached Weeki Wachee where FL-50 ends at US-19.  From Weeki Wachee to just north of Hudson traffic remained slow and congested with increasingly dense commercial use on both sides of the road and stop lights every mile.  Just north of Hudson we turned east onto Little Road, which immediately swung south, and followed it for about two miles to New York Avenue, where we turned west and went another mile to Labor Place, the location of Suncoast Designers.

The coach ran fine, although the Check Engine Light came on almost immediately and was on more than it was off for the whole trip.  That did not surprise me as we had not done any work over the last couple of months to fix the fuel temperature sensor voltage problem that is apparently setting a fault code in the DDEC II.  I had hoped that the repairs we made in the dashboard wiring harness would fix the speedometer/odometer problem, but they did not; the gauge sat on zero for the whole trip.  The left pyrometer (exhaust gas temperature) gauge, however, was much more responsive and tracked the right pyrometer gauge much more closely than it ever had before.  It appears that the wires we repaired were for this gauge rather than the speedo/odo.

Once we pulled in to Suncoast Designers we pulled to the side of the road, so as not to block traffic, and unhooked the car.  While Linda parked the car I found the office and checked on parking arrangements.  Suncoast Designers has at least a dozen RV sites with water and 50 A electric hookups.  The only one open was a somewhat tight spot between two other large Class A motorhomes that required me to back in.  The maneuver was made more difficult by the fact that the road in front of the sites had a curb on the far side and was not wide enough to allow me to swing the front end without scrubbing the front tires.  I repositioned the coach so that I was turning in from the driver’s side, but Linda and I could not figure out how to get the coach into the site.  The guy next to us on the driver’s side offered to help.  A former truck driver, he knew exactly what to have me do.  Unlike some RVers, our pride is not injured by not knowing how to do something, and we gladly accepted his help.

I pulled past the site close to the front of his rig and then turned out to the passenger side, putting the coach at an angle to the open site.  He had me back part way into the front of the site at that angle and then turn the steer tires full left to start to bring the coach around.  He had me stop and then turn the steer tires full right and pull forward.  Steer tires full left again and back up some more, then full right and pull forward. We repeated this one more time and finally had the coach lined up straight and centered between the coaches on either side without having hit either one!  Linda was keeping an eye on the back of the coach the whole time (to make sure I did not hit anything) and guided me into our final position.  We then leveled the coach and shut the engine down.

The outside air temperature was only in the upper 70’s, but it was 90 degrees F in the coach and the outside humidity was high.  In spite of having nine windows that open, the three ceiling vent fans are not very effective at cooling down the interior under such circumstances.  In theory we can run all three air conditioners on a “50 A” shore service, but we have tripped breakers before when doing that.  (The issue is that circuit breakers are commonly designed to only carry 80% of their rated current on a continuous basis, so two of our A/C units plus a little bit of miscellaneous load can exceed 40 A on one of the legs.)  Besides, as soon as I plugged in the Magnum 4024 was going to switch to charger mode and start recharging the house batteries.

I got the shore power connected and checked the Magnum 4024.  It went into bulk charging mode and started charging the house batteries at 86 Amps. Since it is a 24 VDC charger, it was drawing ~1/5 that much AC current, or ~17 A, the equivalent of one of our air conditioners.  The front (living room) and center (kitchen) A/C’s are on separate legs of the 240/120 VAC power supply, so we can run them at the same time.  The bedroom A/C is on the same leg as the front A/C and the Magnum is on the other leg.  We ran the front and center A/C’s along with Magnum and let the bedroom stay warm for the time being.

Suncoast Designers provides free WiFi for customers camped at their facility, but the signal we thought was theirs indicated it was “filtered” and we had not obtained the login information from the office before it closed.  We used our Verizon MiFi instead and had a good, strong signal.  I had a chance to ask our neighbor (helpful truck driver guy) later, and he said the open signal was the one they were using.  Although it was a weak (one bar) “g” signal, our WiFi Ranger latched on to it without difficulty.

Linda needed a few grocery items and located a Publix grocery store on Little Road less than three miles from Suncoast Designer’s.  As evening settled in we switched off the front A/C and turned on the bedroom unit.  Linda reheated some of the leftover Sloppy Joe’s from the pot luck dinner the night before, and we had that on the skinny buns we have started using, along with a simple spinach salad and a few Fritos corn chips.

After dinner Linda sent e-mails to several of our new friends from WCRVR while I checked in to RVillage and took care of a few e-mails of my own.  The overnight temperature was forecast to only drop into the upper 60’s with high humidity, and with rain starting before sunrise, so we decided to leave the rig closed up and the kitchen and bedroom A/C’s on all night.  We rarely do this because of the noise and because we prefer fresh air, except when it is too warm and/or too humid.  Considering that we had traveled less than 100 miles and been on the road just under two hours today, we both felt like it had been a very long day.  As much as we enjoyed the social life at WCRVR, it was nice to not have anything to do but go to bed and get some rest.