work, work and more work?

Yes folks, we are still in South Dakota working away and doing fine. I guess I have neglected the blog a little and I apologize for that. I'll try and do better. :-)
We are slowly getting back into the groove of our four 10 hour shifts per week and for some reason I am having a little more difficulty getting my "body clock" to adjust to Mountain time.
The weather here in the Black Hills has been warming up some but that has also meant afternoon thunderstorms most days. We have avoided most of the severe weather but it sure interferes with our motorcycle rides.
We have taken in some pretty scenery though, even on the stormy days.

One day last week I decided to make some homemade noodles. My Mother In Law is the champion noodle maker and she taught me all her secrets.

I doubt if I will ever be able to make them as good as she does but I get pretty durn close.

We have also been experience a problem with our Splendide "all in one" washer/dryer. The thing has never really dried the clothes very well. We would set the dryer selection for maximum time (2 hours) and the clothes would still be damp even after all that time. Our neighbors and friends Steve and Joan (FOSJ) were also having problems with their unit and had tried several things before calling for a technician to come and look at it. Talking to Steve I was hoping to correct mine with just a simple cleaning of the dryer vent and he suggested I take it apart and try that on the same day the tech was coming to fix theirs in case it was more complicated.
Yesterday morning was the day and I removed the unit from it's cabinet. The dryer vent was totally clogged with a big ball of lint and looked like it probably had never been cleaned. That was an easy fix but, as usual, nothing is that easy. When I pulled the unit out we found water under the unit and it had been leaking for quite awhile. Not a big leak but any water leak is a bad thing in an RV. I was able to get the service tech to stop in and he found the pump was leaking. He said we could rebuild it using a kit for under $40 (which he had on his truck) or he could order us a new pump for $120. He told me how easy they were to rebuild and gave me some pointers so I decided to give it a try and save a few $'s. The kit is just a new rubber gasket that seals the interior impeller shaft of the pump.
I removed the pump which was held on by two bolts and I had to disconnect two hoses and a couple of wires.

Once I had the pump in hand I removed the screws holding the two halves of the housing together. Inside the housing is the impeller that is screwed onto a drive shaft and after unscrewing the impeller you can remove the rubber seal which keeps the pump from leaking.

I cleaned everything up and installed the new gasket using the grease they provided with the kit. I put it all back together and hoped for the best as we gave it a test run. Whoo Hoo, no leaks and it is blowing hot air from the dryer vent!
I put the back in the cabinet and reattached the anchors that keeps it secure. We have done a few loads since then and the clothes come out warm and dry in 1/4 of the drying time as before and Rudee is happy to have a fully functioning dryer again.

The weatherman says the next several days will be cool and rainy so we are just planning on running some errands and "chillin" in the rig. I'll keep you posted.

time is flying by in Indiana

Happy Easter everyone! Hard to believe we are 2/3 of the way through April already. We have been running pretty hard since we have been back in Indiana "mooch docking" in our daughters driveway. Rudee's Mom was taken to the hospital a few days after we arrived and has since been moved into a rehabilitation facility. She is getting stronger everyday and they expect her to go home soon, I'm not sure if that will happen before we leave though.
Larry and Sue Hatton, whom we met at Amazon and have become good friends, stopped in to visit for a couple of days before finishing their trip to Michigan where they will start their very first camp hosting jobs. We had a great time showing them around our old stomping grounds. We visited the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indy 500, and we all enjoyed touring their museum.

Here is the actual trophy presented to the winning driver each year in victory lane. The winner gets a smaller replica to keep and their bust is etched onto this trophy for posterity.

The following day we toured Parke County Indiana which is the "Covered Bridge Capitol" where we took one of several driving tours to see the bridges. Here is Larry and Sue with the town of Bridgeton, Indiana in the background.

We had a fantastic couple of days with these great friends. 'We'll see ya at Amazon in the fall". :-)

Friday was a work day for me. I have written about our air conditioner woes and even after replacing all the capacitors we still could not get the compressors to run. We had two options at this point, repair what we have at an unknown cost or purchase a new unit to mount onto the roof in place of one of the vents. Putting a unit on top would require it to be hooked up to the breaker box that is mounted to the foot of our bed. I did some preliminary planning and felt like it would not be impossible to do the wiring run so we decided to give up on the old unit and ordered the new one and had it shipped here. We chose an Atwood 15,000 BTU non-ducted unit with heat pump and purchased it from Tweety's in Texas.

The unit was shipped very quickly and arrived in only a few days. Now to get busy and get it hooked up. The first thing was to "fish" the wire through the ceiling. I decided to use the existing air conditioning duct work as a wire run and, using a "fish tape" was able to feed that line across the roof inside the duct and then it goes down the back wall to a point I could access the duct work next to the basement air unit. I hooked two electrical wires to the fish tape and it was just a process of pulling the wires back up into the ceiling where I started from. I ran two wires so I could leave one "dead ended" near the bedroom vent for another roof unit that we can install later if we feel the need. The basement air is fed by two separate circuits from two individual circuit breakers so I just "unwired" the old a/c and tied the new wiring into the old feeds. All in all it was a pretty simple process getting the power up to the roof and we will just leave the breaker controlling the bedroom feed turned off for now. My good buddy Rob Runion came by after he got off work and together we were able to carry the 100 lb unit up onto the roof. Once that was done it was a pretty easy process of hooking up the wires and bolting the unit down.

Ahhhh cold air and no smoke or fire! :-)

We have one more week here and then will be heading to our summer job at Crazy Horse. So far we have at least a couple of motorcycle rides planned, a get together with friends from High School and our church is having a golf tournament Saturday where I will play and Rudee has volunteered to help with registration. Looks like there will be no slowing down for us! :-) I'll keep you posted.

Gettin' it handled

When we purchased our motorhome I knew things would go wrong with it and I knew who would be the one working on it. Moi! The morning we were to leave Indiana I tried to unlock the deadbolt on the front door and the little plastic handle for the lock broke off in my hand. I was able to use a pair of pliers to open the lock so no big deal, there is another lock on the door anyway so we will just use that from now on. Last Saturday we did some running around and when we got back to the rig the door handle would not open the door! The handle felt like it was disconnected from something. Luckily we found the drivers side window unlocked so Rudee volunteered to climb through and was able to open the door from the inside. I got my tools out and took the handle apart figuring a rod had come loose. I got everything off the door and found the outside handle has a sort of "paddle" lever that hooks to the latch mechanism on the inner part of the handle. All the parts were real "loosey goosey" and no way to tighten them up so we needed a new handle. I put everything back together again since we didn't want a 4"x 4"  hole to the outside and headed in to do some research on the internet. I found some information on the iRV2  forums including the name of the manufacturer and a "do it yourself" adjustment procedure. Since it was Saturday and the manufacturer was closed I decided to try and do the adjustment to see if that worked. Back outside I was able to try the adjustment which consisted of tightening a small nut through a hole in the door jamb. I got the handle to work twice then it failed again and would not work no matter what I tried. We ended up just leaving the door unlatched so we could get in and out because Rudee didn't want to climb in the window again and we were afraid the neighbors would begin to stare and point. :-)
Monday I was able to call the manufacturer and they helped identify the handle I needed and placed my order. Friday while we were at the RV show UPS delivered the handle right to our doorstep and I got it unpacked. Since it was dark when we got back I decided to wait until Saturday morning to install it so we only had one more night "locking" the door with a bungee cord. :-)
Saturday morning I removed the old handle and the installation of the new one was pretty easy. The new one fit perfectly in the door and all the screw holes lined up! I got everything tightened down and gave it a try. IT WORKS! The handle was kind of pricey ($160.00) but this is not something you can just pick up at Home Depot either. I did save a bunch by doing the work myself and it only took some basic hand tools and I didn't even need the first aid kit that Rudee had handy, "just in case". :-)
here is the old and the new (excuse the dirty fingerprints).

I'm not sure what my next repair will be but so far I have replaced the water heater thermostat and pressure valve, replaced the hydraulic motor, replaced the door handle, repaired the sliding step cover replaced both the TV's with flat screens, replaced the day night shades and replaced the slide out awnings. Maybe I should open a mobile RV repair business ...... hmmmm. :-) I'll keep you posted.

not slowing down much

Thursday morning I made a few more calls trying to find the motor I needed to fix the slide outs and jacks. None of the RV dealers here in central Indiana carried them but they all offered to order one for me. :-(
I took my search back to the internet and after trying several search phrases stumbled across a company in Fort Wayne, In. who boasted of having a large warehouse full of hard to find items for hydraulic systems. I knew it would be a long shot but gave them a call anyway. Sure enough they could order one but had none on the shelf. The guy asked me what I needed it for so I explained our situation, full time RVer's visiting family for the holidays and trying to live in a leaning, skinny motor home. I left out the part about not having any underwear, it didn't seem like appropriate "guy" talk. :-)
He told me they actually manufacture hydraulic systems to sell and said he would check the systems they had built to see if any had the motor I needed already installed on them and would call me back. I didn't hold out much hope for him to even call back much less luck out and they actually have the motor but sure enough, about 30 minutes later, he called and said he had not one but two motors! I told him I could be there shortly after noon and he said he would remove it and have it ready to go for me. Now all I had to do was get Rudee out of bed and convince her that driving 3 hours (one way!) was a good idea. :-)
She was a good sport about it though and we were soon headed North, I guess she was as ready to get back to normal living as I was.
The drive was a long one but I finally got my hands on a brand new replacement motor! We made it back to the motor home about 3:30 pm and I got it installed about 10 minutes later. Here is a photo, the new motor is behind all those bundles of wires and relays. I still have another motor being shipped to us and we'll hang onto that one for a spare so we are not in this predicament again.

ahhh, now we're living! I never realized blue jeans were so ...... scratchy. :-)

Friday I decided to tackle another project. One of the advantages of working at Amazon is the 10% employee discount on their products. We took advantage of it by purchasing two new flat screen TV's. Our motor home is a 2002 so the TV's in it are pre-digital, large, heavy monstrosities. We decided to tackle the living room first. The old TV was removed along with the DVD player and the separate VCR.

I moved our Dish Network receiver to sit below the new TV instead of in the cabinet beside it. I also ran the cables for the new Blue Ray Disk player Rudee got me for Christmas which will sit in the right side cabinet where the VCR used to be. Once all that was done I attached the swing arm mount to the side of the steel TV "box" that serves as the framework for our entertainment console above the dash. Next it was time to hook everything up and see if we could get it all to work right. I guess I measured pretty good because the TV fits perfectly and we even get a picture on it! :-)

Looks pretty good up there. We still have to figure something out to fill the space between the bottom of the TV and the satellite box. We are thinking of just covering some cardboard material with black cloth and attaching it to the cabinet but I may look for a "sound bar" that would fit so we can blast away on those Blue Ray movies. :-)
We still have the bedroom TV to replace but I'm hoping it will not be as intimidating as the front one was. I'll keep you posted.

family time

We wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. One of the biggest reasons we worked for Amazon this year was to have the opportunity to spend the holidays with our family. We have been really busy the last couple of days. Monday evening I kicked Rudee out of the kitchen and made two large batches of noodles. She had finally finished her baking and candy making so I really didn't have to push her too hard, she was tired. :-)
Tuesday morning we were out the door early and, along with daughter Amanda and grandson Nicholas, headed toward Rudee's Mom's house to get things ready for dinner and family time. We spent all day cooking, cleaning and setting up tables, chairs etc. Her family all live within a few miles of each other and have the tradition of gathering at the old home place on Christmas eve. Over the years, as her family grew, we moved the gathering from the living and dining room to the attached two car garage. Rudee's Mom is in her 80's and not able to do all the work needed to host such a large event so we were thankful we were able to get everything ready for the rest of her family to enjoy. Just another advantage of this full time RV lifestyle. :-)

Christmas morning was spent inside our daughters house watching the grandkids open their presents. Amanda made a nice breakfast for us and we had a great time with them. That afternoon we gathered everyone up and drove over to our son in law Ryan's brothers home where we had another nice meal. We had a great time and it sure made working those weeks at Amazon worth all the aches and pains. :-)

I am getting closer to getting our slideouts and jacks fixed. We initially thought we were going to have to take it to an RV repair place to have it replaced but I did a little more research on the internet and it didn't look too hard. I decided to give it a go, so Monday morning I got the tools back out and removed the motor. I then called an alternator/starter repair place in nearby Crawfordsville, Indiana and they said they would take a look at it. We made it a family event and loaded up the grandkids and headed out. We dropped the motor off and they did a quick test, yep it's bad. They don't have that type of motor but said they would try and fix it for me so I left it with them. We did some shopping and were eating lunch when the shop called me and said it was ready. They took it apart and it was "full of rust" so they cleaned it up and got it working again. We finished lunch, picked up the motor ($32.00) and headed home. I quickly got the new motor installed and then headed inside where I nervously pressed the button for the living room slideout. The motor started but only ran for a couple of seconds and quit again :-( RATS!
I checked all the wiring again and we had power to everything so I took the motor back off again. Ryan was home from work by this time so we tested the motor using a battery charger for power and got it working again. We installed it on the motorhome once again but it still would run when under the load of turning the hydraulic pump even though we can turn both shafts by hand. I decided to order a brand new motor and have it shipped here so we are still living with the slideouts in. The motor we removed was an aftermarket one made in Slovenia so this part is apparently a replacement for a past failure of the original part. I think carrying a spare one might be in our future rather then having to wait for one to be shipped because I have yet to find one on a shelf at any of the local places.

We have also had some other issues. The temperatures have been really cold here with the lows in single digits. Before leaving Kentucky we filled the water tank up since we knew we would not be able to hook up a hose to their house since it is a couple of hundred feet from the spigot to our rig. Tuesday morning we woke up and a water line had frozen somewhere so now we had no water flowing! I had prepared for the cold by placing an electric heater into our "wet" bay and our wireless remote thermometer said it was almost 40 degrees in the bays. Since we had such a busy day planned I didn't have time to search out the problem and the temps were not going to warm up much anyway. Once we got home Christmas eve I checked the wet bay and, even though I thought it wasn't needed, I turned the electric heater up a notch to see if that helped. The last thing I did was move a hose that was attached to the water filter so I could close the compartment door and it was frozen! That hose is what I hook the outside hose to when using an outside water source. This way the water passes through a filter before entering the coach. I had left the other end hooked up to the outlet into the rig and it was also frozen. Hmmmm, I think I might have found the problem. I unhooked the hose, crossed my fingers and shut everything up again.
Sure enough sometime during the night things thawed enough to let the water flow again and we have not had any other problems! :-)
Our plans for the rest of the week will be pretty laid back. I have two TV's to replace here in the motorhome and hope to get those projects completed and of course the new pump motor will need installed (I'm getting pretty fast doing that!). Besides the good news of being able to take a shower again Santa Clause was nice enough to leave me a package of underwear under the tree. Life is good again! I'll keep you posted.