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.

Done!!

Our last shift at Amazon was Friday night. Rudee and I both ended up watching the clock way too much while we worked. I guess we were hoping it would move a little faster. Several times I glanced at it thinking, surely another hour had passed only to find out it had only been 15 minutes. :-)
When we returned from our lunch break at 10:45 pm they announced that all of the Camperforce (that's our "official" title at Amazon) were to be dismissed at 2:00 am to report to the large break room downstairs for our "mustering out". Let me tell ya, that old clock almost screeched to a halt after that! We finally made it and headed downstairs to the "party". We got checked in by an HR person and was given yet another T-shirt. Several managers got up to speak and pretty much all said the same thing. We were then dismissed and our very first Amazon experience came to an end. The work was probably the hardest work we had ever done and I can't be prouder of Rudee. We both hung in there in spite of the aches and pains. As soon as we exited the building I gave her a hug and yelled out "we did it!', I was pretty excited to be done. :-)
Here is a photo of us and our fellow Camperforce co-workers.

They were a great group of people who I can now call friends. :-)
Several of us met at the Huddle House restaurant for a last celebration meal before saying our goodbyes. Rudee and I then went back to the rig and got a few hours of sleep.
Saturday morning I got the rig fired up and the power cord put away. The motorhome started on the first turn of the key, not bad after sitting for two months. :-)
I pulled the jacks up and we pulled out onto the roadway so I could hook up the Dakota. Once everything was hooked up we pointed the nose of the rig North and headed for home.
The temperature when we left Cambellsville at 10:30 am was 68 degrees and once we got to Indianapolis (only 200 miles!) it was 38 degrees. Brrrrrr! That was a BIG change. Beside the temps we drove in rain and heavy traffic for the entire trip. We made a stop at a rest park a few miles from the exit to our daughters house and unhooked the truck. Rudee would drive it the last couple of miles so I could back right in their driveway. I got the rig parked and started the set up procedure. First thing on the list is to lower our stabilizer jacks. No problem, jacks came right down and were leveling the rig when they stopped. I pushed the button manually and nothing happened. Not good! I hit the "store jacks" button and they returned to their up position but would not deploy again. :-(
I checked all the fuses that I could find but nothing was wrong there. I finally crawled under the rig and checked the hydraulic motor. The solenoid on the motor would click when Rudee pushed on the buttons but the motor would not move. I gave up on it for the night since it was cold, pouring rain and getting dark. I soon found out the same motor works the slide outs too so it will be a little cozy (and bouncy) in the rig until I can fix it.
We took Amanda and her family out to the local Pizza Hut for dinner where son in law Ryan, their next door neighbor Steve and I proceeded to drain two pitchers of beer. Hey, it had been a tough day!
After dinner we headed back to the motorhome (with Rudee driving) where we finally headed to bed. :-)

This morning Ryan and I started looking for a fix for the slide out/jack motor. My first check was the batteries. I learned a long time ago that if anything is going "goofy" in an RV that it might be a bad battery causing it. Both of the batteries were "A-OK" so we moved on. The next thing to check was the ground for the motor. Ryan undid it from the frame and cleaned everything with a wire brush and I tried the buttons again ..... nothing. We then tried to "jump" start the motor by bypassing the solenoid, that didn't work either. We are pretty certain the motor is shot and it is a little over our heads replacing it so I will make some calls tomorrow to the local RV places to see if anyone can fit us in their service schedule. The good news is we are safe and sound, our rig is still "livable" with the slides closed so we can stay warm and dry. The bad news is the bedroom slideout contains our closet and my clothes drawers so I cannot get to my underwear! Rudee had all the laundry clean and put away so there is only one dirty pair that can be washed so I guess I'm "El Cammando" for a few days. :-o I know, TMI but like I always say, I'll keep you posted!