Should I Stay or Should I Go

Or shall I say we? Doesn't match the song lyrics, but there are two of us.

Anyway, when I left off last time we were being invaded by plagues of insects, enduring day after day of rain, and I had repairs and mods to make on the HOW (House On Wheels). 

The rain finally let up, and I was able to install the windshield washer pump.  That was fun because the pump is attached to the reservoir, which is attached to the coach near the bottom of the body. You can just touch the top to open and close it for filling. Mind you, you can't fill it unless you have a 30 inch funnel, but hey, maybe the guy who designed the rig had really LONG arms. (I bet it was the same guy who decided that the brake fluid reservoir and fill cap should be located so far up in the engine compartment that you can check the fluid level, but if it was low you'd have to remove the upper dashboard and defroster vents to add any.) The fun part was laying on the ground, installing the reservoir with the plague of bugs covering me like a second set of clothes. (Did I mention just how BAD those Asian Lady Beetles smell when they congregate? And did I mention THEY BITE???)

That task successfully completed, we contacted Sargent Mike's RV and Home Repair. Sargent Mike is a mobile RV repair guy. He's an institution in and around the greater Rockford, IL area. He's not only extremely competent and trustworthy, he's a great guy. We wanted Sgt. Mike to see if he could resolve our leaking slide issue. 

In the meantime the weather turned cold, real cold. It got down to the mid 20's on several nights. Our HOW is not a four-seasons rig. Four-season rigs have heated water tanks, plumbing and storage bays to keep things from freezing. Our tanks, and some of the plumbing are enclosed in a semi insulated space that runs about 15 or 20 feet between the frame-rails and under the floors. The space is fully enclosed, except for a 18X12 inch opening to the utility bay where the water pump, fresh water fill, outside shower, electrical hookups, waste dump valves, etc are located. (Probably designed by the same guy who designed...) I filled the opening with fiberglass insulation and hung a metal trouble-light with a 75 watt bulb next to the pump and pipes. Just enough to keep things from freezing. I put another of the same kind of trouble-light in the enclosed space where the 80 gallon fresh water tank feeds into the plumbing. Inside the HOW we kept the furnaces set to a minimum of 65 degrees. The heating ducts don't seem to run through the same space as the plumbing (same guy who designed...?) but we thought if the inside didn't get too cold, and we left the sink cabinets open overnight,  plus the trouble-lights, we wouldn't burst our pipes. We supplemented the gas furnaces with an electric radiator in the bedroom and bathroom at night and used a mattress pad heater (YES!). We used a small oscillating ceramic heater when we were in the living area. Still, we went through propane pretty fast. All in all we were pretty comfy.

Sgt. Mike came out and was able to get our slide fixed pretty quickly. Bless God, for Sgt. Mike!

We got everything battened down and ready to travel and went to bed to the sounds of our local pack of coyotes. Next morning I set out to check the inflation on the four tires on the toad (towed vehicle) and six tires on the HOW. Improper inflation is one of the leading causes of breakdowns and crashes in RV's. I started with the toad, and on the first tire, something didn't seem right. Turns out my trusty, big old honking', calibrated, tire gauge was missing a seal nut on the inside valve. Nice. I looked around but couldn't find it anywhere. Oh well, time to get out the spare smaller tire gauge. Toad tires checked out. No need to wrestle with a cold, stiff compressor hose yet. Put the tire gauge to the first tire on the HOW, and POW! The tire gauge exploded into pieces. Some of them shot six feet! This gauge is for bicycles and goes up to 150 PSI, ("This one goes to eleven..."). The HOW's tires only take 80 PSI. I didn't have another gauge that went over 50 PSI, but I found that I could coax the first one to work if I held the thing together with my finger and thumb. Measured five tires, all five were fine. On the sixth, when I pulled the gauge off the valve stem, the valve core stuck open and air was hissing out. I could not get it unstuck, so I put the cap on the valve and the air stopped leaking. I use high quality metal valve caps with o-rings for this very reason. I went inside the HOW and raised the front jacks to take the weight off the tire, and also so that if it went flat, the wheel wouldn't crush the tire and ruin it.

  Bein' the former Jeeper that I am, I've dealt with a lot of inflation/ de-inflation, stuck/ frozen valve stems, and lost beads. I know I've got a tire valve repair kit, but where? IN THE STUPID STORAGE SHED WITH OUR BIKES, THAT'S WHERE!!!.
OK, we're paying for roadside assistance and it covers this kind of thing, so Penny calls them up. They dispatch a guy and say he'll be there in one to three hours. It's already hours passed our departure time. And guess what? It's beginning to rain.

So the guy shows up, and he's not going to replace the valve core, he's going to replace the whole valve stem. So now the 22,000 pound fully loaded HOW has to be jacked up and the wheel taken off. I'll spare the ugly details of the whole process. Suffice to say, that when I pointed out that the tire now seemed to be leaking from the inner bead because the guy hadn't cleaned all the balancing powder off the wheel when he reseated it, he said that always happens and that if he over inflates the tire, it will seat itself after a while. Hey whaddya know, he was right. when we called him back out three rainy days later, (three days is "a while" isn't it?) and he cleaned the powder off like he should have the first time, it seated properly and stopped leaking.

With all the strange problems, delays, plagues, and now Penny coming down with a nasty cold, we started wondering if God was trying to tell us he had other plans for us. We came so close to throwing in the towel that we we put ernest money down on a small place in Belvidere, IL. Long story short, we didn't buy it, and left town.

BTW, I fabricated a DIY cold air intake that employs a high performance air filter, and won't suck water into the system when it rains. HA!