More Woykin 'n Practicin'

After the initial suspension mods, we decided to move into the bedroom. I really like the bedroom; it's so homey and comfortable... well until we clutter it up.

The original bedroom TV area

There was a 13-inch tube TV in a cabinet and there were two mirrors on tracks that could be closed in front of the window that is adjacent to TV. The TV was pretty heavy, being a tube set, and it wasn't very big. We'd gotten into the habit of falling asleep with the TV on in our stix 'n brix house, and we brought that habit with us. We like to put in science, history or nature DVD's and watch until we fall asleep.

We took out the small TV and hung a 32-inch LCD TV/DVD combo on the wall. Then we placed some wireless speakers at either side of the bed's headboard. The speakers allow us to have the TV sound turned down, while still being able to hear it clearly. Gotta be able to hear the owls...

We also removed the sliding mirrors and tracks from the window. We never used them and when we took them out, we were surprised by how much they weighed! I'm always amazed by RV manufacturers and how they build their products. Like I mentioned in the last post, there is 13 feet of overhang behind the rear axle of the HOW. In that overhang, the mfgr put two 45 gallon waste water tanks, a 75 gallon gas tank and a room slide-out.. Hanging at the rearmost end, is a class III hitch receiver that will tow 5,000 pounds. Inside the coach, along and adjacent to the rear wall, is the closet and the clothes drawers. Clothing is heavier than you'd think! As the HOW was the top-of-the-line when it was built, the cabinetry and finishings are real oak. All that adds up to a LOT of weight in the rear. Swapping out the OEM TV and removing the window mirrors, along with having a Sleep Number bed, and emptying the waste tanks before traveling reduces that weight. Oops! Got off on a rabbit trail. Sorry, back to the HOW improvement. 

To keep the clutter down, we try to use any empty space we can find. In the bedroom we originally stored our DVD's in the open space to the left of the old TV. That wasn't ideal because we had to stack them two-high and three-deep. When we wanted to find a certain one we'd have to pull the front and top rows down and put them on the bed to access the disks in back.

For a while we stacked them in the space that was formerly behind the sliding window mirrors, and that was better, but... we still had to pull some out to get to others, and when we drove they wouldn't stay put, so they'd end up on the bed again. Having as simple of a pack-up-to-go, and put-back-on-arrival process is important to this mobile life style.

Our solution was to build in a lightweight set of shelves.

Our new shelves hold the DVD's nicely, and we added some removable dowel rods across each row to hold everything  in place while we're driving. We stored all the TV series we'd already watched in the shed.

Now that the space where we first kept them was empty, we turned it into a home for all our board games. They used to live in a drawer under one of the seats in the dining banquette. We have BIG PLANS for that, so stay tuned.

One of the things we had already done in the HOW was to remove a barrel-chair and a stowable tabletop that was right behind the passenger seat.

We put a small cabinet where the chair was. We can keep books, and CD's inside and on top we have a soundbar, a Blue-Ray player and some misc storage baskets and boxes.

We also moved the 20-inch tube TV from its place between the driver's and passenger's seats...

... and mounted a 32-inch LED TV over the cabinet. That made it easier to watch from a pair of La-Z-Boy recliners across from it where a sleeper sofa used to be.

Moving the TV gave us a place to put our printer and network hardware as well as letting us expand the work-station at the passenger seat.

All in all things are moving right along in HOW improvement land. Now if we could shake these never ending colds we have...

More to come.

Woykin' 'n Practicin'

These 2 P's have been awfully busy making our Pod more...     well, podly. In other words we've been doing a lot of HOW improvement projects.

Some of the projects are completed, others... not so much, but we're still at it. We want to get as much finished while we're still in Hondo as we can. For one thing, we want to have as much free time this Summer as we can. Our workamping schedule at Blackhawk Valley Campground this year consists of three consecutive days on and then four days off. Can you say PLAYTIME? The other reason we want to get a lot of things done down here is because we have the shed to do any fabrication we need, (Holy Monster Garage!), and we have a concrete parking pad to make working under the HOW a whole lot more pleasant.

More pleasant is a big thing when it comes to suspension repairs and modifications.  It also helps that I LOVE doin' this kind of wrenchin'.

Driving a 12-foot 8-inch tall, 37-foot long motorhome with 13-feet of overhang behind the rear axle can get touchy on winding roads. Add another 20-something feet of Toad (Towed Vehicle) behind all that, and it can get downright hard. On last year's trip up the Natchez Trace and though the Smokies, we learned that pretty fast. When we approached a curve at highway speeds, I'd turn the wheel, but the HOW wanted to go straight. Also a 12-foot plus, 20,000-pound vehicle can commence to rockin' back and forth pretty bad on roads with deep ruts, and also when driving on uneven surfaces.  When a semi passes us or we change lanes, or enter and leave business driveways, (eg, gas stations),  things get pretty loose. 

I remember that from my old leaf-sprung Jeep. It means, that a track-bar is needed to keep the frame and the axle tied together to eliminated side-to-side motion of the springs, and that there may be something that needs to be done with the anti sway bars.

The sway bar links are moved from the outer
connecting points to the inner. These are the fronts.

I started with the sway bars because I read about an easy modification that could make a big difference in handling. The mod consists of changing the geometry of the sway bay links to increase the force the sway bars themselves exert between the frame and the chassis, thereby decreasing the side-to-side rocking on the vehicle overall. As an added benefit, the steering also tightens up, becoming more responsive while requiring less effort on the driver's part. 

Same mod on the rear. Note the Z-bracket tying the inner and
outer mounting points for added strength.

It's recommended to swap out the rubber factory sway bar bushings with new ones made of higher quality materials to properly handle the increased forces of the new geometry. When I crawled under the HOW to assess the situation I noticed that all of the sway bar link bushings already had aftermarket high quality bushings. Only the the actual mounts were the OEM rubber kind.

The OEM rubber bushings

These came off the fronts

The rear ones were SHOT!!! 

I could move the sway bar with my hand. Not good.

That's fairly typical on this particular make, model, length and capacity chassis. I went ahead and ordered some poly bushing for both the front and rear mounts.

When the parts came, I got to work. The whole job took under four hours. 

New rear mount bushing

Here's a shot of the whole shebang on the front passenger side. You can
see the poly mount bushing and the modified link geometry. The space
between the link and the bushing is caused by having the suspension
at full droop (it's on the leveling jacks) to check clearance.

There are more HOW improvement projects to share, but this is gettin' kinda long.....                  and I haven't even done the track bar yet...

But like they say, "Life is short. Eat dessert first!"