pianodan

Also, if using the dash heating/cooling system, when placed on Max or Recirc (whichever your controls have), that closes the fresh air intake and recircs the air from inside the coach, whether you're heating or cooling. I also agree with the one that said to search and find all those bulkhead penetrations and seal them up. It seems the mfg. aren't too concerned with them since we RV'ers only travel in perfect weather, and are never in the cold, especially....NOT!

I don't rely on the engine supplied heating system to stay warm in the winter. We've traveled in the below zero weather and stayed comfortable. We use the coach heating system, meaning the LP gas is on, the coach furnaces are running as well. The coach itself is winterized (our coach is an "older" model, this year, it turned 22 years old), on all the windows with the exception of the driver's window, windshield and passenger side window where the right side mirror is we used the "shrink" style plastic on the inside to make the double pane. It works real well. We also have insulated all the roof vents, put a blanket at the entry door to reduce drafts, and done everything possible to make it warm and cozy inside. Depending on the outside air temp, we've also resorted to running the generator and a plug in safe style electric heater (tip over and overload protection) and managed to travel through some pretty cold areas.

Wow! What a neat story. Too bad it had to leave your family, Dusty, that's a fine looking old beast. I saw one identical to the RV movie with Robin Williams running around the Brainerd MN lakes area not long after that film came out. I also have a "vintage" motorhome, but it doesn't have nearly the "cool" factor of that one.

We do a lot of winter travel. I have single pane windows that cover with shrink plastic, I put covers in all the vents, the waste tank compartment is heated by the rear furnace as is the water tank (which we use). I pour RV antifreeze down the drains to keep the traps open. In order to keep the water lines under the kitchen sink from freezing I use a piano 30w dehumidifier bar or 2 short ones 15-25w. I don't have large battery banks so I either have to run the genset when I stop or get plugged in. My coach has worked real well even in sub zero temps, stuck in blizzard conditions and so on.

My wife has driven our 35' rig a lot. When we travel across country she drives as much as I do. She prefers me to drive in the congested city areas and over the mountain passes though. I teach motorcycle safety in the spring/summer/fall and we reserve a campsite near the college that I teach at. I go early on Friday to teach the classroom, and after she gets off work, she drives the motorhome with the 13' motorcycle trailer behind and does all the setup and hookups herself. By the time I get there around 10pm, there's not a whole lot that I have to do. My wife says it's her motorhome anyway.

We replaced our flooring a couple of years ago. We have a "classic " coach, no slides. I happen to be good friends with a guy who owns a carpet store, and he helped me out immensely! We put hi-grade indoor/outdoor carpet in the living room area with good waterproof padding, and a sheet laminate (looks like real oak, $10/foot or something like that, not cheap), in the kitchen area. All of it cleans up easily, way better than the light colored sculptured pile carpeting that was in there before, and the laminate wears better and looks better than the cheap white kitchen laminate that was in it before.

Hi Karen and Collins, Sorry I didn't see your posting earlier, I've been neglecting my duties here (been too busy lately, no excuse I know). If you are a Frustrated Maestro or would like to join our little happy band of wanderers, we'd love to have you in with the volunteers the afternoon of the 7th. You can send me e-mail (pianodan@tds.net), or pm me here on this site, and I'll help point you in all the right directions if possible. Here's ome more info: June 9 to 12, 2010 Walworth County Fairgrounds Elkhorn, Wisconsin More info: See ad in the March, April and May issues of FMC magazine and there's more in this link: Midwest Area Rally Early birds other than Volunteers can't enter the fairgrounds until the 8th. We'd love to have you as an addition to the Midwest Noteables chapter though, if you'd like to join.

Tom, that is the case with most new engines, however, I'm currently working on a '97 Chrysler Sebring with a 2.5L Misubishi V6, and it still has a distributor with a cap, rotor and all the associated problems. So, there might be something out there before the year 2000, but in the '90s with a distributor. I thought they were gone too. This particular line of SOHC engines all had distributors, and I know some of the lesser known motorhomes had many different engine suppliers. Now, as far as I know, none of the big block Chev or Ford engines had distributors in that time period. Be warned, owners of Chrysler/Dodge Sebring/Intrepid series of autos, these things are a bear to work on and extremely labor intensive when they get beyond simple maintenance/repairs. this one I'm working on is pushing $1800 in labor and $500.00 in parts to get it running again.

I have National Interstate (RV specific insurance), it is now brokered through Poliseek AIS Insurance Solutions, Inc. So far I've had no problems with them, but I've had no claims either. I haven't insurance shopped lately, but they were cheaper than Allstate Indemnity when I switched a few years ago. I believe State Farm has their RV policies through a seperate branch from auto coverage as well, probably an Indemnity branch.

In Medora, there is a fairly nice inexpensive city run campground in the shadow of the bluffs of the park. The river runs along one of the campground boundaries. they also give the FMCA discount. I don't remember what their opening date is, but this CG is handy to explore the entire park from in your toad. Oh, they have full hook-ups and shower houses as well.

We won't be there, still working for a living around here, and not enough vacation time.

If you travel 101 through Oregon, Depot Bay is spectacular, and just north of Depot bay is a Clam house (forgot the name of it, been a long time) that serves galvanized buckets full of steamed clams.

I know I answered this thread awhile back, but does anyone else skim over the thread titles and read this as"Cupboard of extreme death"? Or is it just me? Sounds like a great movie title........

Paul, I've got one of those 4" screw in access holes (marine compartment style) in the bottom of the same compartment, but it's so I can run the cord for my rear AC out and plug it into 20 amp when we're on shore power. My coach is 30 amp, and when it's on shore power only the front AC will run otherwise. The screww in access just might be the way to go though, I might have thought about it after a bit. I won't be making it to the Albuquerque rally unfortunately, my wife has the real job, and not that much vacation time (we'll be at the MidWest rally), we have to save time for a ship's reunion in July, camping with my bro-in-law in August, and time to go to Utah to spoil grandkids at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Take a look at my photos, you'll see some interesting things we've done with our coach. Oh, I do sometimes carry an early (92) Yamaha 77 note weighted key keyboard when required, along with my fiddles, flute, string bass, electric bass, and mandolin. Stop by and visit with the Maestros when you're at Albuquerque, I'm sure Dave and Wilma Ricketts will be there, and he plays some really mean sax.

That first WestPac deployment was a real hoot! More fun than two barrels full of monkeys with their tails tied together! To tell the truth though, I wasn't a real happy camper getting underway then. I'd just gotten married to my honey (whom I'd met and fallen in love with only 6 months earlier), but there was no getting out of it. I got to experience Honolulu, HI on my way over, the seedy sailor bars of Waikiki, got to see sunken WWII Japanese ships with the hulls and props sticking out of the water at Kwajalein Atolls where we played (our whole Amphibious Group did this) Ace moving & storage, taking whole deckloads of trailers from there to the Phillippines for offices and temp housing. From there, I got to ride out my first typhoon, I loved it, the clouds came right down to the ocean and sat there then the wind started, and the sea churned up. We were making good on 15 kts plowing straight into the waves, the Large Slow Targets (LST) that were part of our group had to tack back and forth to make any headway at all. Most of them had to turn tail and run back to HI because of machinery breaking loose in the engine rooms. They lost all of their trailers out there too. The best part of the typhoon was the fact that all the grunts we had on board were laying in their racks puking for three days and we didn't have a huge chow line filled up by non-watchstanding Marines. We crossed the Int'l dateline, and soon after made it to our overseas home port, White Beach, Okinawa, all of our holidays except Christmas were spent there. We stayed long enough to bring stores on board and fuel up, then got underway for our first taste of Liberty in the Phillippines!!!!!! More to come in a later installment

I've got a plan for mine, it may even work better than the velcro idea. The remote handle came off of my grey water tank valve last time I dumped (it was really cold, the valves were working, but that one still pulled apart), so now I have to fix it. There's no way I can contort my self enough to reach it, so I'm making an access plate for that compartment. It's the last one before the rear axle, so I can sit up on the ground underneath, cut open the compartment, and when I close it up it can be with the access panel that will double as a light box. Got the plans all drawn in my head, when the ice and snow are gone from my driveway, it'll be time to implement them. I'll only need two 50w bulbs and one thermostat to make it work. Good idea though!

Hey Paul, I like your idea with the lights. I could run those off of my convertor and with a couple of thermostats that would work fine. Did you get the basement style fixtures with the protective cage around them? You're using the hardwire thermostats like you'd wire an electric heater to, aren't you? Sounds like a good idea, anyway. Dan

Hey, welcome to the fun life!!! When we go to meet and greet potlucks, generally the organizer tells people what isn't needed and then you're free to make and bring whatever you want. MY specialty hot dish has always been enchiladas, they've always been a hit and they're quick and easy to make too (even though mine are all from scratch except the shells, I buy fresh corn tortillas for that). Have some fun, enjoy that RV, we're still on our first motorhome.

i just dump mine on the ground, it won't hurt it, any more than chlorinated city water does.

I've done a lot of cold weather driving in my coach. If your basement stays above the freezing point, the waste tanks (and fresh water if it's there as well) should be fine. To make sure, start up your furnace (s) this week, buy an inexpensive remote thermometer, put one in the basement and the monitor in the coach. See what the temp is in the basement, it should keep it warm enough for the fluids to stay fluid (mine does). I would also pour a gallon of RV antifreeze in the toilet and down the drains, open the drain valves up to the dump valve to keep that line from freezing. The other thing I do for cold weather operation is to cut out aluminum faced styrofoam insulation to put in all of my vents, it effectively blocks the entry of cold air. If you don't have double pane windows, go to your local hardware store and buy the window insulation kits (shrink plastic) and use them on all your coach windows, it does the job real well. The only windows I didn't do this to was my front windows where the mirrors are and my windshield. The kitchen sink area is a spot that freezes quickly as well. If you're going to keep the lines there from freezing, I suggest getting some heat tape to put on those lines, your convertor can power them with no problem. I used a couple of 15w de-humidifier bars that I had around for a grand piano humidity control system (I'm a piano tech). We made a trip to Utah over Christmas and were able to use all our systems this way. On the return we encountered below 0 deg F weather with massive wind chills the closer we got to MN so we had to run the generator to power a 1500w heater to help keep us warm in the cab area. Our coach is really pretty well insulated but the windows radiated a lot of cold air that overpowerd the dash heat as well as the front furnace because it wasn't ducted far enough forward to help (something I'm correcting this year). Hope this helps. Dan

Well, now SeaJay sucked me in, I couldn't let this thread go without a snipe's sea story. For those of y'all that are somewhat unfamiliar with the 'Nav even with all the wisdom that CJ has imparted, his stories are kind of skewed, see, he thinks there is no intelligent life below the main deck of the ship, and the ship had some magical motive force that moved it along the surface of the water. Then again, he enlisted while they still used oars.... Anywhooo, on with the story, and it begins like this: This is a no "splitter" (insert appropriate lettering here) guys; I did my boot camp in Great Mistakes, IL in the middle of the winter Jan-Apr and the 3" thick ice on the inside of the barracks windows is a fact, guys! Camp Moffitt where CJ lived was being de-commissioned and torn down while I was there, we had most of our shots done in the old dispensary there though. We had what was called a "snow watch" and if you weren't too lucky that would be the watch you got stuck with instead of the barracks watch. As soon as 1 1/2" of snow collected on the ground, the snow watch was outside with shovels, this watch was a 4 hour watch and if it was over breakfast, the snow watch missed breakfast and had to hustle back to the barracks to get into clean utilities (oh yeah, Zumwalt went through 3 uniform changes for us over the course of 5 years) then it was on to our classes. Don't nod off in classes even though you had the barracks watch until midnite and snow watch rolled you out of your rack at 2:30 am, or it was off to marching party that night for ya! But, on from there, boot camp conquered and on to "A" school to learn the intricacies of the job. Propulsion Engineering Schools Command, again in Great Mistakes. This was pretty easy, we learned how to steam boilers, main engines, evaporators, pumps, valves, different repairs, steam theory and so on. No matter the steam plant we learned on was an old WWII plant that was not on the ships that most of us were going to. I was a good boy, so I became a dreaded "push button" (I extended my enlistment for a year and put on my "crow"), I was a 3rd class petty officer with the stroke of a pen!!!!! Onward to the first real duty station, the "Might J", the USS Juneau, LPD-10, a 5 year old ship with 5 year old boilers and 45 year old peripherals (pumps, evaporators, main engines, Ship's Service Turbo Generators....) see, I'm a kid next to CJ, he was out and the Navy was but a pleasant dream by that time, the "J" hadn't even had the keel laid when he was terrorizing the poor civilian ladies in Norway and the Med. I had never crossed a quarterdeck on a real Navy ship before, so I was pretty nervous as I lugged my 180 lb seabag up the ladder to the brow. She was way up there, 5 flights of ladder steps to the gangplank onto the quarterdeck. The quarterdeck watch called down to the firerooms (from now on affectionately called "the pits") and the LPO of the forward pit sent up a non-rated fireman that had just been inside the boiler cleaning firesides. Now, if you've never been inside a boiler in your life, the firesides are the tubes that carry the water for steam generation that interface with the firebox where fuel oil is fired to produce heat and steam. To say he was filthy was an understatement. He took me to the Master At Arms office to get my bedding, then down to the engineering berthing compartment where I tried to stuff everything into a too small locker, left my bedding on the top rack that I was assigned and was off to see the Chief and a quick whirlwind tour of the ship. By the end of the day, when I returned to the berthing compartment all I had left of my bedding was one sheet, no blanket and no pillow. Seems the compartment cleaners had heisted them for themselves. I had to physically fight to retrieve most of my bedding. I, of course, returned the favors so I had bedding for my rack. We were preparing for deployment to the Western Pacific when I reported aboard, so the ship was loading supplies (the ship was smaller than a cruiser of the heavy variety like CJ was on) Here's the stats on this ship:General Characteristics: Awarded: May 23, 1963 Keel laid: January 23, 1965 Launched: February 12, 1966 Commissioned: July 12, 1969 Decommissioned: October 31, 2008 Builder: Lockheed Shipbuilding Co., Seattle, Wash. Propulsion system: two boilers, two steam turbines Propellers: two Length: 569 feet (173.4 meters) Beam: 105 feet (32 meters) Draft: 23 feet (7 meters) Draft: ballasted: 34 feet (10.4 meters) Displacement: approx. 16,900 tons Speed: 21 knots Well deck capacity: one LCAC or one LCU or four LCM-8 or nine LCM-6 or 24 amphibious assault vehicles (AAV) Aircraft: none, but telescopic hangar installed aboard. The hangar is not used to accommodate helicopters but on the flight deck there is space for up to six CH-46 helicopters. Crew: Ship: 24 officers, 396 enlisted Crew: Marine Detachment: approx. 900 Armament: two 20mm Phalanx CIWS, two 25mm Mk 38 guns, eight .50-calibre machine guns As you can see, we carried gyrenes too, one in ships's company enlisted, and one (a captain) with the officers. Once we lit off one plant, the real fun began, engineering liberty was secured and we steamed underway watches from that point on. My shipmates tried to play a lot of those fun "newbie" tricks on me, but I knew better, that there was no such thing as a "mail buoy", bilge rats (the only bilge rats we had were sailors or marines on extra duty), I knew what fallopian tubes were so that didn't work on me and the one that worked for most of the "boots" reporting aboard didn't work for me either. The new Boiler tech messenger of the watch (from the forward pit) on his break in watch would be sent to to the after pit for a container of "gland seal". Now, gland seal is steam pressure applied to the outer surface of the main engine shaft glands. It can't be carried or transported by hand. In the after pit, they had a JP-5 (volatile aviation fuel) sample point, the watch back aft would fill a styrofoam cup with it and send the break in messenger back across the well deck to the forward pit, and of course, the styrofoam cup would disentegrate, and the newbie would get chewed out from the entire watch team, starting with the Engineering Officer Of the watch on the throttle deck down. Now, since I knew what was up, I poured that JP-5 into a cut open soda can, set it aside, went up to the ship's store, bought myself some snacks and a 10 cent soda out of the soda machine, and got back with the "gland seal" in time for the turn over of the watch. More of my sea stories to follow......... Oh yeah, before I forget, SeaJay had to breathe that rarified atmosphere up there on the bridge, he also had some of the proliferation of khaki infect him, so he's got excuses for his afflictions........

My coach has the same style pantry to the right of the refrigerator, but it came with oak sliding drawers. The drawer slides are pretty much a standard slide system but require a slight lift to slide them out past the stop. I'm going to remove the whole kit'n kaboodle though and rplace those 3/4" thick oak ply boxes with something lighter like aluminum, I think doing that will reduce the weight there by close to 50 lbs. every little bit helps.

I tried fly fishing in my youth when my family moved to Colorado (I was a senior in High school). Back then I was moderately successful. I think I must have had better coordination then. Now when I attempt it I usually manage to wrap myself up quite well or imbed the fly's hook somewhere on my body. I no longer fly fish, any skills I had with it got lost due to sea water saturation and catching fish with large fishing poles somwhere around San Diego. So, now that I live in Minnesnowta, the land of 10,000+ lakes, I use my 14 ft aluminum boat, take along a container of worms and and one of leeches, and I always bring home a limit of something. When the water is hard like it is now, I don't fish. I tried that a couple of times, and I usually came home slightly under the weather, and had no fish to show. Hey, SEAJAY, buddy, just keep on haranguing that grunt, he would feel unwanted if you quit.

Hey Gary, That sounds like a plan. With all we've got going this year we're only making the one rally, the MidWest area rally. I teach motorcycle safety in the summer as well, I'm trying to offset my deficit spending and pay off the credit card I used to re-engine my coach last year. If you look in the photo section, you can see what a job that was (I did it in my driveway ). Hope to see you guys sometime, keep the shiny side up!

Yeah, my DW and I met in Propulsion Eng Schools Command, Great Lakes and got married in San Diego. I finagled a split sea tour to go with her to Hawaii, otherwise I would probably wouldn't have seen her for most of my first hitch. as it was, I was home for 92 days in our first two years. We weathered the storms of active duty and frequent deployments, extended deployments and so on, and all of a sudden, we realized that this year will mark 35 years of marriage. don't know where it all went to. Hope to see you guys at the Midwest area rally in June; it's at the Walworth county fairgrounds in Elkhorn, WI. Dan (we're hoping to be full timers in 5 years)