ClayL

It was 3% not 4% and I just checked the Dakota Post (was Alternative Resources) mail service web site and they still show 3%. You can change your legal domicile to SD and register your vehicles there. The problem is that LA wants any vehicle primarily garaged there to be registered there and if it is like many other states will fine you if they know you have the RV garaged in LA and registered in SD. You might not get caught but you might. The Dakota Post web site has a lot of info about becoming a resident of SD and offers some services to help you do that. We used them for 12 years and they did a good job for us. DAKOTA POST WEB SITE

The Dish Traveler can't easily be converted to Direct TV. The Direct dish size is larger than the Dish dish and the motors required to move it are larger. Winegard has a kit to convert Direct to Dish but I have not seen one to convert Dish to Direct. You might call Winegard to make sure.

When our legal domicile was NH we had Progressive. At that time (2002) GMAC did not offer full timers coverage in NH so I don't know about the cost comparison. We had one claim that was handled quickly and fairly. When we moved to SD GMAC did offer full timer coverage and was more than $200 per year cheaper so we went with them. GMAC is now owned by National General and is the company Good Sam acts as one of the brokers for. We had claims with them and they were also handled quickly and fairly.

The problem is that owning a house does not mean you are a resident if you don't live in it and have it rented so the address can't be used by you . You can own houses all over the country and not be resident of any of the states they are located in. You are right to be concerned. Many states require you to keep the address on your drivers licenses current and you don't have one in VA. The issue will be the address used on your drivers licences and for your vehicle registrations. Many (most?) states will not allow you to use a mail forwarding service street address for that purpose and you are using a Florida mail service so even if they did allow a mail forwarding service you have a problem. This is why most full timers use one of the three states that are friendly to them and allow the use of a mail forwarding service address. The three states most used are SD, TX, and FL. If you have relatives in VA you may be able to use their address.

Have you checked REMCO to see if it can be flat towed ?

A friend killed two newer electric blankets with a MSW inverter. It seems to bother the newer ones with electronic controls but not the old ones with bi-metal thermostats.

May be too far but Coyote Ridge in Bouse - about 65 miles from Lake Havasu City. 35 miles from Parker. $160 per month plus electricity, wouldn't be much with just the house and engine battery being kept charged. Phone number is 928 851 1061. Nice people, some of whom will still be in the park in March and happy to keep an eye on your rig while you are away.

Two things to think about. SD and TX (Escapees) will give you waivers for jury duty (TX) or take you off the rolls (SD). Both states make it easy to get your drivers license, vehicle registration and titles using your mail forwarding address.

We ended up in Palisade CO which abuts Grand Junction. We moved to Grand Junction in 1972 when I graduated from the UTA (University of Texas Arlington). We left in 1984 for a job in NH. While we there and after we left relatives moved there. While full timing we went back for a month or so in the spring and for a couple of months in the fall. We had been happy there and the work I did there was the high point of my electronic design career, so it seemed like a good place for us to settle down and live permanently. It has a great medical complex and the weather is not what most people think of CO as having. We are in a high desert valley and get an average of 19 inches of snow a year. It can get cold in the winter - Jan is the coldest month: Avg. Max Temperature 35.5 Avg. Min Temperature 14.5 But we have 242 days where the sun shines.

Polypropylene glycol or Polypropylene glycol and alcohol can be dumped in the sewer. Excerpt " If PG does reach soil and water nearby, it is considered practically non-toxic to aquatic organisms and it biodegrades rapidly." from http://www.dow.com/productsafety/finder/prog.htm Scroll down to Environmental Releases. Warnings about disposing of it are concerned with PG that been used in automotive systems and can contain heavy metals and other contaminates. My motor home is on a graveled RV site in my side lot. I let the RV antifreeze run out via a hose feeding a gravel filled sump.

I rented a trencher and I friend and I dug the 18" deep 100 foot long trench. I hired a licensed electrician to do the wiring but had to download the proper wiring and receptacle for him. He thought it would be a 220 connection. I also calculated the wire size for the 100 foot distance. He apparently thought if the wire ampacity was okay then length didn't matter. I allowed for about a 3 1/2 percent drop (from 120 down to 115 volts) at the 30 amp draw and had him use 8 gauge wire instead of the 10 gauge he wanted to use. I have a 30 amp motor home and considered installing 50 amp service but the cost was higher than I wanted to pay. I put in two boxes so had more wires to run. My friends that come visit can use a 50 amp to 30 amp adapter if necessary. I used an 8 foot pressure treated 4X4 and set about 3 feet in the ground for the boxes at the RV sites. I also trenched about 150 feet to the sewer clean out in the back yard and buried a 1 inch PVC pipe from the RV sites close to it. At each end there is an in ground valve box with a female hose fitting. I run a short 3/4 inch diameter hose to the clean out from one and a longer one from the RV to the other one at the RV site. That way I can dump the tanks using a macerator.

The problem is not the sensors being dirty but is due to the tank walls being gunked up and fooling the sensors. Even the non-contact sensors on the outside of the tank can be fooled if the walls are cruddy enough. SeeLevel even points this out on their web site. The SeeLevel web site says "If sludge buildup in the tank becomes extreme the gauge will cease to operate (the tank will always read empty), so by monitoring the signal level the tank can be cleaned before the buildup gets excessive". From HERE Anything you do to help keep the tank walls clean may help. Flushing, adding some detergent and water before you drive for a day or so might help. I have the TrueLevel non-contact system that Winnebago went standard with in 2005 and right now my black tank reads full when empty. The gray tank shows 1/3 full when empty. Over the eleven years we full timed I tried everything people say will work and nothing worked. If I pressure wash the inside of the black tank (have done that twice), the level will be measured normally for a few months and then start to lie. I think the problem is worse for full timers and that may be why some weekend or short term campers find that detergent or some other method works for them. I just dump it every ten days and don't worry about it anymore.

That happened on my 2004 Sightseer with a Workhorse W20 chassis. In my case it was the elastomeric spring cup ( I think they called it an auxiliary spring) that was hitting the axle as it was designed to do. It is a large yellow elastomeric cup on the frame above the axle where the springs are mounted. Mine came with the Monroe shocks - later in 2004 or maybe early in 2005 - they switched to Bilstein shocks and that problem went away. I put Koni FDS shocks on mine and that also stopped the auxiliary spring cup from hitting the axle but I sure don't recommend the ride with the Koni’s. Very rough compared to the Monroes. My Sightseer chassis was a 2003 year and was built before Sep 2003 and had the 2 inch anti -sway bar in the front. After Sep they switched to a 2.5 inch bar and I upgraded mine to 2.5 inches. It was an easy DIY job. From an email from Workhorse. "The upgraded stabilizer bar has been shown to provide the following benefits: 1. Reduced Body Roll when cornering. 2. Reduced "rocking" when passed by or passing large vehicles. 3. Reduced "rocking" when traversing bumps on an angle." If you have a Ford chassis none of this applies of course.

Go to the irv2.com Winnebago section and do a search. There are several threads about the Adventurer TV replacement and how to remove it. See HERE

Some of you may be interested in this notice from the manufacturer. "Dear friends. Recently we have experienced an abnormally high rate of failure with respect to the small lenses that cover the PIR sensor on either side of the Smart Light 1000. We traced the failures back to a container we received a little over 2 years ago. The problem we found was that the plastics factory did not follow our formula, and consequently there was not enough UV additive in the plastics. Thus, the sun "ate" the lenses and caused them to crumble. While there is no risk of damage to the internal workings of the Smart Light, a missing lens will cause the unit to function improperly. We have checked all inventory and verified that none of the fixtures on hand have this issue. However, there are many in the field that slipped by us. If you or anyone you know has a problem with these lenses, please contact us so that we can send you complimentary replacements. So sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused, but we are committed to resolving this issue for you. Thank you for your patronage. Happy Camping!"

For snowbirding I would get a 35/36 footer. That extra couple of feet can be really nice if you are snowbirding. Something you need to be aware of. Many full timers/snowbirds find that they need at least 1500 pounds of cargo carrying capacity (CCC) for each adult. The CCC or the newer designation OCCC will be on a sticker somewhere in the motor home - usually in a cabinet or closet. You can see the definition of CCC HERE, and OCCC HERE. Scroll down to "2009 New weight label" and download the pdf file. To get CCC subtract the weight of water you will carry and the weight of the people you will carry from the OCCC. It is common to see CCC numbers as low as a few hundred pounds (even on diesel pushers) which means it would be overloaded for weekend trips and unusable for full timing. We have 2800 pounds of CCC and would like to have 3500. We started with a 30 footer with no slides and after a year traded it in on a new 35 footer with two slides.

I have never seen a Kwikee step system that uses mircro switches. Is this a really old system? The ones I have seen use curernt sensing circuitry on the control board to stop the motor when it reaches the limit stop.

Maybe you have a partial clog downstream from the air admittance valve that raises the water level high enough to flood the valve.

There are a number of them out there and they all seem to work pretty well. I have a Brake Buddy that I have used for 11 full timing years and about 70,000 miles. It failed in the activated mode and the control board was replaced at about 6 years - under warranty oddly enough, There had been a recall on the board I was not aware of - and the compressor was rebuilt at the same time - not under warranty.

I installed a 32 inch Samsung TV in my rig four years ago and have had no problems with it. Have driven all over the country on some very bad roads during that time. It still works great. ( so does the Winegard Traveller Bill Adams installed three years ago ). That being said, a guy that works for Jensen made a post a year or so ago about this subject and claimed that there are a number of differences in their TVs made for RVs. What he said seemed reasonable. Are the claims true or not? Do they actually result in a more durable TV? I don't know.

It should have at least 6 hours per year - that's 1/2 hour per month. The genny manual calls out two hours per month under half load or 24 hours per year. If it sits 3 or 4 months without running, the fuel used now can gunk up the carb. Mine is ten years old and I have about 400 hours on it - about 3 hours per month average - although when sitting I only run it about 1/2 hour per month. We don't boondock but ran it while driving in hot weather so we can run the house ACs. I have seen 2000 or more hours on a lot of gennys and they still ran great.

Nicki, our last cat was with us for ten years and passed on suddenly two years ago – brain aneurism the vet thought. Since we were full timers she spent her entire life in the motor home. She was very smart and inventive and pretty good at figuring out how to get out of the motor home, so we had to come up with ways to thwart her. Although she did her best to get out sometimes, she didn’t really like being out and would just go under the rig until we coaxed her out. The two new cats we have now have shown no interest in getting out so we had taken the dowels out of the sliding screen tracks to prevent the screens from being opened and removed the small bungee cord that kept the slider on the screen door from being opened. The other morning when we got up the cats were gone. Lee found that one of the bedroom screens had been opened by one of them. It was about a six foot drop to the ground but that didn’t stop them. There are coyotes that come right into the RV park so we were very worried about them. It was pretty traumatic for us but thankfully they had climbed up into the chassis and hid out for the night. Looks like we have to reinstall our safeguards.

I would check the voltage at the engine battery with the engine not running and running. It should read 12.6 or so with the engine off and 14.4 or so with it running. It sounds like you may have a bad engine battery. The solenoid that operates when the ingnition key is in the RUN position connects the alternator/engine battery to the house batteries when the engine is running or when the AUX START switch on the dash is held on. If the house battery voltage is 14.4 when the engine is running it is working. Based on what I understand from your description of the problem I don't think that the AUX START solenoid is the problem. In any case it located somewhere close to the batteries under the step. On some models it is behind a panel on the steps and sometimes in a black box located in the upper section of the bay where the propane tank is.

Many manufacturers use TriMark latches. If that is what yours are, a lot of people sell them. PPL is one that has a good reputation. See here http://www.pplmotorhomes.com/parts/doors-rv-locks-handles-storage.htm#Locks%20-%20Baggage%20Compartment There is also a company that makes the latches with metal rather than plastic plungers, See HERE http://motorhomelatches.com/

This may be out of date since it is from a thread that is several years old. "Call ACTIA, 574-266-2612 , talk to Customer Service explain what is wrong and have your chassis Vin # handy and they will check to see if its under warranty and issue you a RGA number which goes on form and box your returning display in. You need this number or nothing will be accepted. Mine was under general return because its not under Warranty you will bring up form and fill in information on form. Some of the info will be on the back of your display unit you are returning." If that doesn't help try http://actiaus.com/diagnostics/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=32&Itemid=28 and check the "contacts" on the left side. The recall back in 2004 was for a communication issue bewteen the unit and the ABS system. If that hasn't been done and you return it they have been sending a reffurbished unit. That might get you a working unit. If all else fails these guys http://www.bba-reman.com/us/Thanks-us.aspx repair them according to some posts on another forum __________________