GrampaDennis

One of our early expeditions involved working on a family project. Our son is building a house in Bow, NH, and had rented a house near the Merrimack River in Hookset, NH, to live in while building. Grandma and I took the MH to New Hampshire so she could live in it for two weeks while painting interior rooms in our son's new house. Because I still work about 3/4 time, I traveled to the New Hampshire project on weekends. It was dark when we arrived in Hookset. I knew that there were overhanging oak and maple trees at the driveway to the Hookset house, and along the street there. I stopped while brushing some smaller branches, fortunately before getting into the heavier ones. One of the neighbors came rushing out to warn me about them. My son is now 39 years old and is a good driver and equipment operator. He wanted to back the MH into the driveway while I watched the tree branches. This was due to the fact that there were mailboxes and other obstructions and he had planned how he was going to get it in there. We made out fine, with respect to ground level obstructions and the tree branches, avoiding the larger ones. He had the coach almost to his chosen spot, when all of a sudden we heard a CRAACKKK!! He and I had not realized that the utility wires leading in to the house were lower than the height of the Air Conditioners on the roof of the MH. My son stopped before tearing the wires off the house or the utility pole, but one corner of my rear AC shell was in pieces. Perhaps it was a good thing that this AC shell was already cracked and brittle. Considering its already poor condition, I was pleased that it was the point of failure. I had already priced new shells online at Camping World. My son felt really bad about doing the damage, and he patched the pieces together with the very sticky wide tape that was being used to seal around the doors and windows of his new house. When I got home, I checked again online and found the MAXair AC shells for Coleman air conditioners were on sale. I ordered a pair of them. Lessons Learned: Always be careful to watch out for overhead obstructions, but be doubly careful at night, especially in an unfamiliar location. We should have looked harder at the overhead situation before backing in!

My sister and one of my uncles both have properties on Ripley Pond in Maine. In past years, I have taken our camper trailers in to my sister's place. However, our MH is a good bit taller and I was concerned mainly about the overhanging trees. My uncle's place isn't so far in. We did some reconnaisance and found that, with a little tree trimming, we should be able to get in. My uncle said "Sure, trim anything you need to." On the weekend after we finally got our new tires, I put a pole trimmer and a brush lopper into the storage compartments and we headed for Ripley. There was another little complication. We had been having lot of rain in July, and the ground was a bit wet (maybe more than a bit). One of the consequences of the Law of Gravity is that lakes and ponds are almost always located at the bottom of a hill! My uncle's lake lot is a beautiful spot, but it was downhill getting there, and it seemed twice as uphill getting out! On Sunday of that weekend, my aunt and uncle came over to the pond and had a nice cookout with us. My sister and some of her family visited as well. There was an overhanging wire across the driveway. On the way in, I had gone around it through the fieldish lawn. My brother-in-law helped me tie the wire up with a rope, so I could go out the driveway, which was harder ground. When we were ready to leave, I found I could not get enough traction to get started up the driveway. The first thing my uncle and I tried was to steal a few shovels of gravel from a pile along the road to put under the rear tires. That wasn't enough. My uncle said "let's get my tractor." It was at his house, only about a mile away. There are no tow hooks on the front of my MH. There is a fiberglass "bumper" that looks pretty and holds up the fog lights, but is not good for much else. To make matters worse, this false bumper extends down below the frame. I hooked the chain to the frame and used wooden blocking to hold the chain down under the fiberglass. I succeeded in not ruining the fiberglass piece, but I bent up one of the battery boxes, pushing up on it with the blocking. We made 40 or 50 attempts to pull the MH with the 4 wheel drive tractor. We found the driveway too steep and went back to the field route. We almost made it back to solid ground, but had to give up. My brother-in-law has a small track-mounted excavator, which he brought over. This excavator has a small dozer blade on it. He could set the blade, pull with the bucket, then reset and do it again. We made it back into the road that way, but not before he had thrown a track off the excavator. We had to get that back on before we could continue. All in all, it took about 4 hours to get the MH away from Ripley Pond! I offered my BIL money for his fuel and trouble. He wouldn't take any. I owe him big-time, and will certainly do anything I can if I have an opportunity to help him. It was a hard day for my 80 year old uncle as well. Needless to say, if we go with the MH to visit my relatives on Ripley Pond, we'll park at the house on the main road (with a level parking area) and either walk or borrow a vehicle to get to the pond! Lesson Learned: A Class A motor home is NOT an off-road vehicle. (In fact, it's pretty helpless in tough going.) I'm sticking to paved or hard gravel roads from now on!

I wrote about our tire purchase in one of the forums a while ago. I'll put a brief version of the story here as well. From reading the Good Sam forums and the FMCA forums, I learned about the Michelin Advantage tire discount program through FMCA. One of the other FMCA members from Maine posted about the savings he got. I sent him a PM and found out which dealer he used. Grandma is a great believer in comparison shopping, so she called around. Sure enough, the best deal to be had on Michelin XRV tires was through the FMCA program. That was the lure that caused me to join FMCA. It only cost $50 to join and we saved $120 per tire (x 6 = $720), compared to what the same dealer first quoted. The dealer said he had 6 tires in stock. From the forums, I knew enough to ask about the date codes. At first, he said they were a year old and that they had been ordered for a customer who backed out. To compensate for being a year old, the dealer was going to match the FMCA price and throw in free mounting and balancing. I said I would take that deal. However, the dealer called back and said they rechecked and had only 5 of the year-old tires in the warehouse and had one that was 4 years old. I said I did not want a 4 year old tire. We wound up ordering a new set. That caused almost a two-week delay in getting ready to travel, but the date codes on the tires were only 3 months old when I got them. We had a minor hickup because the dealer didn't fill out the paperwork completely at first. We got that straightened out, and I was charged the amount promised. Thanks, FMCA, for the great tire discount program! I recommend that anyone needing tires for their coach look into it.

So, we had the "Cottage on Wheels" home, and basically functional, but it still had the original fifteen year old tires. I was looking into tires (a subject for another entry), but we wanted to take a little shakedown cruise. We decided on Meadowbrook campground, in Phippsburg Maine. It is less than 50 miles from our home, can be reached on two-lane roads. I didn't dare take this thing up to 70 MPH on the old tires. Also, Meadowbrook is not far from one of our favorite places in the world, Popham Beach. I blew the tires up to a little more than the recommended pressure. My belief is that the heat caused by too much flexing in a slack tire would be the worst thing for old tires. I crossed my fingers and said a little prayer and we headed out. Actually, I was more worried about the old tires than I admitted to Grandma. Getting to Meadowbrook was a bit interesting. There is more than one possible route, but any of them traverse a network of very narrow and twisting roads (typical for side roads on the Maine coast). We also had to look out for overhanging tree limbs and branches. I clipped a couple of them, but don't think I did any damage. Meadowbrook was not fancy, but nice enough. The WiFi worked at our site. In addition to walking on their campground roads, there was a nice nature trail through the woods. They had an outdoor Karaoke party in the evening. Much to my wife's embarrassment, I did a song and murdered it badly! (First time I ever did this, and I didn't know the song well enough). We left Meadowbrook early on Sunday and motored to Popham Beach State Park. Being seniors, and Maine citizens, we were allowed in free. They didn't even charge for parking the MH, and they sent a man to show us a nice parking spot where we wouldn't get blocked in. I had enough beach, and needed to use the facilities, a little sooner than Grandma did, so I went back to our rolling cottage. I put one of my nice old country music cassettes in the player and semi-snoozed on the sofa until Grandma returned. I could get used to this! A little side note. I'm sort of glad our rig is old enough that it has a cassette player instead of a CD player. Now, I can play my collection of old cassettes! Maybe someday, I'll upgrade the music setup. I would like to be able to play both. We prepared and ate our lunch in the beach parking lot, then rolled home, stopping for ice cream along the way. The first trip was great! Everything worked well, and the tires held up.

In the process of the delivery and our purchase, the seller picked up a new chassis battery and I agreed to split the cost with him. However, he delivered the coach on the old battery. I installed the new battery. I consider myself mechanically proficient, and I have changed batteries on dozens of vehicles over the years. This battery has the GM type side terminals. I thought I had them tight, but I am also concerned about over-torquing things (don't ask me why). I had no electrical problems driving the coach over to ALT RV Service for the brake work, etc. They had checked out the electrical system as part of their "100 point inspection." They test-drove it 2 or 3 times before everything was done and we picked up our new-to-us motorhome. After we had paid the bill, I headed home with the coach, followed by Grandma in her car. At the top of the hill on Rte 202 in Winthrop, I got into the left lane, preparing to turn left on my way to a gas station. Suddenly everything went dead! No engine, no restart, no power steering, no power brakes. I did not want to end up with a dead coach on the left side of the road! I checked the mirrors. Fortunately, Grandma was well behind me and there was no one else really close. I yanked the thing to the right and still had enough momentum to get across the highway and coast to a stop on the right side of the road. Grandma pulled in behind me, quite concerned about "what the **** happened." We called ALT RV Service and the mechanic came over. As we were checking things over, we found that the problem was that the ground terminal on the battery had loosened. With a computer-controlled, electrically fuel-injected engine, things come to a halt immediately if battery contact is lost. Some of the older engines would keep running on the alternator, but not the current ones! As it turned out, the problem was really my own fault. I have not had the problem again in about 1200 miles. You can bet that I will make sure those battery terminals stay tight from now on! Years ago, when I took pilot training, my instructors taught me to always be scanning for a place to make an emergency landing. I think the same advice applies while driving a truck, bus or motor coach. Actually, this incident wasn't the first time I have had a vehicle suddenly quit on me. However, I must admit it was a little scary in this big coach which I was not totally used to driving yet.

In June of 2013, Grandma and I got serious about our quest for a used motor home. We were shopping somewhat on the low end - under $30K. We browsed our local classified ad magazine (Uncle Henry's), Craigslist, dealers' web sites, and any other sources we found. We looked at 16 coaches in 8 days! Only 3 or 4 of those met our standards at all. We had one near miss where there was a very nice coach for reasonable money, but someone put a deposit on it about an hour before we called. On June 21, we made a deal with a private seller on a 1998 Southwind 32V, on a Chevrolet P32 chassis, with the 7.4L gas engine. It had less than 29,000 miles and was in very nice condition. We agreed to have the seller deliver it to our home and that we would pass the money and paperwork there. This turned out to be a wise decision. On June 25, the seller delivered the coach, but he had trouble with the brakes along the way. It turned out to be sticking calipers. I won't detail the renegotiation, but the result was that the seller reimbursed us for half of the cost of the brake work. Considering that we are now starting out with new calipers and pads on all 4 corners, I think this was fair. We had a local RV shop (ALT RV Service in North Monmouth, ME) recommended to us and we arranged to have them do the brake work and some other things on our list. They have been very good. I'm writing this in October, during what will likely be our last trip this Fall. I want to briefly describe some of our other adventures. I'll close this entry by offerring some advice to other newbies: Have patience in your shopping. You may chase down a lot off false leads, but should eventually find a deal that fits for you. Either drive the coach, or insist that the seller deliver it to you. If there are mechanical problems, you are in a far better position if they are discovered before you take ownership. Realize what you are getting into for taxes, registration fees, insurance, etc., and budget accordingly. Also, budget for substantial repairs and maintenance - brakes, shocks, tires, etc. There is no such thing as a low-cost motor coach. Besides the brakes, we have replaced the front air bags, all 3 batteries, 6 tires and will soon be replacing the shocks. Within the next year, we will be recoating the roof. At some point (we may be there), you end up with more money invested in your rehabbed coach than you could get out of it if you sold. In our case, we intend to use it and enjoy it. We are still coming out ahead of some of the newer, higher priced, units and we have no loan payments.

I bought the same compressor, based on this recommendation and a review from an RVer on the Sears site. It arrived today. I adjusted the pressures on my 1998 Southwind 32V with it. Right now, I'm doing 80 psi on the rears and 85 psi on the fronts. This little compressor did the job just fine. I can't say I'm in love with the tire chuck that came with it, though. I'll probably upgrade that. On the first night out of a recent trip, we pulled into a Wal-Mart and called some friends to come visit. Our friend noticed that my right outside dual had gone slack. (It turned out to be a loose valve stem extension.) We got some air at one of those $1 for 3 minute compressors at a service station. What a wimpy compressor that was! It took 3 bucks to blow up our tire! That was the event that convinced me I wanted my own compressor on board. (Mine is a gas MH with hydraulic brakes - no built-in air system).

I just purchased 6 Michelin XRV 225/70R19.5 for my 1998 Southwind 32V. I got them through FMCA's Michelin Advantage program and saved $126 per tire, compared to what the same dealer initially quoted without the program. Thanks, FMCA! The dealer first said he had tires in stock, but it turned out that they were old. Fortunately, I knew enough (from reading these forums) to ask the age. The dealer ordered new tires for me, and the date code on them was 2113, about 4 months old. That's not bad. I had printed the FMCA instructions for the tire purchase. That was a good thing, because the dealer was not up to speed on how to do the paperwork. He omitted a couple of items at first, but we got it straightened out over the phone yesterday. I got my invoice by e-mail from FMCA today. We shouldn't have to teach the dealer how to fill out the paperwork, but it looks like that's just what we need to do.