dalltop

Just a good reason to have a large garage with a door on it.

Interesting. Did you pull the brake light fuse? Even though the towed vehicle wiring is not connected directly to the coach, if you are using a braking system in the toad then the brake lights will come on when the brake peddle is depressed. Those fuses are really confusing sometimes. Are you sure you pulled the right fuse? I know I have done that a couple times. Depending on where it is you have to almost stand on your head to get to them. Good Luck. David

Bob, Sam is right. I have older TV's as well and I have installed two digital converters since I did not want to have to watch the same thing my 9 Year old daughter might want to watch. Power is for boosting the antenna signal being delivered to the distribution box. To control both TV's with insert the box between the power booster connection and the distribution box. For installing per TV, just insert the box between the feed from the distribution box and TV for each set at the TV. I placed mine on top of the DVD player in the front. Remember that not all digital converts are the same with regard to function. I have seen brands and really like the ones I have. Features like tuning signal meter that allows you to turn the antenna while you watch the signal strength. Another big thing for me was that I could turn on, off, and change stations at the box with out the remote. I know it is really old fashion but some times I will actually walk up and turn things on and off with out the remote. Think of it! Good luck. David Alltop

Welcome. We are also weekend warriors as well and have only been members for a year. We are really enjoying our motorhome. Visit often and check out the threads. Lots of good information. David Alltop Easton, Maryland

If the objective is to prevent a fire if involved in an accident then the proper procedure would be to either turn off the propane detector which will shut off the propane to the coach by closing an electrical controlled valve located next to the manual shut off or to go outside and manually turn of the propane at the tank shut off valve.

Check this site http://www.ryderfleetproducts.com/cgi-bin/...hockairtire.jsp You do not have shocks but it has some photos that may be similar to your issue. It sounds like your tire is hopping because of the rim or tire is out of round or the tire is out of balance. You do not have any shocks but I would have the tire high speed balanced when you do replace them. When they balance the tires they will be able to tell if the rim is true. If you ever tow the dolly without a vehicle on it, be sure to deflate the tires some to soften the ride while empty. You might want to have someone either drive or follow and watch the tow dolly as it is being pulled at highway speed. Of course the tire is already damaged but after you put the new tires on would be a good time to test. I do not believe your tires come balanced with the dolly new. Maybe some else knows. You could also check to see if the tires have any balancing weights. I still own a pop up tent camper and from the factory they were not balanced. When it was time to replace the tires I had them balanced and found that it pulled much smoother at speed. I have been using the motor home so much that we are not putting many miles on the pop up any more so I can not tell you much about the wear yet but it does pull better.

Hello Bill B. I am sorry to hear about your trouble with the unit. I just wanted give you a shout. I see you are from Muncie, IN. I was born there and lived around the area growing up. My parents graduated from South Side as well as my Wife. I graduated from Yorktown. We live in Maryland now but good to see someone online from "home". David Alltop

Hello, we are David, Dawn, and Laurie Alltop. Dawn and I have been married for 23 years and our daughter is 9. We are weekend warriors even though the wife says we should just switch to home schooling and full time. We travel now in a new to us 1995 Fleetwood Bounder with our Lhaso Apso / Terrier mix dog Princess (guess who named her!). I have grown up around the business side of RVing. We did a little bit of camping as I was growing up too, but my Dad has been, and still sells RV's. If you ever bought a RV from Mid-Michigan area you may know Ken Alltop. I grew up "on the lot". Dawn and I started tent camping around 1996. We tent camped cross country to the Grand Canyon once and then to California, both times starting from Maryland's Eastern Shore. Laurie's first camping was at 8 months old. We upgraded to pop up camping. Then last year we bought our Bounder motor home and drove to California and back. What a great trip! Since we had the motor home I decided to spend last Christmas some place warm so we went to Florida. It was not a great year to go but we missed the worst of the cold and had a very nice trip. This motor home is really growing on us. I believe it is time to sell the pop up. I work in the newspaper industry as a regional systems manager. We are community based group of newspapers so even thought our industry is having issues, the community papers are still valued in their communities. Dawn is a stay at home mom but she does offsite bookkeeping for a few clients. Laurie at 9 is a full time student. We have not met a dirt road we did not like (1997 Grand Cherokee), sailing, motorcycling, biking, hiking, ATVing, theme parks, reading, and of course camping. Driving. Love to drive. I can drive for hours and never say a word. No radio, no CB, just tires, wind. I miss the Mid-West back roads that you just drive until you are lost. I have lived in Michigan, Indiana, Maryland, Texas. Dawn moved a lot too. I guess that is why we travel now so much. Now that we have roots we just need to tumble for awhile. Ok after typing all of this and posting I realized that I had already posted in this thread! Whoops. All well.

The aircard is really just a cell phone that fits into the laptop. You can make calls from the the laptop just like a cell phone. They make a router that you can insert the aircard into and support several computers at once. This is only important if you have two or more people on the internet at the same time. It is funny how 10 years ago you would pay $3500 for one computer and now my 9 year old daughter, wife, and each have a laptop. The actual process of tethering has been made easier as more laptops and phones support this feature through bluetooth connection. If you pair your web enabled phone with your laptop via bluetooth, often you can then access the internet with out plugging the cable from the phone to the laptop. This is simple a convenience and does not alter what you are charged per month. Remember to turn off all auto update features on your computers operating system and all applications that check for new versions should not be allow to do so. Any cellular plan either phone or card has a limit and hefty overages. Most are set at 5 Gb per month. Sounds like a lot but it does not take long especially with photos or video to use 5 Gb. You can upgrade your plan for more gigabits per month but you want to avoid those overages. Another plus is that most phones that tether are web enabled phones first. Untethered features of these phones are great. I find that I use the phones video to youtube and emailing a lot. Mobile features like google maps for GPS navigations while away from the motor home to finding a restaurant or find the motor home again. Google Latitude allows our family to "join" us as our friends "by invitation" and they can log in to see where we are. It uses the phones GPS to share our location with the folks we choose. This is in real time so my wife's sister was talking to us on the phone while watching us moving on her computer map from home in West Virginia. She was able to see were we were in Texas on the move. Good thing I was not speeding! I use this tethering a lot. When we travel I am often on call and will connect back into the office to work on issues. Works very well in most places.

I have two that I bought when the family band radios were very expensive. I was using them to talk between two cars. I now keep it in the motor home. I enjoy the company on long drives when the wife is sleeping. It is a shame that the language is so bad that I am force to turn it off. Range is limited. I have a remote mic that plugs in to the hand held and I run it off of the 12 volt adapter that plugs into the cigarette lighter. I hang the radio by the driver window from its belt clip and attach the remote mike to the seatbelt. The remote mike is also a speaker. Works like a police radio when the officers wear the mike on the shoulder. It allows me to hear the radio at a lower volume with out disturbing the wife while she is sleeping.

I have been asking myself the same question. I have always run well into the 150 - 230k range with autos. The Tahoe had 265,000 miles on the original motor. The boy that bought it is still driving it with over 300,000. One big difference I see is that at 55 mph my Ford 460 (7.5L) is taching at around 2200 rpm which is its max torque. My Yukon at 55 is only taching at about 1600-1700 range. Over 80,000 miles the Ford will turn a lot more revolutions over its life. Of course the weight and wind cause these units to under a constant load were the cars and trucks are not as heavy. I hope some of it is lack of proper maintenance. If that is part of the problem then I should be ok because I am very careful to keep up with the scheduled PM.

Of course with the right motor coach..... Just kidding Will you be using an enclosed trailer? Open trailer could have the right GVW but be match the over all length of the vehicle so that it would not be any longer then car being towed on the ground. It will make a difference how long your motor home is too.

If you know someone that does phone work or network cabling you may be able to put a tone generator on the cable and use a sniffer to read the tone and trace the cables location on the roof. Some electricians have cable tracing tools as well.

I googled ice maker solenoid and found this photo. It may be a different color or shape but this will give you some place to start.

My friend says every time you drive a motor home is like your house being in an earthquake and when it is raining you can add a hurricane to the mix. It will take a few months to make the unit your own. Once you get through the initial issues you should be down to basic maintenance and be able to have a lot of enjoyment. On my unit there is an electric solenoid like you would find on a washing machine that fills the tray and then shuts off the water. There should be a board that controls the time that device is open filling the ice tray. Mine is located outside behind the access panel for the refrigerator. I would guess that either the solenoid is stuck or that the board has failed. I would check the solenoid first. It should be an easy check. You will need to research the best way to test the solenoid. Keep at it and good luck.

Do you have a solenoid that controls the route of the charging? I had an issue were driving down the road would not charge the coach batteries but on shore power it would. Bad solenoid. It was supposed to engage after the motor started to charge the system.

Wow. Never new that could happen. Thought it was only pressure from heating not an actual chemical reaction in the tire material that feeds the heating. Very good to know. I had a caliper so hot it was smoking. I am lucky it did result in the condition displayed. Thanks for the posting.

It is sad when common sense fails. All of our bikes are lighted front and back, my daughter even has flashing blinkers on her valve stems too. I always notify as we approach someone walking or riding with a "on your left" or "on your right" not notify them which side we are passing on.

It always feels good when everything is back working again. Of course if it never broke we would not have anything to do. Good Job!

Almost ruined my vacation once. I was tent camping in the hills of WV for a long weekend. Most vehicles have those safety devices. The brake lights stopped working. Parts store said they could get one but they would have to order it. We were tent camping and using the vehicle to sight see with the family so it was really going to change our plans. I pulled it out. Had to stand on my head to get to it but once I got it out I took it apart and swapped the reeds around so that I had brake lights but no cruise. Bought one on the road when I found one just in case but I waited until I got hope to switch it out. Always carry tools! Turned out to be a nice trip after all.

I believe that a RV body shop or a dealership may know someone that can paint that spot. If you have stopped the leak and cleaned the spot, they should be able to match the color. Just try not to clean it to the point that you change the texture of the carpet.

I hate taking something apart without the part in hand to replace it but my water heater had a similar issue. I broke my rule and pulled the sensors. My water heater as two sensors. One calls for heat and the other is the overheat shut off. Mine are held against the tank by a spring. I removed and tested by heating in hot water on a stove and using a ohm meter to measure open and closing. They tested ok but I noticed that over time the contact point between the sensor and the tank was not clean. Small strands of insulation had worked down between the sensor. I cleaned the contact area and placed sealed the black foam insulator that prevents cold air and moisture from entering. That black seal had lost its sticky and was not sealing correctly. I have not had any issues since. Of course it stopped working at about three days of 40 degrees and rain. It never seems to happen when it is convenient. It really helps if it would just stop working completely. I hate intermittent issues. Good Luck.

It is difficult. I am still young but old enough now that certain doors are starting to close. Your past does define you but it can be used as an excuse or an excuse to do better. We had a daughter late in life. I feel like we are enjoying her more then we would have when we were in our 20's. Both my wife and I moved a lot as young people with no roots. Now we have roots, but like you, we have the wandering lust for the open road. We have passed this passion on to our child and if nothing else I believe the experiences of travel, different people, places, will give her something she will never get from a book. WWII FPS, humm, snow storm is on its way this weekend. I may have to fire up the computer and dust of my mouse. It has been awhile since I played. My online name is Hardtop. Always enjoy playing teams better then the free for all. See you online. David IT Regional Systems Manager Still working and loving my Job!

We have been camping for years. I have pictures of my daughter sitting in her stroller, tent camping at Black Water Falls WV. When she turned 8 this past year I felt it was a good age show her the some of the county out west. We have a 2004 Popup tent camper that we love and have used it up and down the east coast and Canada. The trip to from Maryland to California would require something else. We needed something that would be self contained for boon docking on the way out and back. Once we got further west we planned on stopping for a few nights here and there as we traveled. I looked at renting a unit too but decided that purchasing an used unit would work better. It took us about 6 months to find the right motor home. Features, mileage, floor plan. You can find some really good deals. The unit I bought was a 1995 Fleetwood Bounder 35uw with only 10K miles and 150 hours on the generator. Simple design, no slides (which maximizes floor space while traveling), basic F53 Ford chassis and Ford 460 motor for easy, inexpensive repairs that almost any Ford mechanic can work on. Slides are great for extended stays, but when moving often, we do not feel closed in while on the rode with our floor plan. Units without slides tend cost less since most folks are looking for the slides. If I had to sell it right now, even at a loss, we have had a great year and have traveled over 10,000 miles with no regrets. The motor home is in better condition now then when I bought it. It would have cost me about $6000 to rent one for the 10,000 miles I have put on this unit. I believe I could sell this unit at a loss of half that right now and if I was in no hurry, someone would purchase it for what I have in it. You will need to find the right unit. I am able to perform most of my repairs and maintenance. My regular mechanic can take care of what I can not or do not want to work on. I would recommend the FMCA roadside assistance (just in case). I already had a Jeep to use as a toad so my only cost was the tow bar and brakes for it. I like the ReadyBrake for its simple, functional design. We have been 10,000 miles with it and it has worked great. I thought about purchasing a travel trailer but felt the motor home would be more comfortable for everyone and the Jeep would not tow much. I did not want to have to purchase a truck to pull something larger. If you decide to purchase, be sure you shake it down throughly before heading out. My dad has sold motor homes for 30+ years and if it can go wrong it will. You have to be flexible and remember you are on vacation. If something goes wrong you adjust your plans. My biggest problem now is to convince my wife to let me sell the popup and keep the motor home. We love the motor home camping now and would really miss it but the popup is paid for. Good luck!

I also have a Blackberry Verizon smart phone that I tether to a laptop. Works very well. Most plans limit you to 5 GB per month with a heafty per minute rate for overages. Most people will be fine but you want to be careful if you allow your computer to automatically update itself. Alot of software installed in computers will check for updates besides the operating system. Just monitor your usage.