tbutler

And in our Cummins 400, we also have a coolant filter that contains additives to maintain the chemical balance of the engine coolant. Don't forget to check the air cleaner filter as well! I voted no! This is a job that I will gladly pay someone else to do. I know it is expensive but I really don't need the hassle. The rest of the maintenance keeps me plenty busy.

AHA! I thought you were asking a question! Now I get it...

Cathie, Thanks for the latest news on California. My information was indeed several years old. Good to know that people really can escape from California! As to the legal documents, the last thing most of us want is to leave a muddled mess for the courts to decide for our heirs. The more air-tight your will and/or trust can be, the easier for those who will inherit from you. This is also the reasoning behind making your residence choice as solid as possible. Eliminate as much doubt as possible.

Hello CatholicDads! Welcome to the forum. Gary has some good advice for you, don't make any hasty decisions. The divorce is a big change and you need to adjust to that and evaluate your life again after six months or a year. I can say that there are a lot of people who are moving into RV parks as an alternate to living in a home or renting an apartment. I think the current economic conditions have influenced much of this. If you find that living in an RV in an RV park or other location works for you, go for it. You can use it as you expected to help your children learn about the outdoors. Remember that an RV is a depreciating investment. You will likely only get a fraction of the original value out of your RV when you decide to sell or trade it. That applies if you take good care of it and maintain it carefully. If you don't do this, it will depreciate further and be worth little. Right now there are many RV's for sale at a fraction of their original price, good for you as a shopper but bad for you as a seller!

I suspect a little more information might help someone answer that question. What is the make/model/year of your motorhome?

Pat60, I want to stress that this will improve your signal, it may not help in every situation. It all depends on the strength of the signal and how far away you are from the source. I can say that it made it possible for me to use signals that I couldn't even see before. I don't know about the Engenius but the Alfa does work with Vista. Unfortunately, I don't have a model or any identifying information on the antenna. If you were to contact Pasadena Networks and talk to them, they should be able to help you with questions about the Alfa and should be able to suggest the replacement antenna. Yes, the antenna came from Pasadena Networks and I believe they recommended it to my neighbor.

Here is one more vote for the vented dryer. We had a non-vented dryer in our '94 Dynasty and it was really poor at drying the clothes and it does use water to cool the jacket which goes into the gray water tank. The vented dryer is slower at drying than a home dryer but so much better than a non-vented that I would only consider the non-vented if the price difference were huge. Installation is a consideration as you will have to cut through the wall of the coach to install the vent. This might be a job for a professional. You wouldn't want to cut into a structural member in the coach wall. They should have a way, manufacturer information, a means to test for structural members, or the experience to know how to work their way through the wall without causing undue damage. Unless you know what you are doing, I would let the pros do the installation. You will have to add hot and cold water and the drain as well. My experience with Camping World is that you are working with people who are very experienced at working with RV's. I have had to have minor corrections made to work done by them but nothing really serious. Your dealer/manufacturer might also be able to do a capable job of installation.

We are in day three of our 11-day trip with our two 8-year-old grandsons. We had a great day at the Evansville, Indiana Zoo on Wednesday. Both boys are really into animals and ran from one exhibit to the next. If there was something to climb on or slide down, so much the better! The Evansville Zoo is a small zoo but the animals are close to the viewer, unlike some larger zoos. They have one tiger, other zoos have more. We were less than six feet from the tiger as he paced his enclosure! The boys were always on the move, grandma kept up with them, grandpa was trying to take pictures and always lagging behind. We had too many good animal encounters to describe them all here. We bought a digital camera for the boys to use. Grandma had to carry it but they could ask for it at any time. The pictures will be only part of their record. They are both working on journals. They both have books of blank pages stapled together and they write their story for each day in their books. It is a delight to listen to them discussing the days activities as they write in the book. The books weren't our suggestion, grandson #2 made them up and brought them with him. We stayed at Burdette Park RV in Evansville. It is a very nice public park with bicycle trails, a BMX course, a huge swimming pool and water recreation area, lots of playgrounds, volleyball, tennis courts, you name it, they have it. The RV park is nice but not great for big rigs. The roads through town to get to the park are poorly trimmed and very narrow. This is true of the trees in the campground also. So many trees here we couldn't get the satellite TV to work. There is no wi-fi and our cell modem was roaming and would hardly work at all. Still, I would love to take the boys back there in the future and spend more time there. Rates are reasonable and staff is friendly. Today we drove to Corydon, the first state capital of Indiana. It is a short drive from Evansville and we arrived early enough in the day to walk around town. It is a charming small town with a country feel. We walked by the old state capital building. It was closed for the day but we can tour it another day if we want. We found a pharmacy with a soda fountain and went in for ice cream. Our youngest grandson has a milk allergy so finding something for him when we are having ice cream is a challenge. The girl at the counter suggested a cherry phosphate and so he ordered one. It disappeared in short order. Now he has a favorite drink. His mother, a pharmacist, called this evening and he told her about the cherry phosphate several times and then grandma took the phone and explained it further. She had never heard of a phosphate! Times have changed! I took the boys for a bicycle ride while grandma cooked dinner. We rode the bike trail, crossed a low water bridge through some water and grandson #1 slipped in the mud after crossing the creek and crashed! After much wailing, I got him calmed down and we talked about the fact that he had made it across the creek, just slipped in the mud. Then I saw a dead snake where he had crashed. I told him he had killed the snake. He laughed at that. After that everything was better. We got back to the RV and as I was claiming the muddy jacket to rinse in the hose, grandson #2 was inside telling grandma all about the accident. I had to laugh. No better story than someone getting injured in a crash. Luckily, nothing was seriously hurt, not even a single band aid required. The two boys were outside playing, swinging on tree limbs, collecting rocks and generally having a good time for an hour and half after dinner! Guess he'll survive. Not sure about grandpa!

This is why we maintain an address in our original home state. We visit the physicians and dentists, etc. that we did for the many years we were working because it is the only practical way to keep the health insurance under our employer. It is the one area where we are bending our rule to be completely attached to our home state. We have three more years before reaching Medicare which I believe will take care of our problem. Meanwhile, the phrase, "Don't ask, don't tell" is good advice for health care when going full time. Insurance companies are forced by different state laws to compartmentalize themselves into separate entities. For two years after retirement we worked for a company in Illinois while residing in Missouri. We had to maintain our policies with the employer we retired from as well as the policy with the new company. They were both United Health Care but we couldn't arrange any way to combine the two so we were paying double insurance to the same company! If we had dropped the policy of our retirement company, then when we left the Illinois employer we would have lost all insurance and been on the market as individuals. It is maddening! This is just one reason I am hoping that the President is successful in his bid to make health care universal in this great country. The fractured health care system we have now only works for a few. We need a system that will include everyone, not just the fortunate.

They sound like a couple of angels now, our two grandsons, ages 7 and 8, snoozing on the foldout bed. They have been raised as close as cousins could be and they prize their time together. So I thought it would be a good idea to take the pair on an RV adventure. This will test my mettle, putting them together is like putting a couple of Uranium atoms close together! Stuff happens. It's just good ol' boy stuff. This evening they hauled rocks from one place to another for a while. Then they found the two toads! I made sure those were released, only slightly traumatized, into the woods. They ride bikes like demons and play make-believe all the time. I had to wait my turn on my computer this evening while they played chess! Their game leaves a great deal to be desired, but they love it and someday in the not-too-distant future, they'll be beating Grandpa! We are about to set out on an 11- day tour to Evansville, Indiana, Jeffersonville, IN, Louisville, KY, Indianapolis, IN and then Springfield, IL. We have a zoo, a candy factory, a baseball bat factory, a children's museum and an historical site on the agenda. In between, we'll ride bicycles, play tennis, go hiking and learn to be good campers. So tonight we're almost ready to go. The boys, true to form, couldn't wait for the trip to begin. So despite the fact we are still parked in my daughter's driveway, they have moved in and are spending the night with Grandpa. Where is Grandma, you ask? Well, this is Bridge night for the Phila Bridge Club which she has been a member of for nearly 40 years. She misses their games when we are traveling so when we are back in Missouri, she makes that card game a priority. When we travel she writes a two-page letter to her ladies each month with some of the news of our activities. In years past she has occasionally flown from whereever we are back to Missouri for their weekend at the Lake of the Ozarks. Can you imagine eight women staying in two condos at the lake? Roommates, late-night card games, snacks and spirits ... it sounds like college days all over again. Last year she came back from the weekend having played 500 games of Bridge. This is serious fun. Yes, there is a traveling trophy. She will be home soon and tomorrow when the boys wake, ready to get this trip on the road, she'll pay for her late night! Tomorrow I have a few outdoor jobs before we roll, and she will have the inside of the house to contend with. We plan to be on the road as Grandma would say, "at the crack of 10." So think of this as a great mystery novel. Who will be the survivor? Who will walk away from this adventure and who will crawl? Who was it that thought this would be a good idea? Uh ...

The thing that worried me about his discussion of an open neutral was that this was damaged, not completely open. It only showed itself under a large continued load. He says it would pass the normal testing most people who test would do. He also says that the normal surge protector and its tests for proper wiring wouldn't detect this problem. So even if you do routine testing, it would look good and then when you turned on the water heater, microwave and coffee pot, things would go awry. He doesn't go on to describe how he would recommend testing. I can envision using several portable heaters or other devices to induce a large load but even that wouldn't be like turning on two air conditioners, the water heater and the coffee pot. So how do you stress the circuit so it would show a damaged (potentially open) neutral line? I thought the explanations of the neutral and ground lines was excellent and the diagrams and explanation for wiring 30 amp and 50 amp outlets for RV's as opposed to other kinds of wiring that electricians normally do should help RV'ers explain to an electrician what they want done when installing a home outlet, even if they aren't doing the work themselves. Good explanation of how to do testing and what the readings from the tests should be also. I hope everyone takes the opportunity to visit this site.

This web site has great information on AC electric. http://www.myrv.us/electric/ I found the section on open neutral to be particularly enlightening (or frightening).

Clay, That is an excellent resource. Explains it better than I ever could. Thanks for adding that. I've bookmarked the site.

Four 12V household batteries hooked up in the series/parallel manner as the 6V batteries would give you 24 V and fry lots of stuff. The 6V batteries that should have been installed would be hooked up in series 2x2 to give 12 volts and then in parallel to give additional amp hours. Had the 12V batteries been all hooked up in parallel the voltage would have been 12V which is what the system is intended to work with. Check fuses to see if/which are blown and then rewire batteries to a 12 V status. I don't know how you rewire four 12V batteries to get 6V but if they did, that is 1/2 the voltage you should have. That would also explain the failure of anything to operate. Your household batteries should provide power at 12V. This is done by hooking up 2 6V batteries one behind the other + to - to + to - and then doing the same with the other two 6V batteries. Then these pairs are hooked up in parallel, + to + and - to - . This adds "depth" to the 12V power (doubling the amp hours of storage). Finally, if the 12V batteries are "starting" batteries, not deep cycle batteries, they are completely the wrong kind of batteries and should be returned to the shop where originally sold and exchanged for 6V deep cycle batteries (commonly referred to as golf cart batteries). As I have never heard of using four 12V batteries, the shop you had install the batteries must have been completely unfamiliar with RV systems. They owe you a big apology and a full refund.

Hello Richard and Karen, I assume you got my message I posted on your Blog last night. I was talking about a fuse on the toilet itself. If the toilet and the CO detector are both out, you would be looking for a 12V fuse somewhere in a control panel. In our motor home, the 12V house fuses are located in a panel in the bedroom. I know that many of the newer coaches have electronics located in the closet in the back of the RV. You should have a very good owners manual in your Camelot. Look in that owners manual for the location of the 12V house fuses. You are not looking for the automotive 12V fuses which are located in an outside compartment usually under the drivers seat. We should have a Camelot owner who can further enlighten you but it may take a day or two for them to pick up on this post.

As we have traveled the US and Canada we have enjoyed getting way off the beaten path taking some 4WD roads to adventure. I'll share a few of those in hopes that others will contribute some of their own. Our first encounter with 4WD roads was in Death Valley National Park our first year out. We didn't have a 4WD vehicle so we could only read and wish. There are some great 4WD roads there including one that is listed as for experienced 4WD drivers only, deep sand! In Big Bend National Park we drove several 4WD roads including one that roughly parallels the Rio Grande River from one side of the park to the other. That drive took all day to go 50 miles. Part of the time was my taking about 400 pictures. The cactus was in full bloom and there was no end of beautiful scenery. The road was definitely a 4WD road with rough arroyo crossings. In Alaska we found some rugged roads that could be traveled with 2WD but were easier in 4WD. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in eastern Alaska has two roads into the park. Both roads are gravel and fairly easy to travel but the northern road crosses several streams. The loose gravel bottoms would have been dicey with 2WD. The southern road is more a tire hazard than a 4WD road. It goes about 60 miles into the park to Kennicott Glacier. The road is an old railroad grade and a few of the railroad spikes and other debris occasionally come to the surface. We encountered the mother of all 4WD roads a few years ago in Canada. There is an area identified as Crown Land in northern Ontario. Chapleau Crown Game Preserve north of Sioux Ste. Marie and east of Wawa is logged land that is remote and now rich in wildlife. We saw numerous moose and bear. There is a loop road, the western portion is wide and easily traveled. The eastern part of the loop is narrow, rugged and challenging in a 4WD. We negotiated through a ditch for about 400 feet to get around a beaver dam built right on the road. Further down the road we had to go through a series of wash outs up to six feet wide and better than a foot deep. I would only advise taking this road in a 4WD vehicle. It was that remote loop where we saw most of the wildlife. Finally I'll mention a road not taken. We spent three weeks in the summer of 2007 touring Utah with friends. Canyonlands National Park has four wheel drive roads along what is called the white rim of the canyon. Our friends had a 4WD also but the women didn't want to do the drive. Someday we'll return to see that territory. Now, if you are a 4WD fan, share a few locations where you have found good roads for 4 wheeling.

Rolacoy, Welcome to the FMCA Community! Looking for an active forum? Why not help make this one more active? There are lots of people reading here, give them something to talk about. Find a forum that is of interest to you and join the conversation. Post some questions and start a conversation. You'll get out of the forum what you put into it! As you said, there are lots of Class B motor homes on the road. Help get them talking right here. Start by telling the rest of us what is unique about Class B travel. Maybe start a Blog with some of your adventures. This is a relatively new website so you can help make it successful!

Here is a tip for those who have to go through a "process" to get a vehicle ready to tow. I made a checklist on the computer and printed it off to use. After several uses, made revisions to make sure everything was included in the right order. Then I printed it off and had it laminated. That is stored in the drivers side pocket of the toad for ready reference. We don't really use it any more for the hitch stuff but the transmission shift process is involved enough that the checklist comes out of the pocket every time we tow. Louise usually takes care of that process while I do the hitch stuff. The list really comes in handy when I have to do the shifting! I put the towing checklist on one side of the sheet and the back into service checklist on the other side of the sheet before laminating. It is a half sheet of paper, 8.5 x 5.5 inches and very convenient to find and use. I also keep similar checklists for things like checking the transmission fluid level in the Allison transmission in the drivers side map pocket of the motor home. What can I say, I'm a pilot, we use checklists for getting dressed in the morning... pants first then shoes!

Cathe, Thanks for your story. We'll be looking forward to seeing you on the road! I'll give you some details of our move. After doing the book study and deciding on South Dakota, we corresponded with Ron Triebwasser at My Home Address. He recommended an attorney who handled a number of his clients so we made an appointment with her. We signed up with Ron and he gave us our new address. We flew to Sioux Falls one weekend, rented a car. Our first stop the next morning was at the drivers license bureau. We turned in our Missouri drivers licenses and got new South Dakota licenses with our new address on the spot. Our SD drivers licenses expire every 5 years. Our motor home was purchased from individuals so we didn't have license plates on it yet. We went to Ron and accompanied him to the the county court house and registered the motor home and got our license plate for it (that is the short version, it took a little more than that because of special circumstances). After the meeting with our attorney, our wills and estate were modified for South Dakota laws. That concluded our visit to South Dakota. We returned home, put the new plates on our motor home, moved it out of storage and began moving into it. Our house wasn't sold, it wasn't even cleaned out yet. We found a park near our home and commuted to the house every day, going about the process of cleaning it out and fixing it up. We took trips on weekends to get familiar with our new home. I had a workshop to attend in Florida so we spent a week and half on that trip. When we returned we moved into another park with better facilities. We got the car licensed about a month after the motor home. It was all done by mail. We finished moving out of the house and now moved to another RV park closer to our children. We stayed there until late in November. Just before we left we finally sold my pickup truck. We were now down to the motor home, our car and a tow dolly. We headed south to New Orleans and spent a long Thanksgiving weekend enjoying the southern breezes. Louise cooked Thanksgiving dinner in the RV! From there we went to Houston where I had flight training scheduled with the Texas Air Aces. I would learn to fly and recover from unusual attitudes in small airplanes. We spent a week there, enjoyed Tomball and Spring. We left Houston in a heavy downpour headed for San Antonio. Friends from our pilot's group in Missouri met us in San Antonio and showed us around the area. We entertained in our motor home for the first time. We stayed in Boerne just north of San Antonio the month of December. We returned to Missouri at Christmas and were able to sign the papers for the sale of our home while there. When we returned to Boerne, the weather was colder than we had hoped for so we took the advice of the campground owner in Tomball who suggested we might enjoy "the valley," the Rio Grande Valley of extreme south Texas. On January 1 we left Boerne and didn't stop until we got to Edinburg, Texas. On the way south, Louise had found us an RV park. We pulled in and said we would stay for three days. Shortly after arriving we went back to the office and extended our stay to a week. Before the week was up, we extended to a month and then two months. We left at the end of February for other commitments. We have been back to that park every winter since. Now I go through all this to show that the break with the old home state can be a gradual one. How fast you are able to make that transition may depend on a lot of things but the important thing is that you continue to make progress to get it all together in your new state. As soon as we had our address and our drivers licenses, we contacted our retirement system and had our address changed. This immediately stopped the state withholding on our paychecks. That was about a $1000 a month pay raise. Various pension systems have their own rules about residency and how it affects taxes on pensions. I believe that California pensioners have to pay California taxes on their pension no matter where they live. In 2002 I filed my last Missouri state income tax for the part of the year 2001 we lived in Missouri. There is no income tax in South Dakota and we don't have to file a form. I hadn't thought about that in a while, I remember being so happy, just filing that Missouri form was such a pain, not talking about the money, talking about all the quirky rules! Now it is just a distant memory. As to cost of living, I'll refer you to a post I made about 2 weeks ago on under the heading: Buying a Motorhome:Cost of Motorhome Ownership. In that post I put our budget for major items in actual dollar terms. Our lifestyle and motor home affect those numbers, I know there are people who spend less, likely lots less, and there are those who spend much more. Hope some of this helps. Keep asking questions...

I ran across this blog from a writer for RV magazines. It has references to roads and some of the things they saw along the way. Their routing was different from ours but they ended up seeing many of the places we saw. Here is the web site: http://rvstufff.blogspot.com/ Fair number of pictures as well as well written dialog.

I can't speak for the Avalanche but the Tahoe we looked at had the same kind of process our Trailblazer uses. You have to put the transfer case into neutral by holding the switch to the neutral position about 15 seconds (all after starting and shifting per instructions). Once it shifts to neutral the car is free wheeling. You then check that by shifting the transmission into drive and reverse just to make sure the transfer case is in neutral. We have to pull a couple of fuses under the hood and then we're ready to tow. We have had problems with a loose connection at the switch from time to time. Apparently ordinary driving will cause the wiring connector to come loose and then we can't shift into or out of neutral. I have figured out the emergency fix for that is a calibrated smack on the dash about 5 cm to the right or left of the switch! If that doesn't work repeat until it does. If all else fails, invoke a mild to major curse and smack it again! Viola! Ready to tow!!!

SeaJay, I've seen your cars, or at least pictures of them. They are very nice cars! No official word on towing cars on tow dollies recommends towing with the rear wheels on the tow dolly! There are technical reasons for this having to do with the way the front wheels are aligned for stability in forward travel. Run it backwards and it becomes inherently unstable. Tire wear will likely be a problem. See the discussion under Technical:Towing:Tow Dolly Considerations for both sides of this argument. Plus, I've had flat tires on tow dollies and only known when a passing motorist flagged us down. I know you will hear from people who have done it for years and done so successfully but I think you would be best advised not to do that. If I had one of your cars, the only way I would put it behind the motor home would be in an enclosed trailer! Think about it. Have you ever been stuck, pinched in behind a tractor trailer truck a little too close? Were you anxious about what was going to come up off the road from that truck? Having your nose (or tail) stuck to the back of a motor home is a terrible place to be. Your beautiful car will take some hits. We have a guardian on our tow bar, a full width mud flap on the rear of the motor home and mud flaps on each wheel of the motor home and we still found gravel on the roof of our Trailblazer. We added a bra that covers the front end and the windshield and it chafes the paint in a few areas. We get sand and dirt on the side windows and that scratches them when you raise and lower them. It is hard duty for any vehicle. I am resolved to keep the Trailblazer until we quit full-timing just because of the damage the car gets behind the motor home. I would never put a new car or valuable car behind the motor home knowing what I know now. That is just my opinion, I could be wrong! After reading the above referenced discussion again, I'm certain I'll be wrong - for somebody!

Welcome to the FMCA Community! So glad to see you here! Everyone wants to know about you! You can put your information here and we might find it... But if you go to My Controls at the top of this page, you can find a place to tell us who you are, what your hobbies are, what you drive, what you did, where you are, even if you want, your birthday! Each month FMCA draws a name out of the hat for the birthdays that month and gives away a free RV wash done by the FMCA Community moderators!!!! NOT! Really, please take a few minutes to start filling in some of the blanks on My Controls. It helps us all know you better. Then when we click on your name with an article we can read all about you. Also, things like your signature let us know what equipment you are using. That helps a lot if you have a question about something related to your motor home. If you ask questions about places to visit we want to know what your interests are. Need some help? Go to "Forum Support" under the Forum category "Miscellaneous". You will find a post titled, "READ FIRST: Forum basics. Start now, go to the line that says logged in as: Click on My Controls... Fill in one category. Then click on your log in name and see what it looks like! That is what we will see when we come to visit you! And it will be handy for us, right there with each and every message you post. You can change the information with time! Look at what some of us do with our information and use that as an example. Well, maybe not... This community is like any other, you get out of it what you put into it. Again, welcome and enjoy the community that is FMCA!

The standard receiver on all Monaco diesels has been 10,000 pounds for the last 15 years. We had a '94 Dynasty with a 10,000 pound hitch. We have friends that have towed an Avalanche with no problems for years. Their coach wasn't a Monaco. I don't think they are on the FMCA website but I'm betting we'll find someone else who tows the Avalanche. And, yes, check with the company that is supplying your tow bar and other equipment to be sure all is rated to carry that load. I don't think the Avalanche will come close to the 10,000 pounds even loaded with your equipment. We recently took a look at a Chevy Tahoe and it had a GVWR of 7,300 pounds. I'm betting the GW of those two vehicles are about the same. In fact I just checked the statistics on the FMCA Towables article for 2009 and the Avalanche outweighs the Tahoe by 90 pounds! The curb weight listed there is 5560. That doesn't count fuel, equipment loaded on board, etc. I would get a tow bar rated above the GVWR just to be safe.