tbutler

I can answer the question about the force to pull the pin. It should be an easy finger pull. The pin won't come out though in a real situation, the pin would likely be torn from its encasement. Just push it back in place and it is ready to go. It is essential that you test the installation once it is complete. I had a friend who had this system and there was a faulty valve somewhere in the system. He pulled the pin and the brake cylinder didn't budge, no brake. That was repaired quickly but it would have meant that unit would not have functioned in an emergency. Note also if the pin assembly is mounted properly. The installation instructions specify that it should not be mounted to plastic materials such as a license plate frame - which is exactly where they mounted mine at the shop that did the install. I had that relocated before I left the shop. I wouldn't test this too frequently. Check with Roadmaster. It is a part that should be easily replaced if it wears out. Still I only check mine several times a year.

You might also try the truck servicing companies. I've seen Freightliner shops with extensive parts departments that include many different types and styles of lug nut covers. I never could find an exact match for ours when we lost some due to a flat tire. I bought similar ones and put one kind on the rear tires (less visible) and the others on the front tires. Real Wheels Corporation website has this page that gives you 17 different styles. Google lug nut covers for more similar listings.

Thanks for directing lebjdixon to my posting - it's nice to have friends! My original posting has been added to recently and now contains photos by another remodeler. That posting show a swing out design with room for a desktop computer behind the TV. I'm sure there are many other good ideas out there so if you tackle this project, take pictures and give us an additional article.

I installed a Flo-Jet in our 2004 Windsor shortly after we got it. The install was relatively simple. Positioning the unit so it will feed well from the sewage outlet took some consideration. Being entirely a d-i-y project, I had to do some searching to find a suitable outlet hose. I chose to get a transparent reinforced hose and cut it in sections of varying length so I could use only as much as I wanted. A friend (sailor type) directed me to a farm supply store where I obtained quick connect endings for my hose sections so they snap together easily. Look in the pump section for hose fittings. They come in sizes from 3/4 inch hose to 2 or three inch hose. When we visited my mother, her sewage clean-out for the house was 80 feet from where we parked. I had enough hose to handle that run and carried it with me. It paid off several times being able to take a site with no sewer hook-up but being able to dump at a nearby site (with permission) without having to relocate. I also had several sites where it was more convenient to park backward in the site and then run the hose under the MH to the dump on the other side. You will have to wire in an electrical supply, switch and fuse for the unit. I was able to tap into the DC wiring to the inverter for a short run of #10 wire. The wire, switch and fuse were standard auto store items. We do not have a gray water bypass so we just have to run the macerator more often. I don't consider that a great inconvenience. I installed the feed line to the macerator so it could be unhooked from the sewage outlet. I can and do use the 3" line when we are parked in one place for an extended period of time. I'll also use the 3" line if Louise has a large amount of laundry to wash. Finally, I purchased a second Flo-Jet when they were on sale at Camping World. The pump uses an impeller with flexible rubber vanes which will wear out in time. When a vane breaks off or becomes ineffective then the pump takes longer to empty, evenutally becoming veerrryyy slow. I rebuild one pump after it has dried out good and then keep it in storage waiting for the other pump to wear out. I have to rebuild a pump (full time living) about every two years. Rebuild kits for our pump are available from West Marine. I talked to one person who gave up on their macerator because it had become so slow. He didn't know that they required an occasional replacement of the impeller. For an on-the-road dump site (Flying J, etc.), you can't beat the convenience and cleanliness of the macerator.

Don't let warm keep you from considering South Dakota. They recently upped their residency requirements. I think you have to show a receipt for one night in an RV park or hotel to establish residency now! It's plenty warm there in the summer! In 91/2 years in South Dakota, we were never there in the winter... duh!

When we went full time almost 10 years ago there was a booklet which we purchased that dealt with full timing decision on state of residency. Choosing Your RV Home Base does an analysis of all states and compares not only licensing and taxes but also covers other factors, how to establish residency, laws related to inheritance taxes, etc. I highly recommend this booklet. We considered a number of states, some were eliminated because of the distance from where we would normally be traveling (mail delivery delays). Alaska would be fine but who wants their mail to go to Alaska and then have it forwarded to Florida? Vermont looked good but they require six months in residence to qualify as a resident. You get the idea. There are many things to consider. We came to the conclusion above, Florida, Texas or South Dakota. We were residents of South Dakota for 9 1/2 years before actually moving to a house in Texas this last summer. Ohio was never on our radar. Besides the book above, there are numerous discussions on the Web. Simply do a search for RV state of residency and you can get hundreds of opinions.

As we were driving from Texas to Missouri last weekend it occurred to me that we were in the car making a road trip. Well, I knew that! But this was the second long-distance road trip we've made in the six months since we moved into a stick house. We chose to make this trip by car because of the driving distance and the possibility of encountering some real winter weather. Somehow, driving the four wheel drive Trailblazer seemed a better choice than taking the motor home. We'll leave Missouri next Monday headed for Denver and a family wedding before returning to south Texas. So packing for this trip we're digging deep into our stored winter clothes. Now we're using suit cases instead of the closets in the motor home. We needed formal clothes for the wedding and I just had shoulder surgery so I needed clothes for the rehab following the surgery. The uncertainty of the surgery added to reasons for driving the car instead of flying commercial. The shoulder surgery, by the way, was was successful. I still have a shoulder and it still hurts but give a few days or weeks to heal, it should be good as new and the pain of a torn rotator cuff will be a distant memory. Last summer we left the motor home at my daughters home while we hauled our stored goods south to our house in Texas. I took along tools so I could do some finishing work on the house while down there. Again, I was unloading the motor home for the trip. Traveling was much simpler when we just closed up the motor home and headed down the road. Now it is a real production getting ready for a trip in the car. We need to remember to take everything we need instead of knowing it is all in the motor home. So I guess this is an adjustment I'm going to have to make. At each of our stops we have family to stay with and on the road we're staying in motels again. I can't help but compare this with the days when we hardly ever stayed at motels and our family visits always ended each day with our return to our home parked not far away in a RV park. Louise almost ran the car out of gas when she was driving. Actually the alarm would have gone off first but our fuel choices would have been quite limited at that point. She said we had just fueled up in the morning and she was thinking it would be several days before we needed gas again! Oh the joys of motor homing. Funny how the equation for making decisions changes so much once we have a house.

Lots of spare parts for engines and mechanical but I also carry latches for the drawers and doors in the motor home. Ours are plastic and they are breaking on a fairly regular basis. I also have a supply of the spring hinges on our overhead cabinets. Our drawer rails have a cheap plastic anchor at the back of each cabinet. I found a stronger replacement at Home Depot and purchased a set for every drawer in the motor home. I'm about 2/3 through the replacement process! After doing some searching I found replacements for a broken hold down strap for our window awnings and I have several in reserve now. As you get to know your coach, your find out what breaks frequently and having a ready supply of these items will keep everything running smoothly without all the hassle of locating a supplier when you are in an unfamiliar area. I posted an BLOG entry on an experience we had recently with our generator. We have an Onan 7.5 KW generator and it has a belt. I had no idea. When I replaced the serpentine belt on the engine, they asked if I wanted the belt on the generator replaced as well. I said yes - fortunately. When they removed the old belt it was cracked and missing several inches of the inner soft material that interfaces with the pulley. I was within hours of having a generator failure and didn't even know the generator had a belt!

And, if the batteries don't last all night, fire up the generator and recharge them then shut down once they have a charge. In the meantime, while the generator is charging the batteries, you might as well use the heat pump or heat strips in your AC - if you have them. With any furnace or heating system, you have a great deal of control over how often and how long they run to keep you warm. Set the temperature lower and throw on an extra blanket and you may find you can get by all night long with just the batteries. There are other ways to lighten the load on your heater. Park between a couple of big rigs or on the lee side of a building to shelter you from the wind. If you are parking before dark, get some sunlight in the windshield to help keep the unit warm until dark. If you have a folding sun shade for the front window, use it at night, any insulation you can add will help. We used to fit foam core boards (art department at Wal-Mart) into our windows when we were in a cold location. Windows and leaky seals are your worst enemy when it comes to losing heat so anything you can do to tighten up the air leaks if any and covering windows with even a little insulation will help your furnace run longer on battery power.

We were in South Carolina one winter, Spartinburg, and woke up to ice on the windshield and of course the slide out covers. I went out and watched as Louise brought them in. We had no problems, the ice pealed off as the fabric rolled over the roller. I had her go slow and stop periodically to be sure everything was rolling properly. I guess we were lucky, probably warm enough to allow the ice to break loose. We've also had snow on our slide outs and retracted without problems. If you are flexible with your travel days, watch the weather channel and try to pick a weather window when there are no big storms in the center of the country and then head straight south to the Gulf before going east or west.

We were in the Las Vegas area this fall and our house batteries were crying out to be replaced. I've done it myself but we were on a schedule so this time I needed a shop. I've been getting ads from a dealer in Las Vegas for years so I went to their web site. They were out of business but their website referred us to Las Vegas RV Doctor. We called them, they got us right in on a Saturday morning. They went right to work, three techs working on us in their air conditioned shop and had us out the door in under two hours. The bill: $730. They had a connection with a failed dealership, hired many of their techs so brought a lot of experience over. I'm betting they were picking up the bill for the dealers web site. They had a very large shop in what had to be a high rent district but with Las Vegas real estate woes, I'm betting they were getting bargain prices on the rent. After you take the cost of the new batteries out of the bill, I probably paid $250 for the labor, about $125 per hour but having as many as three people working on our rig during that time it seemed like a pretty good bargain. They had a dozen rigs in the shop, all high end, several with custom paint jobs. I asked if they were new coaches that came from the dealership but they said no, these were privately owned coaches. They were doing a land office business. So the business is out there if you find the right "hole" in the repair community. Good luck in your search.

Here is a previous discussion of a different motor home decision but many of the points made may apply. You don't discuss your personal situation so those may be different but if you like your current motor home, why change? The fact that you use the motor home for only a few trips a year is an even better reason to keep what you have. Think of what you would be spending to get a newer motor home and apply that to the amount of use. You can do a lot of maintenance for the price of a newer motor home. The aggravation factor related to repair work may be lower on a newer motor home - or it may not - depending on how well the previous owner took care of the motor home. Even a brand new motor home has its repair list within a few trips. If you've got something good, stick with it.

Well, hello neighbor! We're at Edinburg, about 80 miles to the northwest of your location. Tomorrow I'm leading a group of bicyclists on a visit to Resaca de la Palma State Park and World Birding Center at Olmito, near Brownsville. We drive to the park arriving about 10:30 and then ride around enjoying any wildlife we can spot, mostly birds but you never know. After the ride we're off to lunch somewhere in Brownsville. We have a ride in Port Isabel scheduled sometime in January! We rode South Padre Island about a month ago. By the way, with the current winter weather up north, there will be a huge influx of frozen Minnesotans, and even colder Canadians coming right after the holidays. Right now they are loading their RV's faster than Santa is loading his sleigh. Tom

As a frequent traveler in few states, I'm looking for a system that is national, one transponder for every toll road, border to border. Come to think of it, why not Canada also? If the states can get together and have multi-state lotteries, why not universal toll collection systems? If I return to Florida and use the toll roads, I'll be in the cash only lane!

Both Monaco's we owned had a removable panel on the dash above the instrument panel that gave easy access to the entire back of the instrument panel. That removable panel is easy to spot, rectangular about 12 inches by 30 inches on our current Windsor. Pull or pry the covers off the screw heads and unscrew it. There is plenty of spaghetti underneath! Enjoy!

These are some great suggestions. Coaches differ so much that you really can't compare one to another, especially in the insulation - though none of them hold heat that well. I would suggest that if you want to know how much your coach will require, do all that ccmsm suggests but set the thermostat at a little more conservative 55 degrees. Keep a record of the heating degree days (difference between house winter temperature at 68 degrees and the outside temperature through the day) available from the US weather service - weather radio has this info regularly. A heating degree day is figured as the difference between the average temperature for the day subtracted from the recommended 68 degree house temperature. If the average temperature on a day is 42 degrees, the number of heating degree days would be 26. We have weather radio on the CB as well as one we take with us. Adjust the figures by subtracting 13 for the difference between 68 and 55. In the example above, subtract 13 from 26 heating degree days for an adjusted 13 heating degree days. Then monitor the propane and when you need a refill find out how many adjusted degree days there have been. Then you have a definite number to work with. Of course a sunny day will be better than a cloudy day for warming the coach and degree days don't factor that in. Still, you could get a good idea of how your coach performs in cold weather.

Herman, Be careful! Marines are fearless - until you put a piece of paper and a pencil in front of them! You know what they say... The pen is mightier than the sword! I know Wayne is reading this. I'm sure we'll hear from him!

When we traveled in Alaska we learned about "closet dumpers." Those frost induced dips in the road that take the motor home down through a trough and then up again. If you drive over 40 or 45 miles per hour through these dips, they dump the clothes hangers off the rod onto the floor. This happened in 5th wheels as well as motor homes. We learned to watch the road and anticipate these dips and after two incidents, we had no more problems - simply slow down. Your coach is seven years old and you might check the condition of your shock absorbers. They should be reducing the bouncing of the rear of the coach. If this problem has just started becoming more common, perhaps it is the wear on the shock absorbers which are responsible. I'm sure that some motor homes are more prone to this than others. If the distance behind the rear axle is greater, bumps will be exaggerated in the rear of the motor home. Our motor home has a fairly short distance between the rear axle and the closet in the rear of the motor home. Being a diesel, that weight may also help stabilize the rear of the motor home. So I don't have tricks of the trade other than to slow down on rough and irregular roads and perhaps check your shocks.

Gramps, We do indeed have a good mix of perspectives on motor homing. More are always welcome of course. I'm sure we'll catch a new blogger or two soon. I really enjoyed your Thanksgiving get away! Happy holidays! Tom

It's been a shocking month and a half since I've written about our motor home and the experiences it brings us. There are many excuses: busy lives, family challenges, etc. Most of all, there has been little activity involving the motor home. We parked the motor home in the driveway next to our new mobile home at Sandpipers on October 13. I buttoned her down with window sun screens, and tire covers. Then we began to unload our gear from the closets and cabinets. This was new territory for us. For the last 9 1/2 years we have been living in a motor home. We unloaded one motor home before this one and that was a direct transfer from the old motor home to the new. I carried drawers from the old motor home out the door of the old, two steps on the ground, and right into the new motor home. Louise unloaded them, packing them away in the new motor home, and I brought the drawers back to the old motor home. Three days and we were on our way in a new home! Now we were moving into a house. The half-empty motor home will sit beside our home until spring when we head north to escape the heat of the south Texas summer. The refrigerator was emptied post haste. It was near failing and we were glad to shut it down. Will it ever run again? Only time will tell. Some clothes came out right away, others as the occasion demanded. One of those rare times when I needed a pair of dress slacks I had to hustle into the motor home and dig into the closet to bring several pairs into the house. I reluctantly unpacked my tools as the jobs in the house began to pile up. After a while, my focus is on getting the house in operating condition. I'm spending less and less time in the motor home. When we returned home we made a stop at a inspection station to have the motor home inspected. We weighed in at the Flying J as we needed a weight ticket for our license plates. We planned to take it out one more time for our driving test to get our Texas drivers licenses. With that in mind, we didn't refuel on our way home. We would do that after we had completed the driving test. Shortly before Thanksgiving, Louise called the drivers license bureau to get specific details of the testing procedure. She was told we would not need to take a test and could get our license by turning in our South Dakota licenses. So we picked up all the required paperwork and headed off to the license bureau. After waiting in line for two hours, we arrived at the counter. Anna Marie efficiently worked her way through our paperwork and issued us our Texas drivers license. After checking her computer, she apparently found the information that equated our South Dakota operator license with the Texas Class B license. We were able to exchange our South Dakota drivers licenses for a Texas Class B license required to drive a motor home greater than 26,000 pounds without having to take a written or driving test! Louise was visibly relieved. Every time I had mentioned the impending test to her she got this graven look on her face that said she really didn't want to face the test now or later. I was greatly relieved because I was beginning to think that I was going to be the only driver of the motor home. So now we didn't have to take the motor home out for the test. But there it sits, with a partial tank of fuel and no fuel preservative. So I pulled the tire covers off and removed the sun screens. Several hours going through the interior to ensure that it was secure and we're ready to make a run to the Flying J. Now that I've done that, I am in the process of parking the motor home for the winter. Unlike my northern neighbors, I don't worry about securing the motor home against freezing temperatures. Here, the sun is a constant worry so the sun screens and tire covers go back on the motor home. Tires are protected from the concrete by parking on a set of boards that also help level the motor home. It will be plugged in to keep all systems live and the leveling system will be kept active. We'll keep the furnace active, set at a low temperature to conserve fuel but warm enough to prevent freezing of the water pipes when temperatures drop low during the winter. I'm working on the routine maintenance items, tire pressure, flushing the water heater, cleaning the furnace, etc. This will continue on and off through the winter with the goal of being ready to hit the road next spring. Having a house is nice but it has it's own challenges. I have a whole new set of tasks to keep me busy. I'll keep dreaming of the next trip, the new territory to be explored and new friends to see. The motor home will be there to remind me that there is still a whole world out there to be explored!

There have been many discussions on a host of topics in the past several years. Using the search function on the second menu line above, I entered Road Service and came up with hundreds of previous discussions. Here is one of them that relates to this discussion. It touches on several popular road service programs and positive and negative experiences with each. See Coach Net for the complete discussion.

You can call GMAC and ask to be taken off the mailing list for advertisements. We aren't getting any of these. Likewise with FMCA or Good Sam. Most any mailer will remove you from the mailing list if you request. Companies that you do business with certainly do not wish to offend you with too much mail so they should be most cooperative. It takes a few minutes on the phone and the ads will stop. If you want to cut out lots of junk mail, go to Direct Mailing Association and request to be removed from all or selected mailing lists. Another source for this service is Direct Mail. Both services are free.

What are your interests? If you like history, you may want to go north from Madison and see the northern side of the Great Lakes - from the Canadian perspective. We really enjoyed this route several years ago. We also enjoyed the geology, scenery and culture along this route. At Sioux Ste. Marie we crossed the border to get a little US culture and fill up with diesel and liquor at US prices! Then we were back on the road to the east. We never plan to stop anywhere. At about 4:00 in the afternoon we assess where we are and then consider the possibilities for campgrounds. But then, campgrounds are the least of our interests. We're interested in the new scenery, the culture, the events and the experience of each leg of our trip. We sleep and do laundry in campgrounds! What we want in a campground is good electric, water, sewer and wi-fi. Be brave, explore!

Our coach has a water distribution center in the basement which has a separate line for each water fixture. This distribution center has individual valves which could be turned off or on. It is possible if this is your set-up that several valves could be partially closed causing lower pressure. Our distribution center has separate valves for the hot and cold water lines to each faucet/shower. It would be surprising if the pressure of both the cold and hot water were equally reduced at the fixtures in question. If both hot and cold water pressures are reduced equally, this points to a problem with the fixture. Some fixtures like showers have flow restrictors which will reduce flow from the shower head. Showers also frequently have a restriction on the flow of hot water to keep from scalding you when you forget which way is hot and which way is cold! As always, the differences in coaches can lead to very different answers. It always helps to identify the make, model and year of your coach. The more information we have, the better the answer you will get!