Maintenance on an RV

[seajaycecil@yahoo.com]

Ok everyone...... LISTEN UP..... Here is about a thousand dollars worth of info and you are going to get it for free......

One. I own a 2000 Pace Arrow 33 foot Ford chassis with two slides. All this info pertains to that coach and it may be important for your coach so read on ................

One. my coach has a ''tip up'' dash board that squeaks and rattles like a milk wagon ... On my coach the wiring bundles are laying across a metal plate that holds up the steering column. This metal plate was punched out with a punch press and the press left a ''knife edge'' on this plate. Guess what ........... Yep, the metal plate edges ate a hole in the wiring harness that the dummies at Pace arrow laid across the knife edge. It took about fifty thousand miles of bumping and jiggeling for the harness to be worn thru but when it finally wore thru. POOF'' ..... no power ...... stopped stone dead on the PA turnpike.

I said ''shux''..................

Two ........... we were going out west and our jacks quit working so we stopped a ''Podunk camper, tire, nail salon, tanning booth and r.v. maintenance store for ''Goober'' to have a look ............... Goober fumbled around for about thirty minutes, made two phone calls and said he could not find the problem. He had ''rummaged around'' inside the black box that attaches the wiring harness for the coach to the power supply on the camper. fifty dollars later we left without the jacks working.

We went down the road about a hundred miles and decided to set up camp for the nite. Oh no. We had no lights in the coach..... I said shux ..... We had no power in the coach any where. I said shux again.

It seems that Goober had bumped our resets in the bottom of the black box.

I went outside and opened the ''big black box'' It has release handles on each side and it is full of wires and fuzes ...(and a small frog) (ribbit ribbit)....

In the bottom of the box on the left hand side there are two resets. little buttons on little silver boxes. they are black in my coach. I took a ball point pen and gentley pushed them in ...... CLICK .... all the lites came on ....... CLICK ... the ice box started working ....

I suggested to Willa that we should go back and sick Gus and Finnie on ''Goober'' just for the fun of it but it was too far back and we would miss supper.

Also on the outside of this black box there are at least three power taps. they are screws with wires attached to them. some of the housings have more than one wire in them but you cant see it because they are covered by the housing. I had a situation where one of these wires broke off at the junction. I got real luckey and found it on the first try.

Cheap advise. keep these junctions tight. these wires have a tendency to ''jiggle lose'' and make bad connections or no connections. also, the wires are ''hanging'' on their own weight so they have a tendency to break off at the connectors.

Check them often and you will save yourself a lot of saying 'shux' and oh fudge when your lights go out.

Thats about it folks ..... Remember .... this advise is worth exactly what I am charging you for it .......NOTHING .....

but it is free......

Seajay and Willa.

note ...... If a marine reads this someone explain all the big words to him ....... lol ...... Just kiddin Marine.

[tbutler]

SEAJAY,

Loved the account, you have a great sense of humor considering the fun you've had - or not! Anyway, your account is typical of the things we have had happen to us. If you are going to live on the road, be ready for the fun, keep those shux, fudge and sunny beaches close at hand, you will get a chance to use them! But all in all, the life is well worth it! It does take a certain amount of patience and cool hand luke attitude to get through those rough days.

And, oh yes, take it easy on those Marines, I think they are headed for Somalia!!!!

[davemittan@suddenlink.net]

SEAJAY,

And, oh yes, take it easy on those Marines

Let me second that.

[Guest Wayne77590]

I have never, never in my life, ever heard a sailor say "Shux!" (unitl now)

As for sunny beaches, well sailors never even get close to them so they pronounce it slightly differently, and fudge is - I'm not even going there.

You must be gettin' old.

But all in all, still a good read.

[Roodriver]

Well Seajay, you wrote a great article but you woke up all of those Chesty Puller types. My one question (one squid to another) is whose Kiddie Canoe Club did you sail in using words like "Shux"?LOL

Sorry guys, didn't mean to stir things up. Would be nice if we could get some more posts on this thing.

[seajaycecil@yahoo.com]

To the Marines and the sailor and other armed forces guys and gals that read my article.

We all know that we must ''keep it clean'' on the forums. If I came out with a loud BOIL SHIP or if I said

SUN ON THE BENCH that I would be censored and scolded by the admin that reads this stuff.

FYI .... I was a blue water sailor on the USS NORTH HAMPTON CLC1. Flag ship for the second fleet and we

were N.E.C.P.A. back in the sixties. (That means National Emergency Command Post Afloat) In an emergency

we would have taken on the president and his cabinet and hit the wind for parts unknown. We had the Navys largest

communication gang afloat and the worlds largest radar (SPS2) afloat. She was called the Gray Ghost because of her speed

I have ''tinkled'' in more sea water than most folks have ever seen ....

Seajay the sailor man.....

God bless our armed service personnel. Keep them safe and bring them home soon.

[Guest Wayne77590]

Gus,

Everyone knows that when you talk to a sailor, every other word HAS to be a cuss word, or they just will not understand you!!! (I want to add a smiley here - where did the go?)