Wilbur meet Smokey

Not much work on the Bagos today.  I did take them both out for a drink at the gas station and a photo op.
My wife and I spent some time in Wilbur getting things together for this weekend.  The memories are pretty strong of all the good times we have had with the old one.  And we wonder if we will like the larger MH.

A couple of nice looking Winnebago's if I do say so myself.

I did pick up a mattress and wood for under the mattress from a friend.  Guess I should get out there and take some more pictures inside.

The new mattress standing in front of the couch.  It's covered in blue.

So I did spend $100.00 on each one today.  That was enough of a workout.

A picture from a Superchief with twin beds.  Not mine and mine will have less room between the beds because I will use regular twin size beds not the smaller RV version of mattress.

It's warm inside now

The UPS man brought me a package today.  A new Dinosaur control board for the furnace and a new water pump.  I like to get new stuff and put the furnace together, checked for leaks and instant fire.............only in the burner.  So that was good to get done.

The new Dinosaur board on the right.

The new board installed.

The new parts for today.

Do you know what this gauge is and what it does????

Then it's time you learned.  You can use it to check for leaks in the LP system.  It's called a manometer and it is behind the fridge.  The short lesson is to have the gas on with no pilot lights on and check the gauge, turn the dial to move the red hand on the gauge to match the black hand, turn off the gas valve by the LP tank, wait 5 minutes and recheck the gauge.  If the red and black hands still match you have no leaks.  Class over.

I kind of like the electronic lighter in the furnace (shown above) but I also like the manual lighter on my 1973 furnace.

This is the propane tank and my outdoor pull out cooking station.

So tomorrow maybe running water.......................

I did order the new oil pan gasket today.  That was quite the ordeal finding the one piece gasket.  No one locally knew anything about it but Ford Racing makes one.  Mine should arrive next week and then the big question........WILL SMOKEY STILL BE SMOKEY AFTER THIS??????
Tune in later on that question.

The oil leak

Today the weather was nicer than the pouring rain we have been having, OH I'm not complaining after seeing what hurricane Sandy is doing on the East coast.  So I even put a little roof sealant on a couple of spots where I had a little drip.
But the big news on the oil leak is I think I have found a one piece gasket for the engine oil pan.  I took a few drives today and think the gasket is what is causing my leak and since I am doing this job I want the best gasket I can get.  Everyone has the 4 piece gasket set but there seems to be one I am looking for.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mr-Gasket-Oil-Pan-Gasket-1-Piece-Rubber-Steel-Core-Ford-221-255-260-289-302-EA-/370637409934

This one fits 1968 to 1997 models, and for the older ones with the larger bolts at the front at back you need to drill out the holes.  I guess there are metal groments in all the holes.

This guy used studs instead of bolts for his oil pan.  Makes lining them up easy.

Make the front 2 and rear 2 holes larger for the bigger bolts.

I did spend some time working on my right front leveler that had a bungie cord holding it up.  Seems like the welds broke so I put some grade 5 bolts in.  It took me awhile to drill the 1/2" holes but it's done.

You can see the new bolts.

The furnace lives

Today (Saturday) started at the WW meeting.  My wife and I do weight watchers and Saturday morning we weight in and attend a meeting, unless  we are off running around like the coming weekend.  I am down 36.4 pounds.  Enough of that.
I took the furnace to the shop where they hooked it up and found that the control board is dead.  No spark or at least very little spark.  A new board was plugged in and presto, plenty of spark.  They hook up the gas and I have heat.  All it needs is a Dinosaur board.  But being cheap and I know you would not want me to spend $139.00 on a part I can buy for $90.00 I order one from a company called RV Parts Outlet. They are about 35 miles away and have internet and store sales but this time the dinosaur board and a new water pump are on special so I will pay some shipping to have the UPS man bring me stuff.
Then I started the bed platforms.  At first I was looking for a queen bed MH but then thought twin beds might be good too, so when I bought Smokey I decided to give the twins a try.

We even went shopping for new mattress's and the twin size is half the size of the king so that means we will have a king bed in Smokey.  The original beds were only 33" wide but a real twin will be 39" wide.  And you know that 6" does make a difference.

More later this afternoon.
Well there seems to be a roof leak.  We have had plenty of rain today and on my new bed platform I saw a few drops of water.  I guess this should not be a surprise since the rain has been steady for most of the day.  Well I started the engine and used the levelers to level out the MH.   I will keep and eye on it and see how it goes.

I did order a roll of LED lights today.  The plan is to install leds in some of the ceiling lights that have fluorescent lights going out.  Check out these articles on what others have done.

http://www.irv2.com/forums/f115/inexpensive-fluorescent-to-led-upgrade-139025.html

Furnace repair day

The carpet and chairs were still damp this morning from the cleaning yesterday and I wanted to get the furnace working to help dry things out but not today.  I thought that the electrodes were bad so I bought them at the local RV repair place, and of course I get to talk with the guys who work on them, so I get some free repair advice.
But the new probes, as they like to call them still did not spark.  Give me the good old '73 model and get out the match.  They light almost every time.
So the plan right now is I removed the furnace and will take it to the shop tomorrow where the shop will hook it up and tell me whats wrong.  They did that with my '73's furnace and even told me how to adjust it.  This was a free service and if I need a new control board I will probably buy it at http://www.rvpartsoutlet.com/ since they are cheaper.

Here is my heater repair.

The gasket material is cut out for the electrode.

The big cleaning day

Some of you who are following this Blog about fixing up Smokey, know that the inside was kind of............OK it was very dirty.  So today after a morning of flying RC planes with the "Old Guy's" and lunch with some other friends, Sophie and I picked up a Rug Doctor carpet cleaner and started on the inside.

It might not look cleaner but it really is.

I can't wait until the morning and see how clean it looks when it is dry.

Our house is now home to cushions from the couch and dinette drying.
And I hope to buy the new electrode for the furnace and see if it will work.
I sure hope so.  The list of things that are not working is getting shorter.

I'm in hot water now

So today was a great day with hooking up the water hose and turning on the water heater.  No problems it just came on and did it's job.

Then I cleaned the fridge burner and it is working good, at least until the weather gets warm and it has food in it.

This might be plugged up HUH?

Unplugged it works much better.

And I opened up the furnace to find that the end of one of the electrodes was broken off and laying under the burner.  I called a local RV parts place that has helped me fix my older Bago and they have a new electrode so maybe tomorrow I will have time to fix the furnace.  Then everything will be working out of the main systems. The burner looks like it was replaced once. 

We spent time vacuuming again, it will be the second time to vacuum and the plan is to rent a carpet shampooer and clean all the seats, cushions and carpet Thursday.

The missing gas solenoid

Have you ever figured something out and know exactly what the problem is only to find you are wrong????
Well I figured out that my gas detector has a gas shut off solenoid and that must be why the fridge has a bad flame and the furnace does not light.  Sounded good but someone has already removed the solenoid so back to start again.
I removed the bed platform from the bedroom and now when we get to shampooing the carpet and seats we can clean all the carpet.

You can see where they added carpet where the old beds were.

And I spent some time looking for oil leaks around the bottom of the engine.  Boy the 460 is a large engine.

And I drilled a hole in the right front leveling jack mount, since the weld is broke and it is easy to bolt on.
So that's it for today.

The fridge is working

I love it when things work and today I left the SC plugged in and the fridge turned on to AC.  While waiting to see what happened Sophie and I drove over to the Coast for lunch at the Casino.  And what would a trip to the Coast be without a short walk on the beach and a long time to shop at the outlet mall.
So while Sophie did some shopping, I went to the library and resurched some RV repair books and surfed the web.  You know this modern  RV is getting me thinking of what those people that drive those big RV are thinking.  Maybe I will either like it or love it.

So tonight I turned on some of the lights and took a few pictures.

There are mort lights and some of them really work.

This is the convection/microwave over the range hood.  I think it will work but haven't warmed anything up in it yet.

The power center.  No labels on the breakers but I will work on it.

The gas detector.  Nothing lights up so this might be why the furnace doesn't fire up.

So that's it for today.  I was really happy about the fridge.  It is a 1999 model Norcold and there are no recalls on it yet.

The Superchief....... 1 week at home.

Can you believe it has been a whole week of working on the SC? I am kind of bonding with Smokey. I like him and we have only gone for a 10 mile drive.

Today was my day of a board meeting and then the annual owners meeting for the resort where we own a time share in Newport, OR.  If any of you have any interest in spending time on the Oregon Coast you should contact me.  For a Gold Crown Resort I can get you a deal.  No I am not selling my weeks but there are weeks available.
So as far a work on the SC I plugged in the shore power and turned the fridge on to AC.  The LP flame is so bad that I probably need to replace the burner and it is only $35.00 but I want to try the AC part first to see if it will cool down.  But today being a cool day it might not be much of a test.
Here is a link to cleaning the Norcold fidge burner.

A light in the fridge, WOW just like home.

I did look around and clean the shower floor because the sky light had leaked before and left spots.

The floor looks cleaner now.

Does your shower have a skylight and a wall light?  Yea right in the shower, imagine that.

Then I have been looking into changing the overhead fluorescent lights to LED lights.  Some articles I found were,
http://www.thewanderman.com/2012/05/convert-fluorescent-lights-to-led-dual.html

http://www.irv2.com/forums/f115/inexpensive-fluorescent-to-led-upgrade-139025.html

People are buying 5 meter strips of LED lights on ebay and cutting them into 16" strips and mounting them in the old fluorescent fixtures.  Sounds like a great idea and cheap too.

An easy day but I am still waiting to see if the fridge cools way down tonight.

The gen set works

I started the day with a good nights rest but it was WW day.  That's Weight Watchers day.  Sophie and I have been doing WW now for 32 weeks and I am down 36 pounds.  Of course this last week with all the scrubbing and working on the SC I was down 3 pounds.  So enough of WW.
I made a trip to the auto parts store for new wiper blades.  I did read some articles on the IRV2 site that said people couldn't find new blades but the Knechts auto parts store had new ones.

Something I wanted to try was the power output of the generator so I plugged in the power cord and started it up.  No problem with the power.  I ran the AC but it must not be warm enough for the compressor to come on so I ran the heating strip in the front one. Hardly a big load for a 6.5KW gen.

I also checked out the couch today.  I really wasn't sure if it was a sleeper but it does pull out and makes into a rather nice place to sleep.

Then I tried the furnace.  The other day when I turned up the t-stat nothing happened, no fan nothing.  So today I turned the temp up and moved it around for awhile and the fan came on.  I did smell some propane on the outside so I think the spark is not happening.  Back to the manuals and I will check it out another time.
Oh a big thing that happened today was we took a ride in Smokey.  Just a 20 minute ride but still had a chance to warm it up.  There is still some oil on various parts from the drive home but its getting burned off.  I did use some more engine cleaner and will drive it some more another day.
The drivers outside mirror glass was inside a cabinet so I glued it on, after the short drive.  I have this thing about seeing whats behind me and so the mirror will be nice.

Something I noticed when we drove it home was it turns over slowly after it is warmed up so today I tried the MOM switch after it had warmed up.  It turns over much faster with the extra batteries so I might really have to buy something for this MH.

The rains came and I was ready

Being Friday and I have been hard at work since Monday on the SC I took it easy today.  Last night I remembered that the fridge vent roof cover was not put back on after I was sealing things on the roof so the day started on the roof putting that back on.  I think the thought of it blowing off and breaking probably kept me from sleeping good last night, but it is now back in place.

Then I did go inside just to look around and see if there were any leaks.  I am happy to report I did not see any drips but then again if it is going to leak it will be when we are out camping,  if you can call this camping.
And this afternoon my brother and SIL stopped by.  They really wanted to see Smokey but my SIL spent a very short time inside,  I think she is afraid of the dirt.  She should of seen, or even worse, smelled Wilbur when he was delivered.  That was a mess, this is dirty.
So a while ago I was out in the SC and turned on the TV and watched the DVD that was left in it.  Just looking around and took some pictures.  Take a look.

This is not the way the bedroom was built. 

The drivers side.

Plenty of cabinets around the bedroom.

The toilet and vanity are on the drivers side.

A rather large shower is across the hall.

The shower even has a sky light and a wall light.  Oh it will good.

I'm not sure why I took these pictures since I have junk all around.

The lower grill will not always on the dining room table.

Then there was this locking box in the main closet.  What's inside????

Nothing.  It was empty.

And then I took a picture of the city water connection when I first saw this SC.  And then one after I did some work on it.

Before.

After.  I didn't get a chance to clean up the old black caulk and the color of the coach is even nicer but it's not a gaping hole.

And for things I found to work would be the front AC heater.  I didn't try the AC since it's cold out but the heater really was putting out heat.  And then the big thing was I let the genset crank for awhile and guess what..........yup it runs.  Of course I didn't go out in the rain and plug the power cord into the genset but let's hope it puts out the power.  Did I tell you it's a 6.5KW Onan.  That should power up the whole camp.

And I called the insurance Co. today.  If I want just the liability like on Wilbur it will cost me $19.00.  And that would be for a whole year.  So then i ask about full coverage and a no deduct windshield replacement and the total will be $139.00 a year.  So I got insurance and liscence and probably new wiper blades tomorrow and go for a drive.  Then keep the wife and kids off the sidewalks.