Upgraded TST TPMS display

One of the first accessories I purchased for our coach was a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS).

Recently an RV technology site called TechnoRV announced an upgraded display unit, that is compatible with the older system. The new one has a larger display, and uses a touchscreen instead of buttons next to the display.

Here’s the old unit:

Old unit

And the new unit:

New unit

I also got a weighted base, that attaches magnetically to the unit:

Base and unit

The unit on the base:

Unit on base

The new unit’s menu:

New unit

The old and new units next to each over; you can see how much larger and more clear the new unit is:

Old and new units

2022 modifications

We have done a number of modifications to our 2017 Tiffin Allegro Bus 40SP motorhome, to make it more comfortable as a full-time home, to improve the features, or to repair issues. This is a summary of some of the changes done in 2022; also check out the changes from 2021.

As with previous summaries, for each I include a link to the corresponding blog post, and a sample picture; see the post for details.

You can see all of the modification-related blog posts via the modifications category, with the earliest posts at the top, or the latest posts at the top.

Security cameras:

Telescoping ladder:

Spyder control panel and shades issue:

States map:

Jack pads:

Bolts to secure our outdoor rug:

An extra step:

Truck windshield rock chip repair:

Wine rack and liquor holder:

Steering wheel table:

Cummins for check engine and malfunction lights:

Magne Shades:

National park stickers:

Foldable wagon:

Dash cover:

3-stage water filter:

Safe T Plus and Koni shocks:

Chair armrest adjustment:

Water quick connectors and gauges:

Coach Proxy:

Starlink internet:

Window latch repair:

Ceiling fan motor replacement:

Replacing 3-stage water filters:

Lectric XP 2.0 ebikes:

Propane fire pit:

CLAM screen tent:

IKEA storage cabinets:

Reflectix insulation in cupboards:

Heavy-duty security chain and lock for bikes:

Bike lock

Sinclair Trails stickers:

Half-bath door hinges:

Hammock:

Map and sticker art:

Theater seating and cabinets:

Mirror glass replacement:

Firefly Vegatouch Mira:

Unclogging macerating toilet:

Automatic paper towel dispenser:

Water softener:

BlueFire diagnostic adapter:

Power Watchdog dimmer shade:

RV fire safety:

Wash Wax All waterless cleaner:

VIAIR tire inflation compressor:

VIAIR tire inflation compressor

Another essential gadget I’ve had for quite some time is the VIAIR 450P air compressor, to inflate the tires on our coach.

I already had a tire inflator that plugged into a 110V outlet, which I’ve previously used for truck tires and other tires. But it can’t quite handle the maximum 130 PSI of the coach tires, plus is very noisy. (I inflate the front tires to 120 PSI.)

The VIAIR unit is much quieter, and automatically shuts off when not actively inflating.

Unlike the old one, this one connects to a 12V source like a car battery. I hook it up to the truck’s battery; the truck needs to be running while in use, to avoid draining the battery.

I keep it in the back of our truck, so we’ll be able to use it while driving the truck around if needed.

It comes in a handy bag, and includes two long coiled hoses, so I can leave the compressor by the truck, and reach all of the coach tires:

VIAIR tire inflator

Here it is in use; it’s easy to inflate by pulling the trigger, and release to read the gauge to check the static pressure:

VIAIR tire inflator

An essential tool.

Wash Wax All waterless cleaner

Like any vehicle, a motorhome can get dirty over time from road grime, dust, rain, etc. In the past year or so of owning our coach, we have paid to get it professionally cleaned by a team of people three times — at the Xscapers Bash in January 2022, at NIRVC in March, and at the Tiffin Rally in July. In between those times (and often within days of paying hundreds for a wash & wax), it has been somewhat dirty, which didn’t make us entirely happy.

It’s tricky to get a large RV cleaned — one can pay a lot of money to get a team to come to it and clean it onsite, or one can take it to a truck wash (and worry that they might ruin the paint and/or protective coat), or wash by hand in a campground. But most campgrounds don’t allow washing of RVs, due to the massive amount of water needed.

Also, while carwashes for our truck are easier to find, they can sometimes be tricky, too, when in out-of-the-way places. With our fondness of exploring dirt roads, it can be a mud-ball for a while, too.

I’ve heard for a while of another option, that doesn’t use water, so can be done in any campsite. That system is called Wash Wax All from Aero Cosmetics, and I finally purchased their kit.

It really does work very well; it’s amazing how much better it looks with relatively little effort — a few hours to clean the coach and truck. So from now on, we’ll keep our coach and truck much more clean.

The kit comes in a couple of boxes, including a long box for the mop handle:

Wash Wax Mop Kit

The Wash Wax All kit comes with a bag of goodies, including the wash liquid, spray bottle, heavy-duty cleaner, mop pole and double-sided head, scrub brush, and multiple microfiber mop pads and microfiber towels:

Wash Wax All kit

The mop is a clever design, with a heavy-duty extendable pole and a double-sided head that angles flexibly. The system works by spraying the liquid onto one side of the mop, wiping it onto a small section of the coach (a few feet at a time), then flipping the mop over and wiping it off before it dries — no water needed:

Mop

For lower areas like below the slides, and fiddly areas, I spray directly on, and use two microfiber towels to wipe on and off:

Spray

The wet towel gets pretty dirty, but they can be easily tossed in the washing machine and dryer (without fabric softener) to restore them to like new:

Microfiber towels

The mop pole is long enough to reach all the way to the top of our coach, but collapses to a compact length:

Clean RV

We also used Wash Wax All on our truck:

Truck

Midway cleaning the hood:

Truck

The mop is useful for cleaning the roof, and larger areas:

Truck

Both the coach and truck look so much nicer when clean! I just wish I had purchased the kit sooner. Highly recommended!

(And no, they didn’t sponsor me; I don’t have any sponsorships for this blog. Maybe one day…?)

RV fire safety

Fire safety is an important consideration for everyone, especially RVers, with lots of combustible materials in a small space. There have been lots of stories of RVs that have burned to the ground — usually cheaper trailers with propane fridges, but any RV is at risk.

Especially since RVs typically come with just one mandated fire extinguisher, by the door (which I invert and shake once a month, to prevent the contents settling):

Fire extinguisher

If we’re in our bedroom when a fire starts, that extinguisher may not be overly useful — if we can get to that one by the door, we should probably just get out the door, unless the fire is tiny.

So a basic first step is to get a second fire extinguisher for the bedroom, which we keep in a cabinet above the bed:

Fire extinguisher

But we can do better than that. We have purchased several quick can-style fire suppressors, which not only can put out fires, they produce a foam that we can spray onto ourselves if we have to go through flames to get out:

Fire extinguisher

We have several of them all around the coach, including in a cupboard in the kitchen and under the kitchen sink:

Fire extinguisher

In the bathroom cabinet:

Fire extinguisher

And in several compartments in the basement area:

Fire extinguisher

The coach came with a smoke detector in the cockpit area, but we felt that wasn’t enough, so we got some smart Nest Protect ones, that do both smoke and carbon monoxide detection, and talk to each other:

Smoke and carbon monoxide detector

I mounted one in the living room area, and another in the bedroom:

Smoke and carbon monoxide detector

Plus a third in the basement, to detect any fires down there:

Smoke and carbon monoxide detector

The Nest detectors weren’t compatible with our Wi-Fi network, so I also got a Nest Wi-Fi router to help set them up (once set up, they communicate with a private network, so they’re not dependent on Wi-Fi):

Nest WiFi router

The Nest router is installed in the internet cupboard, with an Ethernet connection to the Pepwave modem:

Nest WiFi router

Our coach only has one entrance door. If we’re in the bedroom and a fire blocks access to that door, there is an emergency exit in the bedroom window; the red latches can be opened to swing the whole window up:

Emergency exit

It’s a fairly small emergency exit, but better than being stuck back there. To make it easier to use, I got a pole that lives next to the window:

Emergency exit

The pole can be used to hold the emergency exit open, for easier egress:

Open emergency exit

Hopefully we’ll never need to use it, but it should help if needed.

Power Watchdog dimmer shade

I mentioned in my review of the Marathon Motel & RV Park that the Power Watchdog was too bright for a dark sky park:

Power Watchdog

Here’s a nighttime pic from an earlier campground:

At night

As a temporary measure, I covered it with a bit of cardboard:

Power Watchdog

But I also ordered a better solution — a self-adhesive dimmer shade from the manufacturer:

Dimmer shade

Here it is with the shade added:

Power Watchdog with shade

At night, the light is still visible, but much less bright (this is a night mode pic, so looks brighter than in person):

Power Watchdog at night

A non-night-mode pic:

Power Watchdog at night

BlueFire diagnostic adapter

Vehicles nowadays are full of computers that control and monitor most operations. You may know about the data port that repair shops can use to diagnose issues. This port can be used by us, too.

The BlueFire data adapter connects to a different style of this port in large vehicles like trucks and motorhomes, and uses Bluetooth to communicate with an app to display this diagnostic information.

Here’s the adapter next to the case it came in:

BlueFire data adapter

Top of the adapter:

BlueFire data adapter

The connector on the bottom:

BlueFire data adapter

There are two data ports under the dash in our coach; the green one is the modern data port; I’m not sure about the gray one; might be an older port, or something else:

Data ports

Removing the cap from the port, you can see the connector pins:

Data port

The BlueFire adapter plugs in, with a twist to lock it in place; it lights up with various colors and flashing patterns for its status:

BlueFire data adapter

The other essential part is the app. It works on Apple iPads and iPhones, and Android devices. It has a dashboard that can be configured; see the BlueFire site for more examples.

Here’s a dashboard layout I used initially on my iPad Pro (I’ve actually been using the BlueFire for months, but just got around to writing about it):

iPad app

I later changed to a different layout that I got from someone online:

iPad app

I have my iPad on the dash of our coach on travel days, along with the tire pressure monitor, and my laptop with the map:

Devices

I’m still working on improving the dash layout in the app; I’ve added a couple of gauges, but there’s room for more:

iPad app

Here’s a screenshot for a more clear view:

iPad app

Sometime I’ll spend more time customizing this further, but it’s a useful tool as-is.

Water softener

We’re often in some areas with very hard water, which leaves buildups on counters etc. So we recently purchased a portable water softener for our coach:

Water softener

It came with water hardness test strips:

Water hardness test strips

I connected it to our (already complicated) water system after the filter, to eliminate any impurities before softening the water (of course, I use quick-connect fittings, to make hooking up and disconnecting easier):

Water softener

One more thing to get out and put away each time; one day I’d like to build both the filters and softener into the coach, but it doesn’t take long, and is worth it for better quality water in our coach.

Automatic paper towel dispenser

Soon after purchasing our coach, I installed a paper towel holder under the cabinet in the kitchen:

Towel holder

That was nice, except Paladin had a bad habit of shredding the towels; I guess it felt fun.

So we left the towel rail empty, and put the roll in a cupboard:

Towel rail

We decided to replace it with an enclosed automatic towel dispenser. We had one in our homestead, and it worked well to protect the towels from Paladin, and was pretty convenient. So we got a similar one, but under-counter mounted, since counter space is valuable in an RV.

I used its template to mark the location:

Template

Then mounted the bracket:

Mounting bracket

Here it is installed:

Installed

One simply waves a hand in front, and it dispenses a sheet to be torn off:

Dispensing

I also tidied the wire, wrapped in a velcro strap, and attached to the wall with a stick-on clip:

Tidy wire

Here it is in context in our kitchen:

In context

Finally, a video of it in action — the motion sensor to dispense a towel, and it auto-retracting when I didn’t take one:

You can hold your hand longer to dispense more towel sections, and can set how much to dispense at a time.

A nice improvement to our kitchen.

Unclogging macerating toilet

The RV lifestyle can be very magical, traveling around the country, exploring the national parks and other interesting places.

Other times, things can suddenly go wrong, requiring time-consuming and/or expensive repairs.

One such not so super fun occasion happened recently, when the macerating toilet in our rear bathroom stopped working. It is a bit more complicated than a regular residential toilet; at the press of a button on the wall (actually one of two buttons, for smaller and larger flushes), it adds water to the bowl, pumps out the contents, grinding it into tiny bits and pumping it to the black tank, then adds more water to the bowl.

But while it happily added more water, the pumping out stopped working; it just made a little noise like it was trying to start, but nothing happened.

Fortunately, we have two toilets in our coach, so it wasn’t a disaster, but obviously not ideal. So I did some online research to see what would be involved in fixing it. When living in an RV, one has to be somewhat handy in doing repairs; there are mobile RV techs that will come to a coach to fix things, but they can sometimes be hard to find or schedule, and of course can be expensive.

(By the way, our mid-bath toilet works differently; it is a gravity toilet, directly above the blank tank, so just rotates a valve to flush the contents. It is still a bit more complicated than a residential toilet, using power to pump in water and open the value. I previously repaired a fault with that one, too. The rear-bath toilet uses the macerator to pump the content several feet to the tank.)

I found a few forum posts about this kind of issue with this model of toilet, but the most helpful thing was a YouTube video showing how to remove and disassemble the toilet. That showed me that it was something I could tackle. So I did.

Here’s the macerating toilet:

Macerating toilet

The buttons on the wall, and instructions under the lid (this was after I manually siphoned out the water):

Macerating toilet

The toilet is secured to the floor with a couple of hex-head screws on either side (sorry about the dust):

Screws

Behind the toilet, a glimpse of the several wires and pipes that make it go:

Wires and pipes

Here’s me investigating behind the toilet; I used this collapsable bucket and manual-pump siphon hose to empty it:

David

The pipes behind the toilet; the vertical one in the middle is fresh water going into the toilet, via a little pump visible at the bottom, and the other pipes go from the bowl to the pump, and from there to the pipe in the floor that goes to the black holding tank:

Pipes

There are multiple wires: DC power, a connection to the wall switch, and two sets of wires to the mid and full sensors on the black tank, so the toilet can show orange and red lights to warn that the tank is getting full (it refuses to operate when the tank is full). Those latter two had the same connectors and color wires, so I marked the plugs before disconnecting them, so I’d know which was which:

Marked plugs

That done, I disconnected the wires and pipes:

Disconnected wires and pipes

After removing the toilet, you can see the wires and pipes; the long wire is the DC power; the two tank sensor wires are also on the floor, and the wall switch connector is poking out of the wall, plus the blue water hose and the white sewer hose:

Removed toilet

The back of the toilet:

Back of toilet

I moved it to the shower, so any remaining liquid wouldn’t make a mess:

Toilet in shower

I then disconnected the pipe leading to the macerator pump, where I expected the problem would be (yes, wearing disposable gloves, and a head lamp to help me see):

David cleaning out toilet

Yep, there was an accumulation of non-dissolved toilet paper blocking the macerator:

Cleaning out macerator

We use Charmin Ultra Soft toilet paper, which is RV safe, as it quickly dissolves in water. Some people say only special RV-safe single-ply TP should be used, but life’s too short for uncomfortable TP. I’m not sure why some accumulated here over the past year of usage… but if I have to repeat this again in a year, it’ll be worth it.

Having cleaned out the blockage, I considered whether or not to further disassemble the pump, to look for any further blockage deeper inside, but it looked like I had got it all, so I decided not to. I moved the toilet over to the wall, and temporarily hooked up the power and switch to test it:

Hooked up to test

The pump ran correctly, so I re-installed it:

Repaired toilet

All better! Not the most fun job, but not too difficult. It is very satisfying to be able to fix something myself, and add more experience and a new skill.

I hope this wasn’t too gross for you. And hopefully this will help other RVers who have a problem with this model of toilet.