modifications

Enhancements and repairs to our coach.

Cummins for check engine and malfunction lights

As mentioned yesterday, after the Rancho Jurupa campground we were going to head to a Thousand Trails park in the Palm Springs area, but due to Check Engine and Malfunction Indicator lights coming on, and the DEF gauge jumping to full during a drive, we decided to take the coach to a nearby Cummins service shop (the manufacturer of the diesel engine).

Here’s the Check Engine light and DEF gauge during the drive:

Check engine light and DEF gauge

After filling the diesel fuel and DEF, we had both Check Engine and MIL, with two errors displayed:

Errors

(Yes, the dash is a bit dusty.)

The Cummins shop:

Cummins

Cummins

Office

Another Tiffin Allegro Bus had arrived ahead of us:

Another Tiffin

Service bays:

Service bays

After waiting for a few hours, they indicated that they wouldn’t have time to diagnose us that day, so we loaded up our truck with some clothes, our cat, and other supplies, and headed to a hotel:

Stuff in truck

Here’s our coach over the back of our truck:

Coach and truck

 The next day, they still hadn’t gotten to it, so we popped by our coach to pick up some more clothes and other items:

Coach

After two nights in a hotel, they finally diagnosed it. They only found the first of the error codes, “SPN 111 FMI 18”, which related to low coolant. So they topped up the coolant and cleared out the errors.

The other error, “SPN 3031 FMI 9”, relates to the DEF system. which was more concerning. But they can’t fix something that they can’t reproduce. So we’re hoping that was either a one-off fluke, or somehow related to the other error.

We’re concerned about it as there have been fairly widespread reports of the DEF head sensors failing, and the replacement part can be hard to come by, due to the current global supply chain issues. If we needed to replace it, we could have to wait weeks. Though I’ve also heard that Tiffin can overnight the part, or that Cummins can do a software patch to bypass the error.

So far so good; as of this writing things have performed correctly. It was convenient that we were near a Cummins shop, but we just hope that we don’t have a failure while out in the boonies somewhere.

Steering wheel table

It may be shocking to learn that our coach has a steering wheel. Which is kinda useful when driving… but not so much when parked at a campsite:

Steering wheel

A fun idea that we saw in an RV we looked at is to have a table on top of the steering wheel when parked. Which has two benefits: (a) it looks nicer, and (2) it prevents our cat from stepping on the air horn!

So we purchased a nice one from Wood Design RV Interiors.

The table has sides to enclose the wheel, and pins underneath to accommodate the angle of the steering wheel (when it is tilted almost flat):

Table underside

Here it is in place:

Steering wheel table

It’s a good place for our potted plants:

Steering wheel table with plants

How fahncy.

Wine rack and liquor holder

Since we moved into our coach, we stored the few wine and liquor bottles we brought in carrier bags, shoved in a cupboard, with some bubble wrap for extra padding. Which kept them safe from breakage and rattling while driving, but made them difficult to access.

Here they are after pulling them out of the cupboard (unfortunately I didn’t think to take a picture of them in there):

Wine

Here’s the empty cupboard, below the window in the dining area (they were actually in a different one initially, that was even more difficult to access):

Cupboard

This cupboard is designed as a computer center, with a power outlet at the back:

Power outlet

A pull-out shelf for a printer:

Pull-out shelf

And a keyboard tray:

Keyboard shelf

But while we had originally intended to use it as my workstation, I find it more comfortable to sit on my living room chair with my laptop on a lap tray. So it is a convenient place for our alcohol.

It gets a bit warm in there when the sun is beating on that exterior wall, so I added some Reflectix insulation to the back wall:

Reflectix insulation

The Reflectix is attached with aluminum foil tape:

Reflectix insulation

I spent quite some time searching for a wine rack that would fit on the bottom shelf (and tried a modular one, that didn’t work out for depth reasons). I finally found one that fits well:

Wine rack

Here it is in place. The bottles on the right are too tall to fit in the rack, but fortunately the shelf has extra depth on that side:

Wine rack

The bottles are held securely, in a way where they won’t rattle, and being on their side is best to keep the corks moist:

Wine rack

For the liquor bottles, my idea was to get some dividers to keep them separated and supported upright:

Dividers

I also removed the keyboard tray from the top of the cupboard, to give the bottles more vertical space.

Here are the dividers in place; not perfect, but gives some structure:

Liquor

To stop the bottles moving around too much, I added some bubblewrap padding:

Liquor with padding

Liquor

The final result; nice and tidy, and easy to access:

Liquor holder and wine rack

Truck windshield rock chip repair

While driving on the aforementioned Dillon Road (on another occasion), another vehicle threw up some sand and rocks, and one hit the windshield of our truck, taking out a chunk of the glass. That’s the first time we’ve had that happen.

This isn’t a low-flying plane over the road, but the chip, soon after it happened:

Rock chip

Our insurance includes free rock chip repair, but (for some reason) we decided to fix it ourselves. So I bought a windscreen repair kit from Amazon.

The recently acquired step was useful to get easier access to the windshield:

Step

The repair kit included a suction-cupped holder:

Suction-cupped holder

Inside view:

Inside view

Adding resin:

Adding resin

The repair worked really well; one can hardly tell where the damage was.

The kit is good for more repairs, so a useful thing to have, should we get any more rock chips in our truck or coach windscreens.

An extra step

Another recent purchase, related to the rug tweaks covered yesterday: an extra step, since the front of the coach was higher than usual due to the slope of the ground at the Xscapers Bash:

Extra step

Extra step

We won’t need that often, but good to have it when we need it.

A clever idea: bolts to secure our outdoor rug

We have an outdoor rug that we put down when a campsite has gravel, sand, or dirt next to the coach (can’t use it when there’s grass, and no need when concrete). We used to secure it from blowing away with stakes hammered into the ground, which can be tricky with hard surfaces (I’ve bent a few stakes!). But while at the Xscapers Bash, our neighbor demonstrated a cunning idea: using lag bolts and washers, screwed in with a drill driver. Clever!

So I bought a cordless drill (my existing one was corded; less convenient for outdoor use) and some lag bolts and washers. I could get larger washers, but these work fine:

Drill driver, bolts, washers

Bolts, washers

The driver has a suitable bit in a quick-connect, for when I want to use the driver for other things:

Drill driver and bits

A bolt and washer secures the mat at each corner:

Bolt and washer securing mat

Mat

Though even that was no match for wind gusts of 30+ MPH:

Unsecured rug

It wasn’t a failure of the bolts, though: the bolts stayed put… but the rug tabs didn’t remain attached to the rug:

Broken rug tab

Oops! So we’ll weigh down the rug more when experiencing high winds, and screw the bolts directly through the reinforced corners of the rug:

Bolt through rug

Jack pads

A recent addition to our RV is a set of high quality jack pads — heavy duty pads to go under the hydraulic leveling jacks, to provide better support on soft ground like dirt, or protect more fragile surfaces like asphalt from the weight of the jacks.

Here are the pads under the back jacks:

Jack pads

And the front jacks (yes, those jacks are smaller):

Jack pads

Peeking behind a front wheel, you can see the whole jack mechanism:

Jack

While there, a bonus pic of part of our 150 gallon diesel fuel tank, which can be filled from both sides:

Fuel tank

And a front air bag, which acts as suspension while driving, and can be used as alternative to hydraulic leveling for short stays:

Air bag

A couple of jack pads after removing them:

Jack pads

I store two on each side of a basement compartment, for easy access when setting up at a campsite. I don’t need them when on a concrete pad, and not so much on gravel, but on sand, dirt, grass, or asphalt, they are a useful addition.

A perhaps better (certainly more convenient) option for jack pads are permanently attached ones, like SnapPads, but unfortunately they are not compatible with our coach, as there isn’t enough clearance between the back tires and the jack when it is up in travel position.

States map

A fun tradition for many RVers is to display a map of the places they’ve been on the side of their RV. We’ve had such a map for a while, but finally got around to installing it. (You may have spotted it in some of the Xscapers posts; I actually wrote this post before the bash, but pushed it out for more timely topics.)

We mounted it on the side of our front slide out, next to the entry door. A fairly common location.

The map consists of a self-adhesive base map of the United States, plus corresponding stickers to add on top as each state is visited. Our rule is for it to count, we need to camp at least one night in the state.

Here’s me adding the base map, trying to avoid bubbles:

David adding map base

The base map:

Map base

Adding state stickers for the places we’ve been since buying the coach:

David adding states

So far we’ve been to Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona in our coach. Plus we decided to include the Yellowstone trip, since we were camping in a rental travel trailer while our coach sat at home (only because our coach wouldn’t fit in Yellowstone National Park). So that adds Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming (we’ll visit them again in our coach in a few months time anyway):

States

A view of our coach and map from further back:

Coach with map

As mentioned in the 2021 travel post a few weeks ago, in 2022 we plan to add Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas to that map. It’ll be years before we visit every state. Alaska and Hawaii will be particularly tricky; Alaska we can reach via Canada, but we’ll have to fly to Hawaii — we have been there in the past, but won’t count it until we visit again… and may have to rent an RV there if we want to be strict with our self-imposed rules.

Spyder control panel and shades issue

Our coach has a multiplex wiring system, where several control panels and features are networked together, so control panels in various places can operate things like shades, lights, TV lift, fans, and more.

Which is great when things work, but a truism of RVs is things are always breaking. One particularly vexing issue was that a control panel and two shades on our front passenger slide-out stopped working after moving the coach one time.

Here’s the control panel, with buttons for lights, shades, and TV lift — it should’ve been illuminated, but it wasn’t, and the buttons didn’t work:

Control panel

The day and night shades in the living area are electric, so they can all go up or down at a touch of a button. Which again is nice if it works, frustrating if it doesn’t.

I contacted the manufacturer of the multiplex wiring, Spyder Controls, and their very friendly support staff spent lots of time helping me diagnose the issue, including trying different panels in different places, which proved that the control panel itself was not the fault. They got me to try squeezing the connectors, since apparently they can get loose. And even got me to order replacement connectors, and (once they arrived), talked me through replacing them on the control panel and shade controller.

Speaking of, here’s the shade controller (called the G5 shade module); a circuit board that takes the network connection and operates the day and night shades for the two shades on that slide. The green light was blinking, indicating that it had power but no network connection:

Shade controller

We also looked at the wiring in the house network panel (called G6), a rather complicated rats nest of wiring:

Wiring

Wiring

Meanwhile, since we couldn’t close the shades, we got some temporary curtains:

Curtains

We lived like that for quite a while, and had an appointment with a service place, where fixing those issues would’ve been a top priority, since I hadn’t been able to solve them.

However, I recently looked through some pictures of the construction of the same model coach as ours that a kind person sent me, and noticed another connector — which made sense, since the wiring of the chassis and slide-out would be separate, but connected when the slide was installed. I wasn’t sure where it was, but looked inside an exterior panel behind the fridge:

Behind fridge

Sure enough, I found a wire from the G6 panel, a couple of wires going to the control panel and shade module, and a hub-like connector between them (G4 common drop tap). Wouldn’t you know it, the cable from the G6 panel was disconnected, as the latch that held it in was missing. Here’s a crop of that pic, showing the bottom orange cable not fully seated:

Wires behind fridge

Here I pushed it back in place:

Wiring

And just like that, the shades started working again!

Blind

Blind

That didn’t fix the control panel. So I bought some more replacement connectors from Tiffin, and pulled off the panel again:

Spyder control panel

I noticed that I hadn’t done a very good job of (unnecessarily, as it turned out) replacing the connector, as I was rushing a bit, since the tech was on the phone. One of the wires was loose:

Spyder connector

So I pulled off that connector and installed a new one:

Spyder connector

And hey, it works!

Spyder control panel

Re-mounted:

Spyder control panel

Next, I replaced the broken connector behind the fridge, so it wouldn’t pop out again:

Spyder connector

All better:

Spyder connector

I’m really glad and relieved to have solved the shades and control panel issues at last. And very satisfying to have done the fixes myself. Not that I’m at all averse to paying someone to fix things for me, but it’s nice to be able to do it.

Telescoping ladder

Many RVs come with a ladder built in on the back, but unfortunately ours did not. Apparently the latest trend is to skip the ladder, so I guess our coach was ahead of the curve. Still, being able to climb onto the roof, or reach other high parts of the sides, is rather useful. Especially since the coach is 12’ 7” high.

So, another useful recent purchase was a ladder. A rather versatile ladder: it can be collapsed for compact storage, and extended to various heights up to 16.5 feet, plenty to reach our roof, plus can fold in the middle to make a two-sided A-frame ladder about 8 feet high, perfect for reaching up the sides. Yet it’s lightweight, at only 38 pounds:

Ladder

Here it is collapsed and stored in the back of our truck:

Ladder