Posts featuring the coach.
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:
We won’t need that often, but good to have it when we need it.
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:
The driver has a suitable bit in a quick-connect, for when I want to use the driver for other things:
A bolt and washer secures the mat at each corner:
Though even that was no match for wind gusts of 30+ MPH:
It wasn’t a failure of the bolts, though: the bolts stayed put… but the rug tabs didn’t remain attached to the rug:
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:
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:
And the front jacks (yes, those jacks are smaller):
Peeking behind a front wheel, you can see the whole jack mechanism:
While there, a bonus pic of part of our 150 gallon diesel fuel tank, which can be filled from both sides:
And a front air bag, which acts as suspension while driving, and can be used as alternative to hydraulic leveling for short stays:
A couple of jack pads after removing them:
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.
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:
The base map:
Adding state stickers for the places we’ve been since buying the coach:
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):
A view of our coach and map from further back:
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.
A timelapse of driving the coach 22 miles from Buckeye, Arizona to NIRVC in Phoenix, Arizona, then 262 miles from there to Desert Hot Springs, California, with a stop at Love’s for fuel and a couple of rest stops. See if you can spot when the dashcam fell off the windscreen!
Three days later, we picked up our coach from NIRVC in Phoenix, Arizona, then headed back into California, to Desert Hot Springs.
NIRVC successfully fixed the driver chair power issue, fixed the slide-out glide block issue, and serviced the slides. They didn’t get to the remainder of the (lower priority) items on my list, so hopefully we’ll get those taken care of when we visit them again in March — I had already made that appointment in anticipation of needing more time, plus generally like to schedule service appointments every few months, just in case, since things inevitably break, and there’s regular servicing needed.
I admit, I had high hopes for NIRVC, based on their excellent reputation, so was a bit disappointed that they didn’t get much done. But they only had a short time, and they’ll have another chance to impress me soon.
Here’s the map route for this travel day (going from right to left); 262 miles, about six hours drive in our coach. A bit longer than we prefer, but we didn’t want to add another interim stop:
Our coach at NIRVC:
Heading west out of Phoenix:
We were passed by three of these oversize loads (going rather fast):
Paladin still wasn’t pleased with travel, but not too bad this time, perhaps because it was only a few days after the last time:
Lots of trucks on the freeway:
Funky mountains:
Goodbye cacti; fewer and fewer as we head west:
We stopped at Love’s in Quartzsite for diesel; it was pretty busy, and some trucks were being inconsiderate in blocking the exit, resulting in some honking by other truckers. It’s the last fuel stop before the California border; diesel was about $1 more across the border:
While waiting for trucks ahead of us, I snuggled with Paladin; here’s a view of the coach in travel mode, with the slides in and the GPS mirrored to the overhead TV:
More of Paladin:
Back on the road, crossing into California:
A stop at the agricultural inspection station:
They didn’t actually ask us if we had anything this time. We were wondering if they’d object to the little cacti we bought in Arizona.
Welcome to California sign:
Heading down the freeway:
Paladin looking relaxed at a rest stop:
Downhill:
The overpass bridges around the desert cities have nice decorations:
Snow-capped mountains; pretty sure there wasn’t any snow when we were here a month ago:
The highway nearing our destination:
A cell tower nicely disguised as a palm tree:
Our destination for 17 days: Catalina Spa and RV Resort:
Stay tuned for a timelapse video tomorrow. If you haven’t watched them before, they’re a fun compressed view of our journey; watch a few hours of travel in mere minutes. With music! If they aren’t fast enough, you can also tell YouTube to play at 2x speed, or jump ahead, though you may miss interesting sights. Or slow them down if too fast.
I enjoy making the videos; I hope you enjoy watching them. And everyone please do subscribe to the Sinclair Trails YouTube channel; I need a bunch more subscribers to be able to get a nicer URL.
We had an appointment with the National Indoor RV Center in Phoenix, Arizona to fix the driver chair issue, a slide-out glide issue, and a bunch of other stuff. So we drove the short 22 miles (half an hour) from the nearby Buckeye campground to NIRVC to drop off the coach. Here’s the route (going left to right):
The colorful front of the NIRVC building:
In the reception area:
The waiting room:
We had the option of sleeping in our coach on-site (with a power hookup), and hanging out in that waiting room while it was being worked on, but that wouldn’t really work with a cat, and we’d be more comfortable staying somewhere else.
So again, we rented an Airbnb apartment; see that listing for more information. Here are a few pictures:
The carport was a bit tight for our truck. The apartment was upstairs:
Pool, grill, table:
Pool (we didn’t use it, but it seemed popular):
We’ve recently booked a third Airbnb for another visit to NIRVC in March, to (hopefully) finish off the items on the list.
A timelapse of driving the coach 165 miles from the Xscapers Annual Bash near Lake Havasu City, Arizona to Buckeye, Arizona.
We departed the Xscapers Annual Bash near Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and headed to a one-night stay at Leaf Verde RV Resort near Buckeye, Arizona.
Here’s the route map (top to right); 165 miles, about four hours drive in our coach (including a lunch break):
A fairly familiar route, having been along I-10 a few times this winter.
But the trip had a bumpy start; we couldn’t bring in our front driver-side slide-out, or move the driver chair, due to a disconnected wire underneath the chair:
This stop was the first time we had rotated that chair around to face the living area, so we guess the wire didn’t have as much slack as it should, and got pulled out.
Obviously this is a big problem; we can’t drive with the slide out. The reason the slide was affected is the switch to extend or retract it is on the side of the chair, to help ensure the chair is forward enough to not get hit.
Fortunately there is an emergency retraction button in the fuse bay in the basement, so I was able to use that to bring in the slide:
Also fortunately we had an appointment at the National Indoor RV Center in Phoenix the next day, so we only had to live with this issue for one day.
That issue worked around, we moved the coach to a clear space at the Xscapers Bash grounds to hook up our toad (tow vehicle); you can see our truck and the neighboring coach (nice folks, that we enjoyed meeting and chatting with):
Our coach, ready to hook up the truck:
We’re on our way; a bridge over wetland:
Colorado River:
Hilly highway:
Our coach has an RV-safe GPS, that knows the height and other info about our rig, so it doesn’t route us places we can’t go (we also have a label above the GPS as a reminder for low bridges):
A fun and handy feature of the GPS is the ability to mirror the output to the (otherwise pretty useless) TV above the windshield — useful so I can see the GPS more easily (it just displays grayscale for some reason):
In Parker, Arizona we encountered several VW buses, probably leaving a recent gathering of them at London Bridge in Lake Havasu City:
Highway:
Quartzsite sign:
I-10 freeway:
Mountains:
Cacti:
We would have liked to stop at the first rest area on the I-10 portion of the route, but it’s been closed for a while for renovations:
So we continued to the next one, half an hour later:
Crackers, summer sausage, and cheeses for lunch:
Paladin wasn’t thrilled when we started going, but settled down in one of his nests during lunch:
When we got underway again, he was a little happier than earlier. We do hope he gets more used to travel days eventually:
Our exit:
We had a one-night stay at Leaf Verde RV Resort; I won’t bother doing a separate post about it, since we basically just stopped there to dump our tanks after dry camping for over a week during the Bash, to catch up on laundry, and as a location fairly close to the National Indoor RV Center:
The map:
From the little we’ve seen of it, I wouldn’t call it a resort; while the transient campsites are mostly pull-through, they are fairly tight “buddy” sites, where pairs of RVs face opposite directions, and thus their doors face each other. Not very nice:
Notice that we didn’t extend the front driver-side slide-out, since the switch wasn’t working:
We didn’t bother unhooking our truck, since it’s just an overnight pitstop (an advantage of a pull-through site):
A timelapse of this travel is coming tomorrow. Please subscribe to the Sinclair Trails YouTube channel; I need a bunch more subscribers to be able to get a nicer URL.
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:
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:
We also looked at the wiring in the house network panel (called G6), a rather complicated rats nest of wiring:
Meanwhile, since we couldn’t close the shades, we got some temporary 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:
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:
Here I pushed it back in place:
And just like that, the shades started working again!
That didn’t fix the control panel. So I bought some more replacement connectors from Tiffin, and pulled off the panel again:
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:
So I pulled off that connector and installed a new one:
And hey, it works!
Re-mounted:
Next, I replaced the broken connector behind the fridge, so it wouldn’t pop out again:
All better:
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.