As followers of this blog may recall, we had a fuse between our solar panels and the solar controller:

I had an issue where that fuse blew a few times, possibly due to our extra solar panels putting out too much power. The most recent time I replaced it with a 30 amp fuse:

That didn’t end so well — a few months later, that fuse melted. Perhaps cheap junk, I don’t know; it should just blow, not melt. It set off our smoke detector, so could have been much worse:

I considered replacing the fuse holder, but figured I needed a better solution. I decided to replace it with a circuit breaker, so if it is over-current again it’ll just pop instead of blow or burn.

I needed a short length of wire to connect it, so went to the nearby Lowes for wire, using 8 gauge wire, the same as used elsewhere in the coach:

That was an adventure in itself; the guy who helped us wasn’t familiar with wire cutting, but he figured it out.

I connected a short length of that wire to the breaker:

I then drilled some holes for the wires above the solar controller:

And reconnected the controller to that wire:

Here’s the breaker installed, and preparing to re-mount the controller:

The completed breaker and controller (with the solar pulling in 14.4 amps):

Here’s hoping this solution will prove satisfactory!

A big expense, but an important one: new tires. Motorhome and truck tires don’t wear out like car tires, but instead age out. Tires can last up to ten years, but the advice is to check them starting at five years, and aim for about seven years to replace them, or sooner if there are signs of cracking.

Our 2017 coach had the original tires, made in 2016, so were about due. And when we recently had our brake seize up, raising the temperature of the tire over the danger zone of 200°F, we decided it was time.

These big tires are over a grand each, and we have six of them, so it isn’t a trivial expense, but good tires are very important for the safety of the coach.

We went to Bay Diesel in Red Bay to get this done:

While there, we also got them to look at our generator, which had misbehaved earlier, but of course was working perfectly while they looked at it:

The rear wheel without the tires:

New tires:

New tires installed; they were all manufactured in late 2023, so they should be good for another 5-10 years:

We also did a test drive with a couple of techs to tweak the alignment of our Safe-T-Plus steering control system:

Yay for new tires:

Under the kitchen sink is a cupboard with a big slide-out drawer, where we keep garbage and recycling bins, plus dish cleaning supplies and more.

At the top of this cupboard is an LED, and a switch that turns on the light when the cupboard is opened.

However, in our coach the cover of the light was missing. I’m not sure if it’s always been missing, or it was knocked off without our noticing early in our ownership. I only discovered the loss when something knocked the bulb out into the garbage. Fortunately, I noticed that and fished it out before taking out the garbage:

Anyway, to avoid that happening again, I wanted to order a replacement cover for the light. I found the light in the online Tiffin parts store, part number 5032143, “LIGHT WARDROBE BROWN LED”. Of course, they don’t sell just the cover, but the whole unit was pretty cheap:

I didn’t need to replace the light, so I just pried off the cover, and kept the remainder as a spare part:

The old light with the new cover:

Much better!

Sometimes my Modification Monday posts are about significant projects, sometimes they’re a simple addition. Today is one of the latter.

On travel days we often have snack packaging or other garbage we want to throw away while driving down the road. So we added a small garbage bin (like this one on Amazon), hanging off the back of the driver chair:

Easily reachable from the passenger chair, and doesn’t get in the way of the slide-out when it’s in:

(It’s hanging off the strap for a lumbar cushion… which I could also cover in one of these Modification Monday posts. But it could easily be attached to the pocket on the back of the chair instead.)

A simple but satisfactory solution.

After leaving the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, we were scheduled to head back to Tucumcari. But about halfway there, we had a high temperature warning on our tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS):

We stopped at the next opportunity, and waited a while to let it cool down, then we continued. But it got high again, so we pulled off at the next rest area:

Even after parking, the temperature continued to rise into the danger zone, which indicated a serious issue:

So we contacted our preferred roadside assistance company, Coach-Net. We initially thought it might be a tire needing replacement, so were going to get Coach-Net to bring us a replacement (or two, since really should replace both front tires). An expensive prospect, with these large tires costing about a grand each.

But on further research we concluded it was more likely a brake issue. Coach-Net sent out a mobile truck repair tech to investigate:

He pulled off the tire, and looked at the brake. He couldn’t get the wheel to turn; he determined that the brake had seized up:

He wasn’t able to free up the brake (perhaps lacking the experience or tools). It was a Saturday, so we had to wait at the rest area for two nights until Monday before we could get towed to a truck repair shop. Finally, a heavy-duty tow truck arrived:

And lifted our front tires, which is the second-best way to tow our coach, since we have independent front suspension (the best way is to put it on a low-boy trailer, which wasn’t feasible since the wheel wouldn’t turn):

The drive shaft was removed, so the rear wheels would freely turn:

Also, the mudflap was held up, so wouldn’t scrape on the road:

We arrived safely at the truck repair shop (see a subsequent post for more details and photos of the towing adventure):

The techs at West Truck Services Center in Moriarty, New Mexico got to work. They were able to free up the stuck brake (something the first tech and tow driver couldn’t manage), so we would be able to move the coach into the shop:

They also restored the drive shaft:

In the shop, we put blocks under the hydraulic jacks on the passenger side, to lift up that side, plus a jack under the wheel frame to lift the tire off the ground:

They then were able to remove the tire:

The brake disk was rather scuffed:

The jack:

They determined that the issue was that the lower brake piston was protruding too much:

They were able to get replacement parts overnighted, and spent the next day rebuilding the brake, including smoothing out the disk:

They worked late to get us finished up, then we were able to get back on the road. (Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of them reassembling the brake.)

So we spent two nights at the rest stop waiting for a tow (due to the weekend), then two nights at the repair shop while they diagnosed and fixed the brake. Not too bad.

Stay tuned for more posts on our two unexpected stays, the towing experience, and a night drive after the repair was complete.