Even the Wall Street Journal is Talking about it!

Check out the article in WSJ this week! It's as if they are watching us....
Vintage RVing!

The waiting game

The "Long Hauler" should be ready by the end of the day on Monday, later than we expected and if we had known we could have saved a lot of money just going to the grandparents instead of hanging around in Daytona paying for rental car and hotels. That's all behind us now that we are at the grandparents and awaiting the OK for the RV to be done.

The shop pulled the engine and found the issue:

This is the view looking down to the camshaft... well at least most of it. There is a section missing (middle hole)where a part of the cam just cracked and fell into the bottom end of the engine. Let's say this is not a good thing to have such a large chunk of metal bouncing around in your engine. Bad things happen. The part wedged into the crankshaft and seized the engine. Solution? New engine. The good thing is that these old 360 V8's are not that expensive to get and there are no complicated electronics to hook back up. Arrow Truck Repair is doing the work right now.

Plan "B" is to drive back up the East coast back home and save the cross country trip for next year.

A Change of Plans

Sometimes life tosses you a few curveballs and it's how you deal with them that make all the difference. The RV gave us some issues on the way down and now we're in Daytona Beach waiting for Arrow Repair to fix the RV and get us back on the road.

With nearly a week delay that means we're going to have to shorten our trip. The cross-country dash will be shortened and we are still figuring just how short it's going to be.

Stay tuned!

 Let's just say the Tioga is going to receive a new heart this week.... Hope that and a few other extras included will get her completely ship shape for travel! Thanks for Arrow Towing for helping out and getting us back on the road (we hope!).

The First few Days

We finally left on Monday after spending 2 solid days on the weekend, fixing and patching, cleaning and sorting. You know how things happen in "threes"? Well they do. 1) the driver's side mirror decides to fall out and shatter while entering Watkin's Glen, 2) we hit a BIG pothole on 80 and damaged the exhaust header, 3) the windshield wipers decided to bonkers. Then we get to Rachel's brother's house on Staten Island.

Let me tell you. NEVER drive an RV on Staten Island. The roads are horrible and you spend more time dodging potholes and dips and bumps. We never saw so many "BUMP" warning  signs on the highway down to NY!

With #1 we stopped into a Auto Zone and bought a mirror and two wide angle mirrors to replace the one that bailed out. The camo duct tape really sets it off...

With #2 there wasn't much we could do except live with it until we could either fix it or find some shop to repair it (more on this later).

With #3 it was 2 trips to the local to Janet in MD auto store to get the right clips to put the wiper arms back in sync. Our kids wound up spending a couple of days with Marco and Leo! Alex took his bike out for the first bike trip and wound up with a flat in 10 mins.... flat! Could          not       resist.

We do still have the electrical gremlins bothering us. The alternator that seems to not work as hard as it should (only 65 amps so no wonder). My kids managing to drain my 3 12V battery power system in 2 days flat. and the wierd things the RV does when the voltage is low.

Chalk it all up to getting to know your RV better..

Now, onto the #2 item details!
I finally had it with trying to fix the horribly loud engine with the broken exhaust. The next morning after making it to Rachel's sister, I called around to find a shop to help weld it or do what was needed to make it better. Not so easy with an RV. I did get to one local shop, "Renaldo's" and the owner said he couldn't do it but to "follow him". So, I do and he takes me close to the airport to see "Carlo". Carlo runs Airport Auto and his crew got me in and 5+ hours later we have a new header gasket! That's what was wrong with it! Well, okay there's lots more "wrong with it" but hey, take the good where you can get it!

Tomorrow am we set out to Williamsburg then onto Kitty Hawk, NC! Last note for tonight, a request to put a curtain on the bathroom rear window has been placed. Talk about a rear window alright! Truckers definitely are in for a show...

Oh, just shoot me now.

There's nothing like trying to update stuff in an old RV that will just leave you thinking: "why couldn't we just play 8 tracks in the thing already???"

I bought a nice JVC radio for the RV. Cheap (about $65). Now the issue wasn't so much getting it installed it was dealing with the insanity of the knucklehead that installed the 8 track am/fm radio in the first place.

There is a gaggle of white and green wire (I know now that is speaker wire) all over the driver's side floor and each speaker in the van has been rewired to what was the old radio jack.

ALL WRONG. NOTHING WAS WIRED RIGHT. NO MATCHING WIRE COLORS.

The radio is nice enough to tell me the speaker wiring is wrong and it will shut down. WHA!

It's just faster to rip out all the speaker wires and just redo it all with new wire before the trip. Oh, Boy!

The Countdown has Begun.

UPdate! Got the parts needed to fix the A/C and she's cold again! Yeah! Also spent time to replace what was a worn out muffler (very quiet now). It's starting to shape up a bit. I'll need a couple of days during the week to get this wrapped up.

 After repainting the front and spending all the time cleaning it up and getting it prepped my DODGE chrome letters walked off. I figure that this emblem was more fitting. Makes the entire RV look better I think!

3- 12V batteries into the original generator compartment to provide back up power when not hooked up anywhere.  Now to figure out if those old generator wires are still hooked up to the power center....

And the old, tired muffler has been replaced. Welded, clamped and a new tailpipe installed. YEA! Let's go out and get so gas in the tank! Do you know how you find out if your tank is leaking?? Put gas in it! Stay tuned for the next episode of As the RV Turns.....