More RV Excitement

While I haven’t been writing much in the blog, things have been exciting for RV living.

The toilet seal has been leaking. That doesn’t mean it leaks on the floor, the liquids just drains to the tank before you can flush. Not to go into too much detail, but you don’t want your liquids to leave the toilet before you can get the solids flushed. John bought a new seal (it took stopping at 3 different Camping World’s to find the right model). There’s a lot of work involved, but he changed the seal.

We stayed several days with his brother Jack and sister-in-law Becky. That gave John the opportunity to do some more intense RV repairs. First, John changed the anode rod on the hot water heater plus flushed out the crud in the bottom of the tank. It hadn’t caused us any issues, but just good maintenance.

Next, we’ve been having problem with the truck portion of the RV. When we push the motor hard like driving up a hill (and hills aren’t much in Florida), the fan stops on the air conditioner. John did a lot of internet research (like a full day) to find out this is a frequent problem with the F450 trucks. Something goes wrong with the vacuum system. The biggest problem is that there is no access to fix it. People talk about taking 14 hours to get to the problem or paying $500-1000 for a shop to fix it. The less expensive fix is to get hose and a vacuum tank/check valve, and duplicate the system in an area that can be easily reached then to pipe it back. As I said, after doing a lot of research (he has MUCH more patience and persistence than I do!) he found out where all the hidden connections are to fix it, bought the parts, and fixed it. The truck works fine now and it only cost ~$20.

As we were driving along to our next campground all happy that things were fixed in the RV, a tire blew. Luckily, we were within 2 miles of a garage. Since the 2^nd tire beside the bad tire was good, we could still slowly drive. They found a nail in the tire (we don’t know where we picked that up) that had ripped the tire into shreds. They quickly ordered a new tire and replaced it for a very good price. Thank you to Thompson Garage in Lawton FL!

Now, we were really happy that things were all fixed as we set up at our campsite. Suddenly, we heard a loud explosion of air as another tire blew. Two flat tires in one day! Again, luckily, John had the blocks and tools to remove the tire (though we waited until the next day since it was too late to find an open store anyhow). We found a tire store several miles away and bought a new tire. The failure was different from the first, so we really don’t know what happened.

  

Now we were happy (and a bit tired) that everything was fixed and then I got a call from Discover Card. Turns out someone got our credit card number and was trying to buy things in another city in Florida. The good part is that they found it and called us the same day. Given all our traveling around, I’m not sure how the fraud detection program works, but apparently it works very well. We don’t have to pay anything, but they had to deactivate our current cards. Given we’re traveling all the time; Discover shipped the cards to the state park where we’re staying by the next day.  Nice service!

Now, I’m almost scared to be happy.