Saturday, May 21, 2011

A wunnerful… a wunnerful!

Beautiful day. Nice temps, nice breezes, no rain, no mosquitoes and we are parked under the Caterpillar Oak hotel. I have seen some bad caterpillar droppings from the oak in front of the house in Raleigh but this puppy has some prodigious cata-poop coming down out of it.

But that did not deter my attitude, today.  I tackled a few more long deferred tasks, like patching the crack in the skin of DakotR at the bottom front corner of the bedroom slideout opening.  It has been there since we bought it and I have made lame attempts to fix it a couple of times but never really did more than gush some goo onto it.

This time, I gouged out the gunk inside, widened and straightened the edges out and generally cleaned all around, all around before patching.

I used some Dyco 20/20 caulk and filled the bugger. I then patched over that with a piece of Eternabond Seam sealing tape.

That should hold it!

Another put off too long job was to replace the main awning rear arm lock.  The original one never had a locked position. It just was pushed into place and would gradually work its way open in route. Last year I had bought a couple of new awning locks and managed to get the front one replace (cause it broke off) but never got around to it.  Actually, I never seemed to be able to get myself, my drill and drill bits, my pop rivet tool and the new lock all together at the same time.  It seems that one or another of these items managed to go into hiding.

I got them altogether today, though, and replaced the old one. One problem with the non-locking type is that it would not stay open and out of the way while trying to stow the awning and would jam between the main support and the spreader bar behind it, usually just as the awning was rolling in its last foot or so.

I also tackled the tar and gunk thrown up onto the lower front panel of the 5th wheel (I just gotta get some mud flaps on those fenders).  The best combination I came up with was Turtle Wax Bug and Tar remover followed by a Marine black streak remover… now I just have to do the other 3/4s of that area.

The water pressure here is so high that without a pressure regulator it causes the filtered water faucet in the kitchen to drip constantly. I had a nice Watts Home pressure regulator which gave good flow but installed it in the house several years ago due to very high street main pressures. I just have to replace it as these RV pressure regulators just throttle back the water flow so much that a good shower is impossible.

It’s another thing to “pick up” when we get back to Raleigh. the list is getting pretty long right now even though we only plan to be in port for a couple of weeks.

I hope the rains hold off tomorrow, too, while I have the drive and clarity to work on some of this deferred maintenance stuff.

ttfn

1 comment:

Tumbleweed Dee said...

It feels good to get those little projects done. There's three RV'res now in W. Vir. It's great following all the blogs and seeing people come together. Safe Travels