David

RV technician and renovation extraordinaire.

Broken Service door

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On one of our hops across the country while hooking up our fresh water, the door fell off in my hand. The problem turned out to be a broken retracting plastic pin on one side of the door hinge. The door attaches to the utility cabinet with one fixed pin and one spring retracting pin. Both pins are plastic, the retractable one is the one that broke. When it broke, the spring and remaining bits of pin disappeared into the gravel, never to be seen again. I made a few inquiries as to how to get a new one but since we were traveling I secured it with some tape and forgot about it. We made it to our summer location and work calls started flowing in so I continued to rely on my good brown tape to hold my access door in place. At the end of the season …

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Ram 2500 Airbag Suspension Installation

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We travel full-time in our Keystone Laredo 335MK travel trailer and pull it with a Ram 2500 pickup truck. Our truck has no problem towing our trailer. We use an Equalizer brand weight distribution hitch to even out the load. While traveling, we have noticed the rear of the truck tends to bounce when we travel over rough roads. Even with the Equalizer hitch, the truck tends to squat in the rear just a bit, this can affect the vehicle stability and reduce the headlight effectiveness. We try not to tow at night but the few times we have we got flashed at by oncoming vehicles quite often. To help these issues out we decided to invest in an airbag suspension system. We went with the Air Lift, 57289 Load Lifter 5000′ kit. The kit is manufactured to fit our Ram 2500. I was able to install their kit using …

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Home on Wheels Alliance

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Want to help out a good cause and have a chance at winning a nice trailer? I just donated to the Home on Wheels Alliance through one of their fundraiser programs with a chance to win a 6×10′ Nomad Trailer by WeeRoll. They are helping senior citizens, the working poor, and people with disabilities from becoming truly homeless by providing safe vehicles to live in. This fundraiser program ends on 11/12/2020 and they are still a bit short of their goal. Please help them out. Thank you. Follow this link to help donate with a chance to win the trailer  

Making use of unused space in an RV

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Like a lot of travel trailers, we have a pass through storage area under the nose of our trailer. I recently had to do some repair work to our water pump that is located in this storage area behind a carpeted false wall. This is also where our leveling system controls are mounted. There was quite a bit of unused space in this utility area enclosed by the false walls. After completing my water pump repairs I removed the two false walls and cut the shorter wall down to allow the front wall to move back. The new space will allow us a couple more square feet of storage. The control panel for the leveling system is still usable in this area but I will be relocating it in a future post to make it more user friendly.

Heading in my new direction

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I am officially an RVSA Certified RV Technician! We’ve been full-time RVers since September 2018, but only on the road since July 2019. Jen and I have been planning and working to fulfill our dream of full-time RV travel. Making this transition meant letting go of the career that had sustained me up to this point. I spent much of the last 20+ years working as a operations and equipment maintenance supervisor in the manufacturing industry. I was very good at my job but I was fed up and burned out. The politics, dehumanizing management, and frustrating environments meant each day was a soul-sucking blender. We budgeted, scrimped, and saved in order to help make the transition possible. I have always been a hands-on person and enjoy fixing and making things. My favorite job was the three years I spent working as a residential electrician before going back to school …

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Sanitizing Our Fresh Water System

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How long has it been since you sanitized your fresh water system in your RV? Did you know your fresh water system needs to be sanitized on a regular basis? Even with a good filter, algae, debris, and bacteria can build up in the fresh water tank and plumbing.

The sanitation process can take several hours, and will require access to a fresh water supply.

We have a Keystone Laredo travel trailer with a 43 gallon fresh water tank, and our water cabinet includes the fresh water fill inlet, fresh water tank vent to prevent overfilling, valve for switching between onboard water and city water, black water flush inlet, outside shower port, and the cable TV connections.

View of the fresh water fill cabinet on our Keystone Laredo travel trailer

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Doubling Our Usable Kitchen Drawer Space

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I borrowed this idea from my father. My dad added several pull-out storage areas in their kitchen pantries as well as interior drawers similar to this project. This additional pull-out storage made much better use of the space, making the contents neater and easier to access.

Our utensil drawer is definitely in need of a space utilization improvement project. The standard silverware organizer does do the job, but the drawer itself was never more than half full.

View of the utensil drawer before the project to add an interior drawer started

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Making Gray Tank Valves Easier to Reach

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Waste water tanks are not high on the list of fun things to do while RVing. We have two gray tanks, and the way the manufacturer installed our kitchen gray tank’s dump valve does not make the process any more fun. Basically, they were installed “backwards.” In order to open the gate valve you have to climb under the edge of the slide floor and electrical cables, and the valve must pulled away from you in order to open it.

View of the kitchen waste water tank dump valve with the handle facing away from the viewer
This is the easiest angle to approach the gray tank. Why is the handle on the opposite side?

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Everybody poops! Or alternately: Full-time RVing with cats, and where the heck did we put the litter boxes?

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We have four cats and live in a 35-foot RV. Where do our cats poop? Not gonna lie: this was at the top of our priority list when we were RV shopping. It is extremely important to have a clean and safe area for cats to go to the bathroom, because without that, it can cause all kinds of behavioral problems that could lead to anything from aggression to physical illness.

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