If we didn’t have bad luck we would have no luck at all

I think it started in Tucumcari when we blew the head gasket in the motorhome.  We had a few things that needed to be checked at Central Valley RV before we left Fresno, but nothing that we couldn’t live with.  CV fixed the hot water heater which for me was very important for washing dishes and showers.

Our last Blog was about the good time we had at the Western Family Motorhome Association.  We stayed over 2 days with our friends, Cool Judy and Luke Rinehimer, at the Fairgrounds.  That’s when we noticed a couple of problems with the RV.  The first was a water leak around the area where the Hot Water Heater had been worked on.  We managed to stop the leak, we thought.  We also noticed the ER-13 code on the refrigerator was still a problem.  We thought we could either drive back to Fresno and have it fixed to drive over to Quartzsite where upon calling Lifestyles RV Repair we were told they had the part we needed and they could fix it. So we drove to Quartzsite and checked in to Lifestyles RV. They thought the heater for the refrigerator we needed was one they had in stock.  It wasn’t. We needed one that had to be ordered and sent from Denver.  We left, filled up with propane, and parked out on Plomosa Road for one night. We later moved closer to Lifestyles RV in the Dome Rock area.  We pulled into the dirt road and heard a scraping sound then the alarms started going off.  We had dragged the air bleeding connector at the hitch and we had no air or airbrakes.  We slowly got to level ground and stopped.  After careful investigation and evaluation Tom and I drove DA TOAD to the hardware store for an easyout and a brass plug.  Back to DA PAD… easyout would not work.  Tom got it disconnected from the back side.  Back to the Hardware store for a brass cap.  After driving back to DA PAD it was an easy fix.  We leveled up and retired for the the evening. 

While watching TV we heard a loud clatter coming from the heater.  As we have a front and back heater, we turned off the front which was the culprit.  The next day we pulled the heater apart and saw the blower had splines missing. We went to Lifestyles RV and lo and behold they had the part in stock.  The shock was half of the blower assembly was missing from our blower (on the left).

This was my project and I got it all put together with no missing screws.

The next problem we discovered was the leak from the hot water heater had not been completely fixed .This time Tom attacked the leak and found another source of water.  He managed to get several more turns on the joint and we think it is fixed. 

The part was to arrive and we were to have the refrigerator repaired on Friday.  Oops, someone forgot to schedule us in on Friday.  So we picked up the the part, a defrost heater, and decided we would research how to disassemble a Dometic 4200 refrigerator.  The next day we started, carefully removing each part according to the assembly diagram.  We were told this job would be a 3-4 job… it took us 5 1/2 hours.  Boy was it a tight fit. 

There was lots of stuff to remove, but we carefully labeled everything.  Not too bad considering we completely removed everything from the ice maker to the side of the freezer compartment. 

WE installed the small heater and put everything back together.  It worked!!!!  This was the part that we replaced.  The broken part is the small piece in the middle.

With everything fixed we moved over to Boomerville on the south east side of Quartzsite.  We spent about a week with our Escapee friends, competing in a Chili Cook Off contest, helping with the CARE auction where most of us brought our very best ‘stuff’ to auction off.  The Boomers bid and donated over $3,000 that day to the Escapee charity that cares for retired RV’ers in Livingston, TX.  After the Boomer rally we moved back to the Dome Rock area for the SKP Geocaching Rally. 

I started coming down with the ‘desert crud’ with horrendous coughing and fever. Though I did do a presentation on Geocaching Swiss Army Knife program and helped with a couple of other geocaching sessions, for the most part I stayed away from everyone and inside the RV.  Three days into the rally the ‘crud’ hit Tom.  He was miserable and didn’t leave the RV at all.

When the rally was over all but 3 rigs left for other camping sites.  We stayed in, ate soup, drank lots of liquids, slept and didn’t get any caches.  Our friends, Pat & Bob DeSpains and Sharie & Jack Armand (Sp?) checked on us each day.  We planned on driving to Blythe to get some supplies, but DA TOAD would not start.  We tried several  things including trying to jump from DA
PAD to get DA TOAD started, but we were feeling so weak, we gave up and went back to the RV.  The next morning Bob & Pat DeSpain came by and tried jumping DA TOAD. It started right up.  This was Sunday, Super Bowl Game day.  We drove into Blythe, bought our food and came back to watch the game and commercials.  This was the first game we watched since the last Super Bowl, I think.  We enjoyed it.

 

Monday we pulled out of our spot.  We didn’t realize how deep we had sunk in the damp ground.  But after a week the ground had dried out and we just backed right out. 

We got on Hwy 95 about 1 o’clock.  Traffic was light, we were listening to Sirius Radio, 50’s on 5.  I had checked the tire pressure as I always do and all was perfect.  When we heard the loud bang and the Pressure Pro alarm went off we were both surprised.  Tom eased the RV to the side of the road and we were able to pull off to a flat area just past MM50.  We called CoachNet and they sent a tire repair truck with another new tire.  We called Good Sam Warranty and were told to have the repair people call them when they arrived. We called Foremost Insurance because of the damage to the side of the rig.  This could have been a lot worse so maybe our bad luck is changing. 

		Tire Damage VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

So now we are in Yuma at the Southern Mesa RV park for a week.  We are planning to attend the Geocaching Mega Event next weekend.  We may even get a few caches around town too.  We should have a good week.