Did I mention that I really, really hate getting up early in the morning? I’ve never been a morning person and never will be. I have never minded working long hours, I just always wanted the night shift, not the morning shift. But I was still awake at 6:30 a.m. yesterday morning. That’s two mornings in a row when I was up with the roosters. Will the madness never stop?
The guys at RV Renovators were on duty at 7 a.m., and they had one heck of a job getting the Norcold refrigerator in our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage loose enough to tilt forward so they could do the recall upgrade. Miss Terry had to empty the unit before they started working on it, and it’s a good thing she did, because judging by this picture it all would have been in a big jumbled mess otherwise. Fortunately, RV Renovators had a refrigerator and a separate freezer that we could store everything in to keep it from spoiling.
The techs had to almost crawl inside the access panel opening in the side of the motorhome to get the job done. By late morning they had the upgrade finished, and we started putting everything back inside the refrigerator. Then Miss Terry noticed a problem. The refrigerator would not ignite on propane, and kept giving us an error message. Oops! Now what?
A couple of techs tried to diagnose the problem without success, so they called in Bob, the “old timer” at RV Renovators. It only took a few minutes for Bob to figure out that the air tube directly over the burner was full of crud, and with all of the jerking and pounding to get the refrigerator out, some of it had fallen down and blocked the gas valve. They cleaned it out, and voila, the propane fired right up and we were in business.
For most of our many years as fulltimers, we have had a residential refrigerator, so there is a learning curve to RV refrigerators that we are still working on. Bob told me that the refrigerator burner air tube should be cleaned every year to prevent this kind of problem. I didn’t know that, did you?
With that problem out of the way, we were ready to go. I would feel confident in recommending RV Renovators to anybody in need of RV service or repair. They took very good care of us, and we will call on them any time we’re in Arizona and need work done. Thanks Cinda, Jesse, Bill, Bob, and everybody else for all of your great service.
From RV Renovators, we drove a few miles east to Apache Junction, where we took a site at Happy Days RV Park, a nice Passport America campground with 50 amp full hookup back-in sites on gravel, with a concrete pad at each site. The place is pretty empty, but we’re only going to be here a few days while we visit with Terry’s parents.
Once we were hooked up and settled in, we drove to their house and spent some time with them. It’s always nice to have family time. By then it was late in the day, and we were both pretty hungry, so we hit our favorite Chinese buffet in this area, #1 Eastern Super Buffet. Even though we don’t live here, we’ve been there so many times during the last two winters that the staff knows us when we go in. I would rate it up with the top four or five Chinese buffets we have found nationwide.
Between two nights with little sleep, and getting up early, along with a full tummy, by the time we had finished eating, I was barely able to keep my eyes open. Terry drove back to the campground, and we had a quiet night watching TV, I wrote my blog, and we were in bed early. Or at least early for us, anyway.
Thought For The Day – There is no shortcut to anywhere worth going.
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Nick Russell
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Nick, I’m all for keeping the burner tube clean, but how do you get to it without pulling the box? In our old 25 foot Airstream, there was an access hole in the shelf immediatily above the tube. Not so in our DP with the box (like yours) snug against the ceiling!
Gene
This happen to use years ago, the scale builds up inside the tube and when you shut off the unit the tube contracts and the scale falls off onto the pilot light. It can easily be cleaned, access it by removing the outside inspection panel then normally right above the pilot light area there is a small inspection plate that will slide out of the way so you can look in to inspect the pilot light. Just clean the scale off with a small blast of air or reach in with an old toothbrush and sweep it clean.
Yep, that’s another chore to keep your RV going. Along with things like cleaning out the hot water tank, changing the water filters, changing the oil, air, generator filters, etc. New RVers sometimes don’t know these things. That’s why as you recommend you read the beginner books and go to seminars at FMCA, Good Sam, RV Dreams rallies and especially Gypsy Journal rallies!!!!!!!!!! Talk to old timers. They will fill you in. And just when you have your checklist down pat, you get a different RV. Sigh. New list time.
We just came from SLC Utah to Nebraska. Spent the night yesterday night in Cheyenne, WY. We woke up to SNOW all over the coach. We were able to get out and head east on I-80 but to go west on I-80 was closed due to, you guessed it, snow. Boy, this has been some winter. Looking forward to spring. Oh yeah, it’s already officially here. Where?
Thanks for all the info. I know a lot of people don’t want this to become a tech type blog, but I sure like learning some of the problems and solutions that are part of the RV lifestyle. Every time I have a problem, I pass along the solution to others we talk to and appreciate learning from others too. Thanks again.
Ok NIck enough of this fooling around with non-essential things like refrigerators. Hurry up and go get the new iPad. I’ve got the bug to buy one of these new toys or I should say one of these critical RV tools (that’s what I am telling Monique), but am anxious to see what you think before I take the plunge. I’ve been debating about switching to an iPhone, but think I might prefer the iPad instead. I have an iPod touch which has all the iPhone features, except no direct 3G connection to the network. There are a ton of applications that I can see would be very handy as we travel that are really not as practical using WiFi. I think the iPad would be much better with the larger screen. So look forward to your comments.
Given the comments about the performance of RV Refrigerators and some people actually replacing with Residential Refrigerators (and loving them), has anyone done “both” and perhaps inserted a small frig in the space for the Washer/Dryer ? Not that you need more refrig space, but the cooling characteristics of the res refrig would be great at times to prevent overheating the RV frig with warm leftovers or serve as storage for frequently retrieved items so that the RV frig door stays closed. Just brainstorming with the experts for when we start preparing for the road. Not asking for a technical thread, but asking if anyone has gone with a “belts and suspenders” approach.
Thanks for the info on the fridge. Just a tip if you are up for a great pizza while in Apache Junction we found a place called Fat Man’s that did it up right.