If you recall, I ended our last post with returning to Max after a trip to Hawaii and getting him out of storage and off to Lake Louisa State Park in Clermont, FL. When Jeffrey was pulling him out of the storage bay, I could hear a strange flapping sound coming from our rear radiator area. Everything was operating fine, so we drove him to the park and, after settling in, we dug out our "mirror on a stick" and "snake camera" tools. Space is tight back there, but Jeffrey wiggled in under the engine and worked and worked to get the camera positioned so that he could spot something unusual. He could finally see letters that read "Winn Dixie, Purified Water"! Apparently we had sucked up one of those clear plastic water bottle labels and it had wedged itself at the top of the radiator fan. Thankfully we were able to dig it out ourselves.
The next surprise was a brief few instances of "hot electrical" smell in one of the bathrooms. After a few days, it was suddenly a "burning plastic" smell, so the hunt for the cause became urgent. The hunt was brief -- it was the electrical connections behind the hot water heater (that just happen to reside underneath that bathroom). Wires were scorched and melted AGAIN (the first two times occurred over a year ago so we had hoped this issue was resolved). Though we had paid professionals fix it before, we decided to try our hand at engineering a better solution that would bring us more peace of mind. After replacing the melted parts, we completely rewired things in a way that hopefully made the connections safer (it sometimes pays to be two engineers). What with finding all the parts we needed (thank you Home Depot, Camping World, and Radio Shack) and building our new electrical box, this little project spanned almost 4 days -- luckily we had the option of using the water heater with propane so we still had hot water. As I write this, the new wiring is still working perfectly.
Our final mystery took the longest to diagnose. When we created a negative air pressure inside Max, the other bathroom got smelly. This was easy to reproduce -- just have all the windows closed and open one of our ceiling vents with the fan on... or run the dryer... or drive down the road with the front windows open. Unfortunately there were too many possible culprits. As it seemed to come from under the sink (thankfully not the toilet) we initially thought a small animal (lizard, frog) had made a home in one of the piping chases and then died. Maybe we'd get lucky and it would stop on its own soon. No such luck. I then did some investigation on the RV forums we follow and we tried replacing something called a vent cap. Though it was an improved model from what we had, the smell didn't go away then either. That left just one possibility -- a recently replaced vacuum breaker under the sink that is used when we operate the high-pressure black flush system when we dump our tanks. Turns out it was the wrong part for this application and black tank odors were getting sucked back up through this valve. We researched and found the right one, were lucky to find it just down the road in Ocala, FL, and replaced it ourselves. Voila! Smell gone.
Hey, we are getting good at this RV fix-it stuff! I knock on wood as I tell you that we are back to not having ANYTHING on the list that we need a professional to fix :-) This is actually pretty rare. We celebrated by catching a flight to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to enjoy a week at our Grand Mayan timeshare with my parents. We had lovely weather and were so laid back we forgot to take any pictures, so this blog post is text only :-(
Anyhow, having finished our travels around Florida for this winter season, here we sit at the end of March near Gainesville, FL spending some quality time with Jeffrey's parents and enjoying the last few weeks before we head to points north. We decided to lag a little here so we can see the Orange & Blue Debut Gator spring football game for the first time. The day after we hit the road to attend an "Escapee" RV rally in Sevierville, TN and then will tour Pigeon Forge, Knoxville, Nashville, and Chattanooga. Memphis will have to wait until another trip.
I promise my next post will be much more "RV Travel" exciting!
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