Pretty Interstate Machine

HEIC isn't very forum friendly, might want to stick to JPEG

Doesn't look very big or brown, how about Beige Rolling Turd? Then you could keep the nickname! 😅

Our Travelmaster is "Taku-San", which literally translates to "Mr. House".

hey! a little late to the thread but I own an 86 savannah, no manual but let me know if there's anything I can answer! @zaddylonglegs also has one (and a manual!) but I couldn't seem to get scans (I would really like to preserve the manual) which floorplan do you have?

Damn, I just read all of this thread and it's like the beginning of UP

I think it's this model...sorry it's not exactly a perfect image:

It is indeed. I did not get an owners manual with it and was not able to find anything when googling around. Currently chatting with @zaddylonglegs who seems to have the same model and some literature. Would definitely like to get a repository of info online for us travelmaster folks if at all possible.

Okay, so I see the 4"x50' roll of eternabond on ebay and amazon and such for 50 bucks, but glancing over at the eternabond site I see: EternaBond RoofSeal EternaBond AlumiBond EternaBond Seam Repair Kit EternaBond RoofSeal Plus All of them claim to be an application for my seam situation. Has anyone tried the other stuff and can they speak to the efficacy of one over another? I want to do this right so that I can alleviate worry and not have to deal with it for awhile. Thanks for all your suggestions, everyone. Also @fiddlindan, we should talk! Do you have the M-501-RD? I am definitely looking to meet folks that have my model and compare notes! Send me a PM if you like.

Definitely planning on roof units, I just thought that hey, maybe I could just have an extra there for a little bit of extra juice, perhaps even put it on a prop bar that I could lift while parked.

Quick update, From what I can tell I have an aluminum roof. Thanks for the eternabond advice. I'll see about picking some up. Is there a good source? Places to avoid buying from? Just grab some on Amazon?

So on the front of most toyhomes you've got that clear window which in theory could let a lot of light in, but my thought was that it's prime real estate for a nice solar panel. On a dolphin I know it's a little bit curved and on a sunrader I know it aims forward more than out, but on the travelmaster it seems like the angle might be juuuuuust right....... anyone done this? have thoughts on this?

Thanks @DanAatTheCape but @FredNewell, thanks again for the continued advice. I do intend to keep this around for awhile so I do want to take care of it. right now my primary concern is that I have about two weeks until I go full time and I need things to be dry and serviceable (everything needs to work). I'm putting in my new toilet this weekend, I need to figure out what to do with my fridge and the leaks and then I'm at least mostly good to go. for the upholstery, I'll look that up. thanks. as for the rubber roof question, I actually don't know how to tell if it is a rubber roof. my hand doesn't bounce off of it and it doesn't move. it feels hard, like wood. I can walk on it and knock on it. it does not sag and is stable on the inside as well. will eternabond work no matter what kind of roof it is? if that's the case, I'll just get some of that for my seam up top. I am not necessarily skilled but I intend to learn what I can and do my best!

Thanks for all the advice. I guess the thing that has me flummoxed is that there are tons of "experts" and while some of them sound very much like a "bonehead", many of them also sound like they know what they're doing, and everyone has a different opinion. There are people that sound completely confident that silicone is the way to go, and there are people that I wouldn't trust near my RV that suggest dicor. There are two friends of mine that know something about RVs and they both suggest complete polar opposite solutions. It's overwhelming. For the back window, sometimes it seems like it's on the left, sometimes it seems like it's on the right. It gets my bench wet (rear dining model) and there is definitely water in the window well. I'll probably need to replace my bench cushions or re-upholster them or who knows. maybe just a good soak in bleach and a hot air dry? I dunno what people do with them. For the overcab leak, we've replaced and re-sealed my top marker lights already so I really don't think it's those. The leak is from the ceiling, not from the window area. Here's a shot of my roof. I circled the place I think my leak is: The place(s) I'm thinking about adding solar are on either side of that front popup (hopefully both). The TV antenna is coming off and I'll run my solar wires through there unless anyone pops in with a "NOOOOOOOOOOO DON'T DO THAT" Eager to listen to everyone's thoughts.

I have a rear window leak. I've heard all I need to do is pull apart the rear window, clean around put in some butyl tape and maybe add some extra silicone, and put it back together. I also have an overcab leak, it seems to be lined up with the seam over my overcab, so I guess I can pull off the bar that goes over it, clean it up, apply some butyl tape there, and put it back on? Is Dicor still the best thing to pour onto my roof? The thing is, my entire toyhome seems to have tape that uh... is probably well over 10 years old. Should I just take my toy to someone and have them re-seal the whole thing? Or is it better to not mess with an area until it leaks? If I'm thinking about mounting solar cells to my roof, should I seal before I do that, after, or both? If I should take it to someone, who? I'm in the mid-atlantic near DC right now.

That's fair - I didn't say cheap. But I don't know why anyone would buy a more expensive thing that would perform as well as an inexpensive thing. I have no brand loyalty ?

talk to me about which fridge you have? I can get to virginia pretty easily. which wire harness are you pulling out? the ECU or others?

I feel like for the 1/3 price of the adco cap I can buy a tarp... is there any reason to not do that?

Dumb newbie question, I've developed a leak in the east coast storms and hurricane weather. I'm in the process of finding someone to help me get it fixed up, but in the meantime I'm trying to avoid making it worse. I've searched the forums and found a lot of camper covers, but I was hoping to find something more akin to a "cap" that would cover the top of my toyhome, but not much more than that. So we're talking the entire top, but only down so far as my overcab hangs, that way I could still drive with it on. Does such a thing exist? Should I just buy a regular cover and cut it up? Or should I just fashion one from a tarp? Anyone that's been through something with this.

okay, so it looks like I have no DLC connector anywhere - between chatting with some folks over at the yotatech forums and here I think my ECU is just too old. Since I don't have the data stream (or don't know where to get at it, it looks like we're going to build a passthrough black box solution. the upshot of this is I will get live data instead of "after the ECU has made a pass at it" data. there's another product, MPGuino, that accomplishes some of what I'm trying to do, just not quite with the interface I want. so I'll probably attempt to convince their code to cooperate with my own.

Okay so, like I said before, I respect your experience and your knowledge here. I'm repeating that statement up front here because I'm probably going to say some stuff that you already know and forgive me if I say it in a way that makes it sound like I don't think you know. Perhaps I'll fill in a gap (unlikely) but moreso what I want to do is make sure I understand everything that is going on and carefully identify the plan and the things I do know. Established that: We've got a car and a bunch of things that have sensors and senders. The senders are basically wires with various voltages and resistances that we can read with a multimeter. The ECU acts as a multimeter for all those sources, and tracks them. The ECU sends appropriate data to other systems based on the data and also lights up dummy lights etc on the dash. I have to assume there's a way to get the data back out. Starting with what we're now under the assumption started sometime around 1992, the DLC started streaming the data it's tracking as serial data. Like, you could connect a wire to TE2 while the engine is running, and plug it into a computer's serial port and watch the data come down the line. To a normal person this would look like garbage coming down the line. Example screenshot (computer nerds, this is not Toyota data): Thing is, it would come down the line at regular intervals. The guy that decoded the data says it's really just a dump of every value that the ECU can sense a few times every second or so. I have the software he wrote. That's why I cling to the idea of it coming over some wire that fluctuates in voltage. Once this was formalized, we all know what it became: OBDII. The realisation that I've (slowly, and I'm sorry about that) come to is that the data probably does not come from my ECU. It might come from one of the newer ECUs and give us OBDI data, and I was (still sorta am) hopeful that it will return something. One of my main thoughts was that if the TE2 wire is present but experimental, they obviously wouldn't want to expose that to the public quite yet. But since it's been 30+ years I doubt there will be many repercussions at this point ? If it's not though? I can read anything (if I know how), and I can record it, freeze it, play it back or record it. Writing a software tool to do that is trivial...it's the hardware part that I'd need to make sure I had right. So basically I guess what this has become is that I'm building the equivalent of a flight recorder / black box for a 22RE. I'm including an "incident" button which would simply add a timestamp to the data so I can look back if I hear a weird noise or something, and it will also display the live data as it captures it (think "Prius information display"). So I guess now my question is, I should tap this data and bring it into the black box, but where? I'm not talking about reading the just "check engine" codes or just the Ox sensor, though that would certainly be possible with my idea. I want every bit of data I can grab.from the car and I want to log it roughly once a second (or more often if possible). Is it safest to do this at the ECU? If so, is there a sort of "ECU extension cable" that I could patch into, perhaps? Or should I run a pile of wires out to everything under the hood (this seems less good)?

well, these days you can just use a laptop or cheap single-board computer on an old system to constantly read the values and record/freeze them... we're talking like 50 bucks. technology is pretty amazing! I'm planning on building something computer-assisted, like with a raspberry pi. so, I don't need to be able to read the gauge with the naked eye. I skimmed this image from another forum because it looks a lot like my pickup...the circled-in-green connector is the one that we're talking about, right?

1988 FSM describes diagnostic connector as "check connector". 1985 FSM has a "check engine connector" for shorting T and E1, as expected (page FI-22), and then on FI-69 describes connecting SST 09842-14010 to the "service connector" to check the Ox sensor ('88 manual has a similar process). I wonder if this is where I should be analysing/pulling signal... has anyone ever run this signal through a logic/signal analyser or a scope?

good call, I think I've located those and am digging through them now

Valid question. Short answer: I plan to write the software myself, and I think I'm capable of doing so if I can find the wires that send data. Long answer: I work with an embedded systems engineer, I know several microcode developers, and I'm designing a synthesizer from scratch. I also know a fellow that got data from his '92 corolla with an arduino (not a 22RE, I know). OBDII is not voodoo to read, and the earlier the system, the simpler it is going to be to read. Data streams are great. If there is one, I can almost be guaranteed it's not compressed which means we'll just get constant data from the ECU. There's also MyEngine which claims to be able to read pre-OBDII Toyota data, but I want to do more with the data than just display it, and I plan to build an information display into my dash. If I succeed, I'll end up with something that resembles a modern dash cluster in a 1986 vehicle, which would be pretty cool if you ask me.

Thanks Linda, this is where I ended up (I had this page open when I made my post). I think I'm gonna have to get my head under the dash more... or see if I can find connector 12. @Maineah I respect your expertise and appreciate your input. I know 1996 was the introduction of OBDII, but prior to that some OBDI Toyota ECUs give data and I am determined to find out if I can access that somehow.