[Furnace help]

I have a question on the Sunrader furnace. I have a 1987 Sunrader and it has a furnace that will auto light. It worked fine for our trips to California and worked fine on a few local trips last month. Just over a week ago it got real cold, in the teens and it snowed over a foot. I am not sure if that has anything to do with it or not, but just the conditions of the failure I guess. So to continue the furnace lit and worked fine one day and then would not light the next. We noticed it was just blowing cold air for over an hour and realized something must be wrong.

A couple of times in the past when the coach battery was low it (the furnace) would not light, but we just figured it was low battery (we have a guage to tell how much juice the battery has, LP in the tank, black and grey water etc.), when we finally plugged it in to a land line it would work fine on those occasions.

So here I am a week since it has worked, still not able to light the thing, I turn on the gas valve, turn on the furnace and the fan growls a bit (bearings are another story) like usual and then comes on and blows cold air. There is a noticable "clunk" a moment after turning on the furnace switch followed by a softer "clank" a few seconds later. sounds almost like a switch or relay. I wanted to see if anyone had a similar issue or had any quick fixes.

FYI- the gas has is still reaching the stove and I can light that still.

[Winter driving Oregon & California Highway 5]

My wife and I made that trip twice just about a month ago. We traveled from Eastern Washington to San Jose to visit family, we had to go back down to San Jose the day after Christmas, got some bad news.

Most of the way the drive is real smooth, as you get near Shasta and just north of Shasta it got real nasty, I think I posted a few pics in the "trips" category. we made it thru without chains and there was snow everywhere. We also planned our stops, one of which was the Rolling Hills Casino south of Redding on 5, it had a nice RV park and a shower building for visitors, for $5.00 you can use a very nice and clean 5 star facility wih marble showers and soft water. I actually saw another Toyota RV in the RV park, but never made contact with them. Have a nice trip!

[Cars]

Okay this is the only topic board I would be brave enough to discuss this one. My wife loves the movie "Cars" and loves the idea of riding route 66 sometime in the future, and thought the story behind cars and route 66 made it s great movie. So here we are watching the movie "cars" and trying to identify all the cars in the movie, and there where a lot of real cars used as models for this. We then thought about our little Sunrader, there where also a lot of RVs depicted in the movie. We watched closely to see if there was a Sunrader in the movie and sure enough I think we saw one. Near the beginning of the movie they show the crowd as the race cars fly around the track, they then cut to a bunch of RVs. In the forgroung is an RV that is supposed to be "Elvis". The first few times I watched this movie I did not see the resemblance to a Sunrader, but if you look at the RVs in the backround that are much larger, and the fact it has a flat, truck type of hood instead of a "van" look to it. I would say that was made to look like the Mini-Winni Toyota Sunrader type of RV. Okay, okay, I will now try to get a life. I did see a real life "Guido" at our last Summer Nights car show last year but no Hudson Hornet.

[Do Toyota Motorhomes Leak?]

Take a look at the inside of your metal frame windows (everyone except the wrap around front ones). You will find an inner frame with screws that go through to the outer frame. All you need to do is remove the screws around the inner frame and push the window out. It would be a good idea to have someone standing on the outside to make sure that the window does not fall to the ground once it breaks loose from the old putty tape. You may need to use a pry tool such as a painters 5 in 1 and a small molding pry bar to get the window started out of the coach but I have seen them fall on their own if the putty tape is old.

Once you have the window out, clean off all of the old butyl putty tape and put a new strip all around the outer window frame. Have someone hold it in place while you set the inner frame and center the window. Replace the screws and you are done. You will need to tighten them enough so that you get a squeeze of butyl caulk coming out around the outer frame.

Butyl putty tape caulk comes in long rolls and can be found at all RV places.

Don't use any form of tub caulk such as silicone or painters caulk as it will be almost imposable to remove the windows the next time they start to leak in a few years.

Take one window at a time and you may want to start with the smallest window first so that you can get the idea of what is going on before you tackle the big one in the back.

Nice rig for sure, looks very clean. I need to replace the seal on my upper plexiglass windows, and may even replace the plexiglas because they are chalky white now and I can't polish them back to black. Kinda like hard water staining. Also my seals have bowed out so the thing has kind of an over bite look to it, I am scared to do anything as it may not go back together. I have toyed with the idea of just filling that space with fiber glass and having no front windows.

[Do and dont's]

Howdy Robert

I seem to recall a post here a while back about the overdrive not working above a certain altitude. Think it was by our fearless leader. If my screen door memory serves me correctly, it was designed by the factory to do that. Lessens engine strain.

Course, if your overdrive went out on the plains, I never made this post...

Gotta protect what's left of my ego...

1987 Sunrader 4cyl 22RE EFI

I should modify this to topic to "should nots and shouldn't haves", let's just say I had a wild ride these last two weeks. We had just returned from California, the next day we recieved some real bad news....the worst kind.

We had to return to California on the Christmas day, so we had just barely finished clean up from the previous trip and had to turn around and go.

First off my fuel gauge stop working on the last trip, so we had to manually calculate our mileage, no problem.

But we had to go thru the mountains again, only this time when we got to the 3500ft. altitude the over drive stopped working again, but a running condition developed as the engine appeared to be chugging a small bit about the time the OD stopped working. The condition quickly went away and we finished our journey to Ca. 5 days later we are on the return trip and get to the higher elevations again, but this time the engine started to chug really bad. if it was a carburator I would have guess the accelorator pump was gone, if we gave it any gas at all if would bog. So here we are after a difficult week, in the middle (or on top of) no where, in a rig that would not pick up speed, you could toe tap the gas and get a minimal thrust. The engine temp seemed fine, the check engine light flashed once or twice but never stayed on. We prayed to make it to a gas station, any gas station. Eventually we did make it to Madras and idled in to a station. I topped off the tank and checked all the vacuum lines under the hood, we also took a break for a while.

I went to start it a while later and it ran fine and I could then rev it up, which puzzled me, it seemed to fix itself after it cooled off, or maybve going thru the warm up cycle changed the fuel ratio setting on the EFI. I can only imagine that maybe the tranny had overheated and boiled a gas line (vapor lock) or an enrichment selenoid froze up when the thing went into high altitude mode. Anyone else have this happen??? about 2.5 hours later we came down below the 3500ft altitude and we got OD back. A few moments later on a hill the OD went out again and we had the engine/transmission chug episode again, but only briefly and it settled down and we made it home only we got in at 3:00am instead of 11:00pm like we should have.

[Giant Dog Crate]

Here they are some photos of thier first long trip to California and back to Washington, about 2,000 miles total.

[Do and dont's]

Yes this is correct, it happened again on the way home while going thru Mt. Shasta. We made it home with only some minor issues, fuel gauge (Napa) light bulb burned out, and then when I filled up the tank the gauge went haywire. Pegging between E and F a thousand times a second while the truck was rolling. When I slowed down or found a smooth road it would kinda flicker around the actual reading. Very irritating when driving thru the snow at dusk, but we made it, and always knew how much gas we had or when we needed gas anyway. I think it must have a loose wire somewhere.

getting back to the smooth ride, I had read many places where the tires should be around 50PSI, and since there was no sticker on my door jam from Toyota I did my best to figure what the PSI should be, I had the tires at about 46PSI for most of the trip. But then when I was putting on my seatbelt one morning I noticed a sticker on the side of the cab, and it read 28PSI for the tires. When I spoke to a tire retailer, they said to do what the manufacturer says, not what the tires say. I have attached a photo of the label inside my cab, I lowered my tires to 35PSI at the next gas station, it had a huge effect on the bouncy ride and crashing noise everytime we hit a bump, it was smooth and quiet. Any thoughts on this???

[San Jose or Bust]

Well we made it thru Northern California and Central Oregon. This was quite a trip this time of year and all, I learned a lot about the Sunrader for sure. We went thru Shasta and up to Bend on 5 and then on 97 in a snow storm and it really handled it quite well. I actually like to travel in these elements as it levels the playing field, everyone has to go slow, ha ha. Actually if you get a good run at the hills, this thing does real well.

I am working on the pictures of our trip, so I will add more later and tell about where we stayed.

I have attached some more picture in this latest edit of this post. Mostly Klammath Falls, Mt. Shasta, Shasta Lake and the mothball fleet on the way to the Bay Area.

[Do and dont's]

dang, sounds like you hit it on the head if that is true. We where taking off from the Klammath falls area and heading up Mt. Shasta, and 4th was not working, on the way down all of a sudden it went into 4th again. go figure.

[Do and dont's]

Thanks for the tips guys, we made it to California and it was a nice drive spare a few things.

As we got thru middle Oregon I lost my overdrive. There was no running condition(slipping etc.) but simply would not shift into 4th. This was no problem really as 4th is a funny gear anyway, I will speed up to 70mph in 3rd it would drop to 4th and then it can not hold the speed and slowly drop back to 60mph and drop into 3rd again and then zoom back to 70mph and drop into 4th, and repeat this cycle endlessly until we lost the 4th gear that is.

Well we stayed the night near La Pine Oregon, and resumed travel in the morning. We encounted very strong winds in Shasta area and slowed to about 35mph about half the speed of the winds ha ha, to keep from getting blown into the median. Funny thing on the way down Shasta heading south the 4th gear started to work again. I had checked the fluid the night before and it was just above the hot level line maybe 1/8 inch or so, maybe the shop overfilled it last month or electrical issue. This problem plus loosing the light for my aftermarket fuel gauge is the only issue sofar. about 2 1/2 tanks of gas so far in over 900 miles maybe $200 worth since departure and I still have half a tank now.

Thanks again!

[Do and dont's]

I have a few questions I thought of that I should know before we leave to California. I was hoping someone would know the answers.

Questions like if the RV is plugged in at an RV park, is it okay to run the engine or will it cause electrical problems, or is it okay to warm the engine up while it is still plugged in to a 30 amp hookup.

If I need chains, do I need to put them on both back tires of the dually, by that I mean do I need 4 chains for the back wheels. (I know these are stupid questions).I am planning on bring one set of chains is why I ask.

This is real bad, but I have to ask. There is two wires coming out from between my over cab windows. The windows that usually have the seal problem above the windshield. I am not sure what the previous owner could have had in mind for these wires. I am thinking maybe he had a box speaker system or something. Any ideas???

By the way my Torpedo came in, and this thing is a gas. I can plug in my VCR (because it also has a tuner) and project the image on anything or anywhere. I found it online for $75.00, and it has a built in speaker. It reminds me of the drive-ins, I could even put it on a park bench and show a movie on the side of the RV if I wanted. For now I use a spring loaded curtain rod across the top rear of the RV and slide a sheet over it for a screen. Not the best picture, but perfect for watching a movie at night while camping.

We are off on Saturday night late and home to reach California by Monday.

[Small---Big---Small ?]

Well I have only had mine for about 2 months, but I have calculated mileage at or near 16 MPG ( I know this is acurate, I had no fuel gauge at the time, so I had to be acurate or run out of gas ha ha). That was driving on the highway. I have since tuned it up, I will track my mileage on my trip to California next weekend and let you know what I averaged. I have an '87 Sunrader with 22r-e EFI. Hope you find a good one for sale...good luck!

[1987 Toyota Sunrader help]

Well I have a couch on one side and an empty box on the other. The box or frame just had plywood on top, with wood siding over it on the sides, and vents for the heater. Originally I was going to attach the dog crates to the ply wood tops. I decided to fabricate up some vinyl covers for the plywood and use foam for a cushion. I have attached a photo of what I did, this may be a temporary fix and it was real cheap to do, about $25.00. I rolled some vinyl up and stapled it to the edge of the plywood so there are no rough edges. I thought someone else might be able to use this information as a quick cheap fix instead of buying a new couch assembly.

[San Jose or Bust]

Well we are going to test this thing out on a long drive in mid December. I have the tailights working, fridge, heater, and changed all the fluids etc. I did find a storage box on the outside that looks like the bottom has either rotted or some screws came loose that I will have to repair before we leave. I just bought a thing called a Torpedo to project TV or DVD on the wall for entertainment, small and compact, nothing fancy but will do.

We will be traveling down from Washington thru middle Oregon. We are still planning our route, from Eastern Washington it is shorter to take 97. But the road is smoother on 5, we lose about 2.5 hours tho. I guess the RV parks will make the difference. I read of a nice RV park at Seven Feathers, maybe too nice for what we are doing. We would like to drive for about 6-8 hours and stay in southern Oregon or Northern California overnight and finish the drive to the Bay Area the next day. what we need is a dog friendly RV park with a nice facility, like showers and power and maybe even cable. Not a sight seeing stop, but would be nice if it is scenic, maybe if we can make it to Shasta and stop there. We will have a house to power up to in San Jose, but may take Greg up on the Aptos RV park once in the area and stay a night there too. We should be 3-5 days in Silicon Valley and then drive back to Washington and home before Christmas.

Any suggestions of good RV parks in the Northern California-southern Oregon region on the I-5 corridor would be great help. And any Sunrader tips for long travel as well. I will post a trip report when we return.

[Help with HESITATION]

You need to determine if is fuel or spark causing this, usually hesitation to me suggests fuel. Maybe a bad fuel pump, maybe even a crack in a vacuum line. Any bad smell, maybe a plugged catalytic converter? Good luck.

[When to cover your RV?]

I know in Portland it is very humid, but if you are driving the thing everyday I do not know if I would cover it, maybe build a carport to drive it under to keep it dry. I know in old boats the fiber glass rots and weakens if there is moisture, so that is what I would worry about in humid climates, and mold.

I just winterized mine, to make sure water does not freeze in the pipes, but I am still driving too, as I cannot resist driving it around, I just do not use the sink or shower. I would just make real sure nothing is leaking into the RV around windows and vents etc., but I am by no means an expert on RV care so I would look for a more opinions.

[shocks]

I think some of you may have some good info here so I will ask. On my '87 21ft I have the air bags on the suspension. I really have two questions, one is the air pressure to use in the bags. I had it at about 50-60 and I felt like I was looking down the hood and it handled funny. It reads a range of 20psi to 90 psi on the sticker for the bags. What I did was go to level ground and use the level built into the side of the thing and found that at about 25 psi it was pretty level and it rode more balanced. I realize as my weight changes in spring, when I load it up, I would have to increase the psi. I guess the questions is are my shocks not doing thier part, I am almost thinking of adding air shocks up front so I can lift the front instead of bottom out the rear. It seems like the front end is real low, but it is a 2wd. I was just wondering if anyone else has had a similar feeling. How could one tell if the shocks are shot, it has only 65K miles, not real bouncy or anything.

[Back up lights]

Thanks for the good advice, I just thought it was funny that the lights went out the day I had the fuel gauge put in.

When I turned on the headlights yesterday I found the condition worsened as the brake lights and running lights are out on outermost clusters of the tailight array. So I still have blinkers, emergency lights, and brakes lights with the healdlights in the off position only. The guy said the reason to use the NAPA fuel gauge was because the NAPA sending unit was not the same ohms as the Toyota gauge. I wonder if this difference is causing problems elsewhere. I will check it this weekend.

Thanks again!

[Back up lights]

Well I may have spoke to soon on the wiring. I just put a new fuel gauge in yesterday, went with a NAPA sending unit and gauge, as the factory unit was hard to get. But I noticed last night when I went to have my wife pull it out of the driveway that my tailights are acting funny. So here it goes....with the headlights off everything appears to be working normally, brake lights, blinkers reverse. BUT when she put on the headlights I still have running lights on both sides, when she put on the brakes the right brakelight is fine, but the left tailight goes out alltogether, both blinkers are fine (they are amber lense anyway and different socket). I thought no problem change the bulb maybe a filliment is out, but it appeared to be fine. They are dual filliment bulbs. I have no clue where to start to look. Once it warms up outside maybe I will go play with it.

[Back up lights]

This may not be a tech issue, but I have a question about reverse lights. Mine do work, but it is very hard to see, I would like to add a flood light or something of the sort. My goal would be to have a splash of light behind me when I throw her into reverse. I am not sure if I should go to the trouble of putting in a toggle switch on the dash, or if I could simply tap into the light cluster and maybe reroute the reverse light wires? I have heard mention of wiring problems for some, so part of me says "leave it alone" as it all works. Any thoughts here?

[Giant Dog Crate]

Here is the latest in RV security systems.......

[Giant Dog Crate]

I just saw this area and had to mention our dogs. They are the reason we bought this thing really, as you see we have three JRT dogs. The Mother (Jetty) is a good racing dog (Purina dog challenge) and we thought to have a litter of puppies about 4 years ago. We kept one puppy (Rico) with the best markings to also race and possibly breed, as he is papered and and has great markings. Well to make a long story long another of the puppies (Archie) got off the leash and ran in front of a car and was badly banged up, we spent a lot of money to save him. So we ended up with three, as we did not think it would be fair to sell Archie because he may need future surgeries on his hip.

Back to the RV, when ever we wanted to go anywhere we had to either pay a kennel to hold our dogs, or cram the 3 maniacal Jack Russells in a sedan and try to vacation. When I noticed the Sunrader and found out it was affordable my wife and I decided to buy the thing.

We sent out pictures of it to friends and family, and my wife's cousin thought it looked like a giant dog crate, I thought that was pretty funny. She knows why we bought it, so it was not meant as an insult to the Sunrader, but as a dog joke. We look forward to a lot of fun trips in this Sunrader.

[Charging the coach battery]

What kind of plug? Does it look like a regular plug for house current. Refers come in two flavors. One can use gas, 120 volt AC (like your house) and 12 volt DC from the battery. The other is only gas and 120 V AC. Here are some pics of 120 and 12 volt heater elements

This image is with the elements inserted into the heat transfer tubes

Well here is a pic if it comes thru. It is like a wall socket, when I unplugged it I had no more current drain on my battery, until I found the off switch inside the thing a few days later. Again I am new with this thing and learning as I go, and trying not to break anything as I learn. I did notice a converter panel down below my sink, it looked real clean and in good order. My stove finally lit today, I did not wait long enough for the gas to travel to the burner last time when I tried to lite it.

So once I fix the gas gauge (my last project) I am ready to take it on a road trip.

[Big Sur]

I used to live on the other side of Mt. Madonna in Gilroy which is just over the hill and inland from Watsonville, I have read a few posts on the Big Sur trips and might add a few nearby points of interest. There is a restaurant there called "Nepenthe" or something of the sort and it has a neat little hippy gift shop below, this is near the top of Big Sur. On a clear day it is a nice place to have lunch and take in some amazing views. of course 17 mile drive is something to see at Pebble Beach as well as Carmel, nice beaches to stop at near the bottom of the 17 mile drive. I do not think there is any overnight action, but a must see. Aptos is a nice mellow little beach community closer to Santa Cruz (which also has a boardwalk by the way), nice restaurants and shops as well as beaches.

I did want to mention "Bonfante Gardens" or at least that is what is was called 4-5 years ago. The owner of "Nob Hill" food chains had slowly built this park over the years in a 50's disneylandish garden style. Kind of a throw back walk in the park with many plants and flowers and some rides. The place was intended for small children or adults, not so much for the teenage thrill ride seekers. I had a season pass for a couple years before we moved to the NW, and it is one place I really miss. The smell of the cedar bridge. The giant enclosed garden reminded me of the smell in Hawaii and rare fragrant plants. At the time it was very affordable, not a profit generating machine, but a nice experience. This may have changed since I heard the city may tried to cost him out of the place.

Needless to say there is a lot to see and visit in the part of California and I did not even mention much.

[Charging the coach battery]

I am new at this, but mine has a box on the backside of the fridge you can open from the outside of the RV. There is a plug, to see if the fridge is killing your battery you could unplug it for a few days and see if the battery holds a charge. I could tell mine was drawing current when I first bought it as the battery charger had a big spark when I attached it. That usually means it is drawing current somewhere, I searched around until I figured out the fridge had been on. Once I bought a plug adapter I plugged the RV into my house, I just the left the fridge on and eventually it started to get cold, but it seemed to take a day and a half to get real cold but it works good now. And my spare battery also got charged.

I have heard with home fridges that power must be off, and level and let it settle for a time before restarting, I am not HVAC rated or anything but I did hear something to that effect once.

Good luck!