dayoff53

We (David and Kay Day and Craig and Sherrie Day) will be there! If I remember to stock the Warrior, I will bring wine. We'll contribute something else - have no idea what!

I am really anxious to hear how the 30-gallon tank installation goes. That is one of the big drawbacks of the Toy Homes from my perspective. Even though they get good gas mileage, a 17 gallon tank means fill-ups every 200 miles or so to be safe. I've put a jerry can on the back to give me a little cushion, but it would be great to have a larger tank. Please put a note in Fuel Tanks and ETC when you've completed the swap! I hope you enjoy your first long trip with the Toy! I'm about to take off on my first real trip in a week - but it will only be 2000 to 2500 miles. Nanaimo, baby!

I've learned that people (myself included) can be passionately convinced of the "truth" of something that is entirely erroneous and it is easy to point to anecdotal evidence to support an incorrect hypothesis. For example, I long believed that higher octane fuel ("ethyl" in my youth, from the addition of tetra ethyl lead) gave more power and higher fuel economy. But I am a believer in the scientific method, and science just doesn't support that belief. There are lots of web sites that can give you good, correct information about fuel octane issues. The State of Oregon has some very good and correct (but concise and not terribly detailed) information about octane here. The scientific truth is that, in most properly tuned engines, any octane rating above that which prevents "pings" or "knock" (preignition caused by the fuel igniting from compression before the spark plug sparks) adds no performance benefits and does not increase the life of the engine. If higher octane rated fuel truly does increase your performance or fuel economy, you probably need a tune up. However, in some engines that have electronic knock sensing, there may be some slight benefit to using a higher octane rated fuel. As to E85, even the ethanol fuel industry admits that it may decrease fuel economy by about 2% in fuel injected vehicles. The U.S. Department of Energy gives much gloomier information, stating that flex fuel vehicles usually have a 25% to 30% loss in fuel economy when running on E85 because of its lower energy content. The Wikipedia article on the subject points out that E85 has 30% less energy by volume than conventional gasoline. I'll stick with good ol' gas - I even avoid 10% ethanol when I can, since the Department of Energy acknowledges that it will reduce fuel economy by 3% - 4%.

As to the water heater, it may be something very simple. If the hot water tank was drained, you will not get any water out of the hot water faucet until the tank fills again. To do this, just turn on the water pump and open a hot water faucet until water comes out - it may take several minutes. When water comes out, the tank is full. Then, you will want to top off your water tank again, because you will have taken about 6 gallons (depending on the size of the water heater, but that is common) out of the tank. If that is NOT the problem... I dunno. As to the waste tanks, I don't know your particular rig, but most have two tanks - a "black water" tank that holds only waste from the toilet and a "grey water" tank that takes the waste from the sinks and shower. If so, there will be two separate knife valves that go into a single drain under the coach. You drain the black water tank first, then close it and drain the grey water tank. I like to flush the black water tank out with some clear water after I drain it, assuming there is some available. Some rigs have only 1 waste tank. It should be simple to find out whether you have 1 or 2 - just look at the drain pipe under the coach and see if there is only one pipe with a singe knife valve (pull handle) on it or two separate pipes, each with a knife valve. Also, you may have a status panel somewhere with a button you push and lights that indicate the condition of the battery, the fresh water tank and the holding tank(s). If you have such a panel and have separate black and grey water tanks, there should be a separate light for each tank. I hope that helps.

Winnebago has a lot of information on their web site, including wiring diagrams wiring installation plans going back to 1990. I don't remember what year your Warrior is, but they didn't change much year-to-year. You might find some useful information. As an example, here is all the wiring information for the 1991 WT321RB. The difficult thing with fishing wiring around through the ceiling is that it is all styrofoam filled. I like the idea of using the 110 wiring that you are no longer using for the air conditioner.

Hey, Wayne! How many reservations are confirmed now, if you know?

We're getting excited about Nanaimo! My brother and I have been busy fixing up and modifying our rigs for the trip. I have done the following (with my brother's help) to our '92 Winnebago Warrior: 1) Replaced the original antenna with a Winegard Sensar IV amplified antenna 2) Installed a 26" Vizio LED TV and a Blu-ray player 3) Built and installed a spare tire carrier and put a spare on it 4) Built and installed a Jerry can carrier and put a can on it 5) Replaced the fart fan with a Fan-tastic Create-A-Breeze 8000 6) Replaced the battery box with one big enough for two batteries and installed 2 6-volt deep cycle batteries 7) Replaced the broken steering limit bolts 8) Got a 300 amp pure sine wave inverter (tiny, I know, but it will power the TV and Blu-ray) 9) Put an 8" clear extension on the sewer pipe and got a great new slinky 10) Replaced the mirror glass on the flat rear view mirrors That's just a drop in the bucket compared to the modifications my brother has made to his '90 SeaBreeze 900. I'll let him show it all off to you on June 24. We are leaving Boise on the evening of June 18 and will get to Glacier Nat'l Park on June 19. On into Waterton Lakes Nat'l Park in BC on June 20, then who knows? Maybe Lake Louise area before heading West for Vancouver Island. If you see us on the road, give a toot!

I'm no gearhead, so perhaps I just don't understand, but I thought any engine that will run on E85 will also run on "normal" gasoline - and usually better. It is modifying the tanks, fuel lines, etc. for E85 that is a pain and I am not aware of any advantages. What am I missing here?

I found some at South Bountiful Auto in Bountiful, Utah - used and could use cleaning and paint, but I got one for my spare and used as is - worked great. 1-800-517-2489. I don't remember just what I paid for mine, but I do remember I complained and sweet-talked just a bit and got them to ship for free (to a business address). It was somewhere in the $80 range total. I got mine earlier this Spring (2011) and got the impression they had several. It's not a fast mover, so they probably still have some. Silver only - no white ones.

I think I have decided what I am going to do. In my '92 Winnebago Warrior WT321RL, the battery is just in front of the entry door. It sits in a plastic box bolted to the bottom of the coach and accessible from a door on the outside of the coach. I am going to take off the plastic box and replace it with a larger one that I bought from a local custom roto-mold outfit that had a right-sized one laying around and sold it to me for $10. The box will be wider than the access door, but I can slide one battery in then move it over and slide the second battery in. I have thought about switching to 6-volt, but have settled on 2 12-volt batteries (at least for now). No inverter, but I may do that in the future, just to run the 26" LED TV and Blu-ray player. My brother ('90 SeaBreeze) is keeping his original 12-volt system, but has added 2 6-volt golf cart batteries and a 1800 watt true sine wave inverter and a separate fancy charger. He's setting it up so that the inverter powers everything except the air conditioner and the charger (doesn't make much sense to use the batteries to run the inverter to charge the batteries - I suspect that would NOT create perpetual free power). He also added an Onan Microquiet genny (didn't come with one - mine came with the noisy, stinky Kohler). His wiring took a little thought, but it is pretty nifty - automatically switches from shore power to genny so you don't accidentally run both. I figure I'll just follow him around and plug into his outside receptacle every night...

We'll have to leave Nanaimo no later than bright and early Monday morning, June 27. If you could get there at least by evening June 26, it would certainly add to the party - you might even get the prize for longest trip to get there... You're going to see some beautiful country - you'll miss the home of my youth by a little ways (just north of McCall, Idaho about 8 miles along Idaho Highway 55), but you'll still manage to see some of the pretty parts of the state.

Sounds good! Why don't you drive it up to Vancouver Island for the ToyIn June 24 - 26 so we can admire it?

Adapters are available - and cheap - at any RV parts store. Here's the cheapest kind and you can spend more if you want. There will be no problems other than the limitation on your household electric circuit (15 or 20 amp), which should not be a problem for anything except possibly the A/C if you are on a 15 amp circuit - in which case you may pop the circuit breaker in your house. When I have had a place to park an RV at home, I have always put in a dedicated 30 amp circuit with the appropriate 30 amp outlet for my RV.

I'm not sure what "cord" you're talking about. My '92 Winnebago has a three-wire 30 amp 110 volt shore power cord that plugs into a 30-amp socket at an RV park or at home. The generator also has a 30-amp socket, so I just plug the same cord into the generator to get my power from it. Here is a picture of a 30-amp plug: and here is a picture of a 30-Amp Socket, showing the hot, ground and neutral: Here is a brief explanation of putting on a new 30 Amp plug, but it assumes you have a black (hot), white (neutral) and green (ground) wire. If all of your wires are gray, you have to trace them to figure out which is which. Good luck!

It probably came with a Kohler 2500 watt generator, but that hasn't been made for years and you wouldn't want it if it was available - it's incredibly noisy. I would recommend that you look into the Onan Microlite (2800 watt gas or 2500 watt propane). It should fit in the compartment, is a current model and is MUCH quieter. 110 volts is what you need - same as your shore power. Just guessing, but your a/c is probably around 1800 watts. I know folks running a 1500 watt pure sine wave inverter, but haven't heard of anybody running 4k or 5k watts - seems like that would require several good 6-volt batteries to last very long running the a/c off of the batteries. My brother ('90 SeaBreeze) is adding 2 6-volt batteries and an 1800 watt pure sine wave inverter to run his TV, blu-ray, micronuker and 110 receptacles and maybe a second 12-volt to run lights, etc., but he is not going to try running the a/c off the batteries. Good luck! Sounds like you have quite a project to get ready for a major trip in a month! Search the forums here for any project before you start - you will find a lot of useful information.

Nope. I've just started looking into available maps and resources - just figuring out where old Route 66 is can be a little daunting in some places and it looks like there will be lots of places where you have to get on the interstate for a ways. Until I retire (4 years or a tad more with a little luck), I probably couldn't do the whole thing, either. I'm particularly interested in the Texas-New Mexico-Arizona stretch, though the entire Route has an allure... Anyway, as I consider it further, the concept of a tour starting in Chicago and ending at the Pacific, with Toys jumping in and falling out along the way seems kinda neat to me. We would need to have a fairly accurate schedule - at least where we intended to stop each night - then folks could jump in the parade and go as long as they want. Maybe no individual Toy would go the whole distance, or maybe several would, but there would be a group going the whole route. I would think it would be best to have "locals" planning the route and leading the parade through the area they are familiar with. As far as stops - well I imagine the group would include some dry-campers and Wal-Mart types and some that want a pool hall and dancing girls at every stop, so perhaps we would decide on a general area/town for each overnight stop and get a list of available options at each place. In my fantasy, this could, at least in some segments of the trip, include quite a lot of Toys - more than would fit in a single RV park. Planning the details of something like this is beyond my skills - I like to think of myself as the idea man; the big picture guy; the dreamer. We need some practical, detail-oriented folks to actually be in charge. It's more like this is a Toy-In that I would really like to be a part of and it would be really nice if somebody would do it. If the idea gains traction, I think it is really doable, but if the thread dies out after half a dozen replies, well, I'll always think it coulda been a neat trip.

I have a '92 Winnebago - same manufacturer, same setup. I have not figured a good place to put a second battery, either. I see no response to the original post here - what about it fellas? Surely somebody has successfully added a second coach battery to one of these "late" model Winnies or Itascas...

I love driving the old US Highway system - off the freeways and through all the little towns that once thrived along the highway and are now declining as the freeway traffic buzzes by, oblivious to the history and beauty of the old highways. Route 66 symbolizes the by-gone era of highways that went to and through, instead of around, the communities of small-town America. It has been a dream of mine to travel all, or at least a large portion, of the old Route 66 sometime. Now, it occurs to me that it might be a fun thing to do as a Toy-In. I'm envisioning a trip on the old Route 66 from it's beginning in Chicago to it's end in Los Angeles, with people doing as much of it as they want, joining and leaving the parade along the way. Or, perhaps, several groups starting at different points along the route at the same time so that we collectively cover the whole Route 66 in just a few days of travel each. I think this would be an interesting and fun trip. I also kind of like the irony of a bunch of homes on Japanese-built trucks traveling the quintessentially American Route 66. This is not something I envision doing in the immediate future - for me, it is two or three years in the future, perhaps more. I just want to see if there are others who see merit in the general idea. In my fantasies, there will be a groundswell of excitement building over time, so that eventually we have a parade of hundreds, maybe thousands, of Toyhomes America's main street, the Mother Road, historic Route 66. Who's with me?

Wow! You've got the original 8-track player in the coach and you're getting rid of it?!? You'll never find another one like it, man! Good luck with your auction.

I have been looking for replacement mirror heads or just replacement mirror glass for my flat side-mount rear-view mirrors and haven't had any luck at local auto supply stores. From reading this thread, I found rustrepair.com, who has replacement mirror heads in stainless steel, white steel and white plastic and also has replacement mirror glass. I also found mirror heads and replacement glass on eBay. To make this search easier for those that follow, I decided to save some of the information I found here. For those of you trying to find these items on eBay and elsewhere, this information may be useful. The manufacturer of these mirrors is "Velvac" and they call them side-mount wide angle mirrors. They are nominally 6.5" X 6", though 6.5" X 10" are also available. They are commonly called step-van mirrors. The relevant part numbers are: Stainless flat - 704093 Stanless convex - 704095 White steel flat - 704078 White steel convex - 704077 White plastic flat - 704178 White plastic convex - 704177 Replacement flat glass - 702051 Replacement convex glass - 702023 for steel mirror heads, 702057 for plastic mirror heads

I'm gradually getting enough data to make some estimates of the mileage I can expect in my 1992 Winnebago Warrior WT321RL (3.0 l. V-6) with under 30k miles. Worst is about 12 (70 - 75 mph on the freeway with a lot of truck traffic, some hills) and best is about 15 (55 mph on secondary highways with light traffic and some hills). I much prefer staying off the freeways - and so does my Toy. I expect to get around 14 mpg on longer trips - we'll see how accurate that is after the Toy-In on Vancouver Island next month!

I've amassed quite a bit of documentation as well, so if you are looking for anything don't hesitate to ask - dayoff53@gmail.com. I hope you can make it to Nanaimo next month! I think there are 7 or more rigs already committed and I know they collectively represent a lot of knowledge about these Toy homes!

Here's a thought... I see your are in Oregon, so join us at the ToyIn in Nanaimo (Vancouver Island) in a month and you can have several folks look at it and give you their (semi)professional opinions! I'm going to be there with my 1992 Winnebago Warrior WT321RL - identical model to yours. Check it out in the Rallies and Toy-Ins forum.