Bob C

If we have to back up in a crowded area, my wife stands well behind the Rv while I back it up. If it is raining when this happens, I stand outside while she backs up.

I just ordered a 100 watt Windy City system with digital controller. i already bought 30 amp Anderson connectors ($6 for 5 connectors) and 10 gauge marine grade wire to make it portable. The controller includes a temperature sensor for the battery so that the system doesn't overheat the battery. I am going to build a mount similar to what Maineah has, I have some stainless steel to make the mount. While traveling, I will be storing the panel in the bathroom with clips to mount it on the wall behind the toilet. The controller will handle 300 watts if I decide to add more panels. Correction-The controller will handle 400 watts. The big reason for going with solar is my 12 volt refrigerator. If I stay in one spot for more than one day, my battery starts to get a little low. I will post photos of everything when it arrives.

Did someone put stop leak in the system?

I have gone over the Bighorn Mtns on Highway 14A twice with my 21 ft Escaper. We also got up to 10,500 ft on the Rockies twice. First gear at 4500 rpm's took me up some pretty steep hills. I have never had the tranny refuse to move the RV but I know that it can happen with an extreme hill. I have taken some pretty crooked roads and on one road, my wife got out to make sure that I didn't hit a rock overhang and checked the back to make sure that it didn't swing sideways into the rocks in a turn. My daughters call those "roads with character." Along the Mississippi River in WI there is a one lane road (actually just 2 tire tracks in the dirt) that is 3 miles long with nowhere to pass or pull over. If you meet someone, one of you is backing up.

If you do a site search, you will find a checklist that goes through all of the things that you need to check out. One major item would be making sure the axle has been upgraded. The one ton axle will have 6 lug nuts on it. Post a photo and we can tell if it was changed. Check for water damage, frame rust, tire age, condition of airbags if they are present, do all of the appliances work-especially the refrigerator, check the plumbing out, check the waste tanks, If you can't find the prepurchase checklist here, there are several available on the internet.

The model and serial numbers are probably on an information plate on the outside of the unit. You will have to onto the roof or lean a ladder against the RV so that you can get high enough to see it.

Your battery isolator is the gold colored item on the driver's side with three terminals on it. The wires from the isolator should go to both batteries and to the alternator. The coach battery will have a heavy wire that leads from the battery to a circuit breaker to the coach. The starter battery will have a heavy wire leading to the starter relay or solenoid. I also see that the passenger side battery has a factory battery holder on it so that is probably the starter battery. You could also cheat and disconnect the negative terminal on the driver's side battery, If the truck will start, the battery that you disconnected will be the coach battery.

I have a 12 volt Norcold in my Escaper. It came out of a retired (scrapped) sailboat that was destroyed in a storm. The frig I think is a 1.7 cf. This last weekend I sat for 2 days without running the motor and the house battery was getting real low so I turned the frig off. My wife and I don't normally stay in one spot for more one day so the electric frig works for us. If we did more extended stays I would add solar units. If I could get a gas/electric unit for a decent price, I would pull the 12 volt. One thing I really like about the 12 volt is the ability to run when it is not even close to being level. The manual that I got from the internet says that it can run at up to 30 degrees off level.

Have you checked out: http://freecampsites.net/#!Pennsylvania&query=region http://www.freecampgrounds.com/results.aspx?s=46 I have used both of these web sites for campgrounds in Minn, SD, ND, WY, Mont and WI. It looks like there are quite a few free spots in Penn but I did not look to see if they are near you. Sometimes the directions are not the best but over all they are pretty good. Bob

Did you have a hard time getting the old bushings out? Was there a metal sleeve inside of the bushings? I had a shop change the spring hangers on my Ford Ranger and they had to use a heavy press to punch out the old bushings. Just wondering what I will be getting into.

I have had my rv insurance with American Family Insurance since I bought my RV 3 1/2 years ago and have everything with them for 25 years. We also have homeowers, 2 cars, 1 truck and a motorcycle insured with them. We recently got a bill for all of our vehicles and got a nasty surprise. The RV insurance bill went up about 150 %. I talked to the agent and he informed me that I had been paying a fraction of what I should have been billed. An underwriter decided that it was time to check out our policies and found what they said was fraud on our part. They determined that my 1988 Escaper was not a Class C RV but was in reality a 1 ton Toyota truck that was improperly insured. I argued with the agent for about 10 minutes and finally told him that I would be back in 15 minutes. I went home and got my RV and drove back to the agents office. I walked in and asked him if he knew the difference between a truck and an RV. We walked outside and he took 10 photos of the Escaper to send to the underwriter. I also had my Wisconsin vehicle title with me and he took a photo of that also. The title lists the vehicle manufacturer as Damon Industrues with the model listed as Escaper. It does not even have the word Toyota on it. The underwriter was going by the VIN only and would not listen to any argument because he knew the facts. I then pointed out the vehicle manufacturer id plate on the drivers door frame. It also says Damon Industries as manufacturer. After a bunch of calls back and forth between the agent and the underwriter, the underwriter finally reclassified my RV as an RV and my new bill went back to what it was before.

Changing the spring bushings on by Escaper is on my short lost of projects. I hopefully will get to it this summer. My RV only has 41,000 miles but the bushings make really strange groaning noises when I put air in the airbags. I think it would help the ride quality to get off my backside and finally do it.

There is a parts house in Madison, WI that is the original owner of a 1 ton dually pickup with extra wide fenders like you see on F350's. I see another one in Madison but it has no markings on it. The parts guy said that it came from the factory that way.

I installed a Progressive Dynamics 4245 in my RV shortly after I bought it. It was so simple that I kept wondering why others had problems. To install mine, all I had to do was unplug the old converter, unhook 2 wires for the 12 volt side of things. They were simply positive and negative (for 12 volt) There was also a grounding wire from the converter to the frame. I then only had to mount the new converter to the floor and hook up the three wires. I was done. My 120 volt side never got touched because the converter plugged into a 120 volt outlet under the rear cabinets that was fused at the 120 volt entry box. I have seen peoples photos of their updates and I really feel lucky for the way mine was installed.

The one ton Toyota axles are that were installed by the factory starting 1986 were built for the one ton Toyota pickup trucks that came with duals. I know of two one ton Toyota pickups with duals still on the road near me. There are also a couple of retired UHaul cube trucks nearby that have factory duals and one ton axles. The RV rentals that I have seen vary size of unit. Roadtek class b's have single rear wheels whereas all of the class c's that I have seen have duals on the rear. The chassis that they use are much heavier than any Toyota micro-rv.

Most of the older RV's used the same key to open the storage doors. For that reason, I changed all of mine after having a locksmith re-key a set of locks that I bought from him. I probably have the old keys and locks in the garage if you need a key. I may have donated them to a local charity though.

Is your RV sagging or are you trying to get more clearance without saggy springs? It seems that a lot of these RV's suffer from inadequate springs for the gross weight when they were built. I added airbags and it brought the rear end back to where it should be. I plan on eventually replacing the rear springs but have not gotten around to it yet.

Do you have a lock on the water fill for your holding tank? Did you know that almost all of the older RV's had the same key? I changed mine and installed locks that a local locksmith re-keyed to a none standard key cut. It is good if you know the locksmith so you don't get charged for the time. It only took him about 15 minutes to do 5 locks for me. I now have 2 spares.

I think that a high quality 12 volt fan would be more efficient than running the a/c fan on an inverter. Doesn't the a/c fan either bring in outside air or expel interior air? That would make using the cab a/c work harder to cool the back.

Why would you want the a/c fan to run? Is it to act as a ceiling fan to circulated interior air? My Maxxfan can be run with the cover closed so it acts as a ceiling fan. The Maxxfan is very quiet where-as my a/c fan sounded like a jet engine that was really annoying, which was one of the major reason for removing the a/c unit. My wife and I almost always have the rear roof vent cracked open about 1/2 inch and it really draws interior air through the RV.

I drilled a hole through the side of the dash with the bolt coming out near the plastic lens. I painted everything black so that it would blend in a bit. The wiring was just three wires. One to the coil, one to the headlight circuit, and a ground. I like that I don't have to look very far from my normal field of view to see the tach. Last summer we were in the Rockies for a couple of weeks and did many long steep climbs. I frequently was running 4500 rpm's and had no problems running in second gear. We topped 10,000 ft on 5 occasions I believe. I have heard others say that a 22Re could not do it, they are WRONG. The engine never ran hot. We averaged 13.8 mpg with the Toyhouse.

Sorry I can't help you, I live near Wisconsin Dells which is almost 4 hours away.

I have a fused 3 way 12 volt splitter mounted on the wall above the refrigerator, plugged into the existing single 12 volt outlet. We only use it to charge camera batteries which have a pretty low power draw. We do not watch TV or play on the computer while on vacation. If we are not going somewhere, we are usually outdoors unless weather prevents it, in that case we go indoors and read. I think we got the splitter at WalMart.

I bet that the tandem axle has torsion springs on it instead of leaf springs. If they are set up properly with the correct spring rate, they work really well.

I am replacing my original taillight assemblies with LED units when the RV comes out of storage. I am done with the corrosion and messing with the sockets on the old lights.