90toydolphin

Thanks for the link, I now know I have a model 800. )

I too have a hard time with claims of 20/mpg for any toy mh. Maybe downhill, tail wind, empty camper, almost empty gas tank, driver jockey size, outside temp below 70 degrees and a new perfect motor. Even with all of that I would need to see it myself. I believe 13-15 driving normal with hills, stop signs, traffic and all the goodies loaded including the wife, dogs, beer, fresh water, half-full holding tanks, generator, you get the idea. I also have to agree, any toy over 10,000 needs to be pretty special. You can do a lot of repairs and add a lot of toys for $6-8,000. Low mileage vehicles scare me, my worst buys were low mileage cars. Instead of wearing out they rotted away, hard to spot rot inside. Unless the mh was religiously driven to operating temperature on a weekly basis time takes a bigger toll than usage, at least that's been my experience. I am actually surprised at some of the high prices i see here for listed toys, when I looked and eventually bought there were quite a few under $6000, some under $4000. Perfect? No. But good enough to have lots of fun with and adding a few thousand addressed many of their short comings. I can see eventually spending 12-15,000 on one and having it just the way a person wants it. And of course there is the fun and satisfaction of restoring and having something that isn't that common. Maybe some of the pricey ones are those that have had a lot of money spent on them and the owners expect to get it back when they sell. My experiences tell me, even if you supply all the labor, getting your money back is not realistic. Using and enjoying it is the only way to get your money out of it. At least in my opinion. Good luck with the shopping and hope you find the perfect toy for you.

i think it's called "white gas", at least it used to be. hope they improved on the leaking, or maybe that was just ours when i was kid. at the time it was a big improvement over the smell of kerosene.

if anyone does the brighter lights please get ones that don't blind the on coming drivers. every time i pass one of the blue, too bright set of lights, i want to stop them and break out their head lights. personally i think they should be against the law. personally i want the oncoming driver to be able to see as well as i do.

sounds like if you need to change one, do them both.

i've run into small 4 cycle engines doing that and turned out to be the governor. my understanding is that adjusting it isn't easy and should be done by someone with the training and equipment to do it. warnings against trying to do it yourself is that it's easy to do it wrong and usually results in burning up the engine, rpms aren't controlled. if the carb doesn't solve it you may need to find someone to work on it.

and old shade tree way of finding where a noise is coming from is to use a stick, 1 inch dowel, and put one end to your ear and the other touch areas of interest. i've located bearings going bad, water pump noises etc. you could put one end against the cover of the timing belt and see if it's loader there than somewhere else. you said the noise in intermittent, so i can't believe it's anything to do with rods, valves or wrist pins, serious inside the motor stuff. i would avoid driving it hot at all, that will just about insure you get to replace the motor. just carry water and check it often enough to keep the overflow full and watch the gauge. hopefully in fl you have someone you trust and have confidence in to find out what is going on. you might slow it down to the 50-55 range ). good luck, hope you make it safely where you need to be.

i was crawling around under my mh and found that some previous owner had a spare key in magnetic box stuck up on the frame that the bumper connects on. probably had been there since new, 20+ years ago. worth doing a little easter egg hunt for????? lock smith to open will probably save money in the long run. probably open the coach door in a few seconds and no repairs to do later caused by the wire and other implements of destruction used to get in. and while he's there you can have lots of extra keys made ).

alternator or regulator(first), that's where i would start.

needs to be said one more time, mount at floor level, no choices, propane is heavier than air and if it's mounted high you mh will fill with gas before it reaches the detector, mh full of propane very similar to a bomb.

thanks for sharing your trip and experiences.

i changed my dead one out for a dorm type. have only used it once, two nights three days. we put frozen freezer bags in it when we left, kept things cool. we used a generator for tv/dvd and turned on the frig while watching tv, it refroze the bags and continued to keep things cool the whole trip. boon docking with a generator makes it doable with dorm frig. the small frig's use very little ac power so small generator would work ok. i have a honda 2000 because i also have a window air conditioner to run. it kept things cool for about 8 hours before we ran the generator.

do search for "seat swap" in the forums and you'll see where Bunneys did a swap, three out of four bolts matched. it was newer unit but might be a starting point.

i doubt if you could find a wall unit the 1000 watt would work with. the start up power needed is too much. i ended up getting a honda 2000. i live in central calif and when 100 degrees outside the 5000 probably wouldn't cool the coach and cab much going down the road. at least the 5000 btu i have wouldn't. if you could direct most of the cooled air into the cab it probably would work, not sure how you might do that. the portable one might be a better solution, then could have it blow into the cab. i'm not familiar with the power needed to run those, i'm sure someone here would know. one other possible solution would be a water type cooler for the cab window. i remember them from 45 years ago and ran across some while looking for air conditioner solutions for my toy. it wouldn't help when camping, but might help going down the road.

hope you do blog your travels. it will be cold, even in ca, at least up hwy 99, ice every morning here for a couple of weeks now. happy travels.

if you end up in central ca, semi close to modesto, and need a place to plug into an extension cord let me know, would be fun to say hey. we're about 30 miles south of modesto, 20 miles north of los banos.

thanks waiter for the alaska trip story. i started reading it today and will continue until i finish. growing up i had relatives in alaska and enjoyed hearing about their trips down to central calif. thanks for all your work in telling your story.

you might try using a pressure washer, it would at least get the loose stuff off, be fairly easy and quick, reduce actual sand blasting time and cost.

it has to be a problem with carb, fuel pump or line between pump and carb. if your not into working on engines then check your checking account balance and take it to a shop you trust. for some reason your carb isn't retaining any fuel. ie weak pump, leaky line or carb problems. the $100 you spend for diagnosis will probably save you more than that replacing stuff that isn't the problem.