whyverne14

I've been playing the Princess and the Pea. I found those cushions to be a little hard for sleeping. I'm a poor old guy, so I bought one of them 10 buck foam pads. That helped a bit but not enough. So I went the next step up, the 20 buck foam pad with the half inch of memory foam. I put that on top of the other pad. And that seems about right. I slept on it the last three nights. Pretty nice. I'd like to get a thicker memory foam topper, but my bed is the dinette bed in the back. When I need the dinette I got to move everything off my bed; blankets, pillows and pads to the son's bed in the front. So I don't really want any big old thing there that I have to fight with moving. When the weather is nice, I don't even set up the dinette. We each got a chair and a little aluminum table and we sit outside. But when there's rain around, that back dinette is cool, got that big picture window to look out of, sit there, read, play games.

I just finished pumping out the windshield washer reservoir on my new Toy. It was just plain water. Not good with winter coming on here. Reminds me of a story from a while back. There's a 99 Buick sitting right beside my Toy there. I bought that three years this coming March. I got it from one of those small car flippers that I know; they get them from the auto auction, fix and paint them up a bit. Now that was a warm winter, but then there was a cold snap and that thing started overheating. I took it up to a mechanic and he's running tests on the fan and stuff and I'm poking around with the coolant reservoir. I said "This looks like plain water in here". Sure enough, we drained it and put in antifreeze and it's been fine ever since. So you gotta check, y'know. I gave the dealer a bit of a hard time, but I didn't really blame him. Who expects that. People are weird, they do things and forget they did them and cut corners and whatever. So you got to check everything.

Wow, how complicated are electricity and batteries? Very. Well my budget is blown for this year anyway. I'm actually quite happy that I found out, since I never plug in; that I can get a nice full charge by charging the battery in the house. I've had the new converter for three weeks now and haven't yet had the opportunity to see what happens when it's plugged in! I slept in it for the last three days cause I'm doing some experiments with bed comfort. And I used some lights and some water. The battery was reading 12.6 this morning. That makes me happy, I hadn't seen a number consistently that high all summer. I'm getting there. Any more electric mods will have to wait. I've got to replace both roof vents. The cab AC needs fixed. I need to winterize yet, change the engine antifreeze. Always something.

Pretty rare here in Western PA. I've only seen three other ones since we got the Dolphin in the spring. Just last Saturday we spotted a Toy Winnie behind the Monro Muffler on Tarentum Bridge Road. We pulled back there to scope it. Should have taken a picture! Looked nice. This is the same shop that told me "No Motor Homes" so I don't know what the story is on that. That same day a guy in an old MG with the top down, passed us and gave us the thumb up. We stopped at a Car Cruise, where people park their old restored cars for public display. Even though we parked four rows over, some folks were walking over to peruse the Dolphin. I was a little embarrassed cause mine is still kinda funky.

I'd like to apologize, I don't think I made it clear that we dry camp almost exclusively. So since I can't plug in at home and don't plug in at camp, I find it necessary to remove the coach battery and charge it in the house. Maintainers aren't going to charge up a depleted battery. I might run my cheap generator for a few hours a day in camp just to keep us going. Being a newbie, I was confused for most of the summer myself. I have this battery monitor and I'd drive for a couple hours and it would say 100%. Then a few hours later it would be at 60%. I found out those readings don't really count. You got to let the battery sit for about a day to get a true reading. And the only way I can get a true 100% is to charge it in the house. At least until I can afford a fancy solar boondocking system.

That's what I decided too.

Yeah, I finally got it through my thick head that FLA batteries just don't want to take that last 15 to 20 percent of charge unless you hit them with 14+ volts for many hours. There ain't no way around it. Otherwise you have a constantly partially charged battery which is not good for battery life either in the long or short term. A lot of people don't do it that way and get by but if you want to do it right, you got to pump it up. And I just cut some blue foam board to make a nice little bed for the battery so it can't slosh around in there. If it jumps up and down a bit, well that's the drivers fault. Slow down you jerk! Oh that's me.

Thanks. It doesn't seem like I want to mess with the bottom of the battery holding box cause that's right above the holding tank and hard to get to. It just seems weird cause I don't see any holes or fasteners at all in there except where the wires come in. What was original? I have to take that battery out a lot because I can't get a cord to the rig so I have to carry the battery across the street to top it off with my regular charger. Well I'll be running the heavier cables today and I'll give it some more thought. Thanks again.

Thanks. Hmmmm, the vent hose seems to just follow the filler hose on top. Maybe it's supposed to take another path. More direct. I'll have to study it more one of these days. The trouble with owning a strange beast, I don't know of another one around here that I could look at. Thank goodness for you guys.

Thank you.

So now I need to run heavier wires from the new converter box to the coach battery. I was looking around, "Where do you buy this?" but now I'm thinking that I already have a set of 6 gauge copper jumper cables that I never use anymore since I bought the jumper pack. Why don't I just use that? I'm trying to learn to ask first. Also, does anyone have any ingenious ways of securing the coach battery? It's in that plastic box on the side there. The last genius put a strap in with a couple screws and the strap just ripped out of course.

Finally got some ramps to run the 86 Dolphin up on to make it easier to get under there. I still have that "takes forever to put gas in" problem. So I'm looking at this fuel hose, parts of it are metal, parts or it are rubber. It goes down, it goes up again, up and down. Looks like it could be another DIY Frankenstein fix. So I'm thinking, "No wonder". Might be something that I have to learn to live with for a while, I imagine that's going to be an expensive replacement to do it right. But I don't know what it's supposed to look like.

Cool, thanks.

Thanks Maine. Haven't had time to check it out yet. The furnace works, still playing with the things that don't work. I'll get in there eventually.

That's on my TODO list also. Mine works fine, last guy put in a new Dino board. Squeals a bit though. I'd like to clean and lubricate. Does the whole thing just slide out? I don't know these things yet.

As I posted elsewhere, I have this ADCO cover on my Amazon wish list. It went down to $250 last month. If I had the money, I think it would be worth it. Looks like fairly easy acess, they even give you weights to throw the lines underneath. Haven't heard from anybody who used it on a Dolphin though. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007HS4W5W/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=38WRBHNJENKW3&coliid=I2213UAREO990B

Sorry, I'm not too sure about that. I've been to a few propane safety courses where I was told that an open propane valve should be left loose, so that anyone can immediately tell if it's open. No thinking about "righty-tighty" in a possible panic situation. Loose means open. I don't think it should leak if it's loose.

Actually we're planning a Florida trip this winter. Maybe we'll just stay there. A tarp scares me cause, Oh Boy, do we get wind here. Big winds. Might have to spring for a cover just to make myself feel better. Or just fix any damage in the spring. I didn't know kero put out a lot of moisture, I know propane does. Thanks for the advice. BTW, I put that really good ADCO cover in my wish list on Amazon. It dropped from $325 to $250 but almost immediately sold out. Went back up and has now dropped again to $272. They're teasing me. If you don't know that trick, it often helps to put things in your shopping cart without buying them. Often the price will drop to get you to pull the trigger. Happy trails.

My 86 Dolphin will have to sit outside all winter in PA. I'm especially worried about freezing rain (getting into every crack and expanding) and heavy snows. I was looking at covers, not cheap. Then I was thinking about the folks who stay in their camper all winter. They just keep it warm. Where I park, I can't get a cord to it; but what if I put the old kero heater in there under adverse conditions? Crack the cab windows for air. That thing goes for about 10 hours on low. I don't imagine that the insulation is all that great in the coach. Do you think that would keep the roof warm and dry? Seems like it wouldn't cost that much, depending on how much bad weather we get. My first winter, what do the pros think?

Got my new converter installed today! Ran the generator for half an hour and it took the battery from 30% to 80% charged. Didn't do anything before. Yahoo!

Sounds great to me. I just passed up a small 3 way for $250. Wasn't in the budget.

Sometimes you have to ask the right question. "How many people here had their wheels fall off"? I'm guessing none, so I'm not going to think about it anymore.

I borrowed money from the kid to send away for my new converter kit. Can't wait. It says it should take 30 minutes. I figure that's about a full day for me. The first instruction is "Disconnect the battery". Heck, that's 20 minutes right there. That strap is hard to get loose. Have fun with the doggy.

Dolphin Coach Door Lock OK, I had two annoying problems with the 86 Dolphin coach door lock. One, the inside handle would hang down, wouldn't return to horizontal; so the tongue of the lock would stay in the door and wouldn't engage. So we'd have to pull it up manually to close the door. Two, it wouldn't lock; either with the key or with the push pin from the inside. So I see two screws on the inside of the lock face, hopefully even I can't screw this up. I get the face off and start playing with the push pin lock. Oh. the push pin is actually a bolt and it had worked loose and wasn't engaging the slot that would lock the door. Tighten that up and it's fixed. Could've done that from the outside months ago when I first got the thing. Well you don't know what you don't know. Then I lubed everything inside there and the handle now seems to want to stay up. Easy peasy for once. I also did a small crack and a chip in the windshield with the DIY kit. Mine never look as good as the pros but it's much better. Four little problems done, thank you very much.

Fridge in Pittsburgh area. Gone I'd like to, but not in the budget right now. Ah, the 12 volt cooler is good enough for us Weekend Warriors. Someday.