Bus Maintenance

     One of the least favorite things about owning an RV is the maintenance that has to be done on it from time to time. Well, our time caught up to us. 

    The first thing that needed to be done was new batteries. Similar to a larger diesel truck RVs have two coach batteries that have to be replaced at the same time. However, unlike a truck, most RVs have house batteries that have to be replaced as well. These aren't the same type of batteries as a normal truck battery. The house batteries are designed to be charged and then slowly discharged multiple times so that you can run most of the inside electrical items in the RV such as the light and TVs when not plugged into shore power or running the onboard generator. 

    Swapping out the coach batteries was fairly simple. Undo the connecting cables, pull the old, put the new ones in. Twenty minutes and done. The house batteries were a different story however, First, I wanted to document how everything was connected. The batteries are Jumper'd together and then there are the cables that run to the electrical system and then some random cables for additional items. All of these needed to go back in the same spots so everything would work again when I was done. Out came the phone, several pictures later and a hand drawn diagram and I was ready to go. Well almost.....

    As I started to undo the rods that hold the batteries in place while driving, I discovered that many of them were corroded. Badly. And because of the length of the rods my socket wrench wasn't going to be able to remove the nuts. So off to the store to buy a deep socket that would work. Back and slowly removing the nuts due to the corrosion. Much slower than I had hoped for. Finally, all of the cables were off, the tie-rods were off and out came the batteries. My original plan was to remove an old battery and put a new one in its place so that everything was aligned the same. That quickly fell by the wayside as I realized, that to get some of the batteries out, others had to be out of the way. This meant that some batteries would be out as I swapped the others. No worries, I have pictures. Only, I don't really. Turns out that some of the pictures were at bad angles and hard to see where everything fit precisely. Not to mention that the posts on the new batteries were on the same side whereas the old batteries the posts were on opposite corners. <sigh> Ok, no problem. As we said in the Corps, adapt and overcome. SNAP!!!

    What the hell was thaaat?! Great, the bracket that held one of the drawers in the bus came out. The screws holding it in place was corroded and snapped as I pulled the battery drawer out. Great. Now what? After looking at it for a few minutes and realizing it was a minor design flaw, I realized it would be easy to fix. I have some self-tapping screws, align the drawer and bracket and drill in new screws. This time using four or six vs. the two that were put in at the factory. Done. use baking soda and water and a wire brush to get rid of any corrosion that I see. Any bare metal that had the paint removed in doing so, repainted with better corrosion resistant paint (i.e. Rust-oleum) that I have laying around. Fortunately, it's black as well. Once that dries, spray all moving parts (that are supposed to move) down with WD40. Put new batteries in, cable everything up and..... YAY!!!! It worked first time. No need to start doing the cable swap dance.

    Drip, drip, drip. Now what? Oh, its starting to rain. Quickly button everything up, get the batteries in the back of the Hummer, and get the tools up cleaned and put away. Jump in the Hummer and the sky opens up. Congratulate myself on getting finished before the rain started. What should have been an hour job, took four. I'm hot, dirty and just want to get the old batteries up to the store for my core refund. Get to the store and it's still pouring. Now this particular store, the employee is supposed to come out to help get the batteries out and if you have more than one, bring a cart. Nope, this lard butt said on his ass. I walk in and ask for a cart, but he'd already loaded all of them up for other customers for the next day's sales. FINE!!! He still sits there as I'm getting soaked bringing in all six batteries one at a time. Finally, I get them all in and get the refund. That's done.

    I took the bus in for an oil and air filter change as well as some other minor issues that we had run into on our last trip. While there we discovered that the tires were cracked and needed to be replaced. So while the bus was in the shop I called around for pricing on new tires. I finally reached out to the Goodyear Truck and Commercial tire shop not far from me. They beat everyone else's prices by at least $500. AND they could get it done in a couple of hours. So, a couple of days after getting the RV back from the shop for its oil change, I took it up for its new shoes. I can't say enough about the guys at the shop. Friendly and helpful. They did what they said they would, for the price they said with no up charge on anything, and I was out in a couple of hours. I drove the bus back home thinking that we were pretty much ready for our next trip in June to Atlanta and then North Carolina. But fate had other plans.

    The day after getting new tires, Jodi and I got a new mattress. The old one was lumpy, and we weren't sleeping that well on it. A few days later we decided to swap the mattresses out. The easiest way to do it would be to open the slides and give ourselves room. I started up the bus and after several moments, started to open the full wall slide. It went out about halfway and stopped. "Well," I said to myself "that's not good." So, I retracted the slide, made sure the lights were on showing the locking arms were engaged. I then tried to extend it again. This time it went out about six inches and there was an audible 'pop' from the rear of the bus. I retracted the wall again, waited for the lights and figured I'd extend it one more time. This time, the front locking arm that I could see wouldn't move. I went to look at the back arm and it was half extended. So back to the shop again to get it fixed.

    It took three weeks to get the bus back. Literally the day before we were due to head out on our trip to Atlanta. The first week was diagnostics, then there was a week of playing around to get the part shipped and dealing with the warranty company then trying to find the part at the shop once it was delivered and getting it in the bus. They were working on the bus right up to the time we picked it up. Unfortunately, once it was fixed it was discovered that the fiberglass on the wall had cracked when the locking arm failed and that would need to be repaired at some future date. For $4000. <sigh> In the meantime they were able to coat it with silicone and I will just have to keep an eye on it.

    Regardless, we had an operational bus once again.