TPMS Trouble

Heading out is always stressful.  Especially when you have planned an extended trip.  There always is a lot to do, and hopefully you don’t forget any needed things.  This trip was complicated by the fact that we had been living in the RV for the last 2 years, and this was the first trip since moving into the Barn.  Once we “moved” out of the RV, we could actually load it back up with only things needed for this trip. 

Also, since the RV was basically sitting for a year, we needed to get Basecamp ready for travel again.  We needed to maintain a few things, purchase and install some new things, and get them all checked off the list before we left.

The most important item on my list was servicing the Aqua Hot, the diesel and electric water heater we use on the coach.  It provides all our domestic hot water, and the primary cabin heat.  Over the last winter we noticed that the diesel heater would occasionally run for three or four cycles then “hiccup” and stop.  Sometimes we had to restart it between our two showers.  Sometimes I would have to restart it in the middle of the night when it wasn’t providing any heat for the interior.  In addition, the electric part of the heater wasn’t working at all.  Normally it would provide enough hot water for most domestic needs, but after a thunderstorm, it started popping the breaker, so I turned it off and had been using the diesel part exclusively.  I had ordered parts for the annual diesel service and now that we had moved into the Barn, I could do the service work.

While I was replacing the diesel nozzle, I noticed the electric line coming into the Aqua Hot box had melted along with the electrical block the wires were screwed into.  Hmm, that must be why we were popping breakers whenever we turned on the electric element!  I cut all the melted wires away, and used household wire nuts to re-attach the electric line to the unit.  I wanted to test the electric system, to see if anything else had fried along with the wires.  Once the diesel fuel filter and burn nozzle were replaced, I turned on the Aqua Hot to see how it performed.  

First up was the electric element.  It seemed to be working just fine!  As far as I could see, there was nothing else broken or melted other than the wires, so it must have been just them.  Once the electric element was working, I fired up the diesel side.  But it didn’t turn on.  Now what?  It was working before, now it didn’t do anything….  It took me a few hours of thinking, prodding and poking before it hit me:  there is a microswitch on the side of the Aqua Hot box and the cover needs to be on to pick it.  Once I replace the cover, the diesel heater fired right up!

I realized there might be air in the fuel system, so I let it run for a while.  After it ‘hiccuped” a couple times, I was resigned to pull it apart once again.  I turned everything off to let it cool overnight.  The next day, I pulled the diesel burn unit out one more time.  I aligned and thoroughly cleaned the two electrodes that spark the diesel fuel to ignite the burn.  Then I cleaned the burn sensor with brake-clean.  It was quite dirty, covered with a varnish looking buildup.  Other than that there really isn’t much else to adjust.  So I put it all back together, and crossed my fingers hoping for the best.  After firing it up again, it seemed to run ok.  I had to check it off the list and move on to other things!

We purchased a brand new TPMS system from TireMinder, and it arrived late the week before we left on our trip.  I installed it per the instructions.  The Range extender seemed like it was the most important item, and I placed it under the battery tray, roughly half way between the front and back of our coach, as the instructions described.  All seemed to be operating correctly, so we checked the new TPMS off the list and moved onto the next project.  We would have to use it on a trip to learn how it performs.  Luckily for us, it taught us a good lesson on this trip!

Our King bed needed a little bit of help.  It is a foam style of mattress, very comfortable.  But it has started to sag a bit, so we purchased a 3” mattress foam topper to try to prolong the main mattress’s life.  Problem was the King bed in an RV is not a King bed in a home.  So I had to trim the topper to fit.  No problem, just cut an edge off with a sharp knife, and clean up the mess.  It seems to have helped!  Hopefully we can get another season out of the bed before spending big money on a replacement mattress. 

Lets see, there were a few other things on the list.  I swapped out the living room TV to a Smart TV: the old one wasn’t smart.  We had been using a FireStick to get content, but I had a spare TV we hadn’t used after our move, so I changed it.  Now the new TV is “smart”, but just barely:  we still seem to have to re-attach it to the wifi often… so not sure if that was an improvement!  But I checked it off the list!

I replaced a couple ceiling lights that had gone out.  Our rig is pretty dark inside, we need every light we got to see sometimes!   When we moved out, we cleaned out the refrigerator, and turned it off to give it a rest.  We also cleared out all the food from all the cabinets and cleaned the shelves.   When we were living in the camper, we used a lot of space for bulk storage in the fridge, freezer and pantry.  We unloaded and re-organized all of it, and it hopefully will lighten the load a bit! Now that we don’t need to carry around the entire bag of flour, as an example, I can use smaller containers.

It is now time to start packing up.  Time to turn the fridge back on, and let it cool down before loading it up.  We try to make a meal plan, and stock up according to the plan’s needs.  This is a great idea especially when you are planning to spend a lot of time where there are no grocery stores.  Our domestic style refrigerator is large enough to feed us for more than a couple weeks with great freezer space too.  All the dry goods got restocked per the food list on the meal plan.  It was nice to have a little more room for it all.  If fact, we had 3 pantry shelves that were completely empty!

As far as clothes and toiletries, we began the process of moving back in, but some of them we moved the morning of our departure.  All our clothes are in soft-sided totes.  This works great for moving in and out of the RV!  We never really “unpack”!  We just move the totes into the Barn’s bedroom closet when we are in the Barn, then move them back into the RV when we leave.  Obviously, some of the clothes need to change due to season or weather.  But that is easy too:  we have large plastic totes on a shelf in the garage that we have marked what is inside of them.  Super easy to swap out warm weather clothes for cold weather clothes on the way from the Barn to the RV.

On departure day, we do a last sweep of the Barn, for anything we might have forgotten.  Lists are great, but sometimes we forget to add things to the list.  This trip we departed just as the sun rose above the mountains.  An early departure.  The plan was to drive until it got dark, whatever distance that turned out to be.  And we did.  450 miles.  A long drive day.

Who We Are

We are Natalie and Brian, and our Golden, Kenai. We are BaseCamp Blue Sky

We are RV’er’s who love to go Camping!

We have been camping with our families since we were babies.  Over the years, we have camped in everything from tents to Diesel Pushers.  

We also have owned quite a few different types of camper over the years.  We started in a Winnebago Class-A  in 1998.  It was a 32T Brave, with full basement storage, and no slides.  We loved that motorhome, the floor plan was perfect.

Unfortunately we have not found the same love for the floor plan since!  Also, we had to lemon-law it, as the engine had a flaw that was not easily repairable.  So we had to give it up. 

Fast forward a few years, after working in NASCAR and having our son, Ean, we purchased a manufacturing business. The first few years was tough.  With hard work and perseverance, we purchase a black 20’ converted cargo trailer to market our products.  It had a toilet, shower, sink, bed, and room for a bunch of stuff.  It was our first foray back into camping since our Winnebago, and it worked out great for us.  But I had to buy a larger truck to tow it as it was so heavy!  

Eventually we sold it and purchased a new 5th wheel toy hauler.  A small one.  I found it up in Pennsylvania, so we drove our new Ram 3500 single rear wheel pick-up truck up there to pick it up and bring it back to our shop.  We had in mind to fit a side-by-side inside of it.  I found a new one-year-old Can-Am Maverick 2017 model and we drove the 5th wheel trailer to the dealership to see if it would fit:  we would buy the Can-Am if it did.  It did, just barely!

We used that combination for a couple of years.  We loved off-roading and camping at the same time.  We made weekend trips to places in the south East and put a few miles on the Can-Am. Even rolled it!  All good!

Then we got a dog.  Kenai, our golden retriever, changed everything.  So did the purchase of our Jeep Wrangler Rubicon.  We loved offloading, as I mentioned before.  Kenai didn’t fit into the side-by-side.  But she was brought home in the Jeep.  So that necessitated a change in camping equipment.  Our business had grown to the point were we could step up to a motorized RV.  

We found a used Class-C camper, and converted it into a 4×4 beast. The idea was to take it to Alaska.  We sold our business, and made our plans.  Then Covid hit and all our plans came to a screeching halt.

Instead, we took an 88 day trip thru the Rocky Mountain states, visiting family and friends along the way, even thru the covid crisis.  Camping was about the only thing we could do to stay safe.  Solitude, scenery and our own bathroom! 

Along the way we began the search for a new home.  Without NASCAR, or our business, North Carolina just too far away from our families.  While we didn’t find a new area to live on that trip, we did find our next camper:  the Dynamax Dx3 Super-C 36KD we own today. 

It was in Texas, and had been sitting in a field for over a year, thru the super-freeze that Texas had in 2020.  A dealership had errored in the online marketing and called it a Mercedes diesel camper van…. Needless to say, I jumped on it as it was at least $100k lower than market value, and we could afford it, barely! We made the drive from Minnesota to Texas, where my Sister lived, and basically purchased the Dynamax on guts.  

As a handy man, I believed I could fix or repair just about anything.  Owning a small business teaches you those skills.  So does growing up working with your hands.  This RV needed a little love: It drove great, and in fact it was twice as fuel efficient as the Ford Class-C we sold.  But I had to clean out the birds nests in the slide-out toppers, and replace the fabric too.  And so much more.  We planned to use it to travel the country, coast to coast.  So far so good.