Problems and Problems with our RV!

We have owned our 1999 Discovery RV since January 2005 and we have had very few problems with it.  This is probably because we take it in for routine maintenance at the Freightliner RV center in Gaffney, SC nearly every year on our trip home from Florida to Pennsylvania. 

That being said we just experienced a series of mishaps in a short period.  The first one is really minor but strange…I was walking from the back to the front of the coach when I somehow managed to snag the handle to the silverware drawer in a pleat on a front pocket of the shorts I was wearing and actually ripped the face off the drawer!  It will take removing several staples that held the drawer face and in the interim we had to shift the contents to a lower drawer and have put tape across the front to hold it together and stored towels in it.  This is such a minor thing but just the first in a series of events.

Later that morning I was pulling the coach out of a Pilot station where we had purchased fuel when I somehow managed to drive the right rear tires over a curb.  Now if you have never been in an RV to experience an event like that, I need to explain that it will rock the whole RV pretty hard from side to side.  In several instances in the past when I have hit a curb like this we have had our dish cupboard come open and dumped some dishes on the sink and floor, breaking several plates and bowls.  This time however we had a Velcro strap around the handles of the cupboard doors to prevent them from opening and that worked fine.  But, Pat happened to be back by the sink getting me a glass of water when I hit the curb.  The RV rocked so violently that she was thrown off balance and into the bench seat by the table, hitting her arm quite hard on the table edge.  That was bad enough, but the real strange thing was that the rocking was so violent that the built in refrigerator actually broke loose and came out of the wall about 6 or 7 inches!  Concerned for possible propane gas leaks I immediately checked the back of the refrigerator from outside the coach and found that miraculously both the gas and electric lines were still connected and the refrigerator was working fine. 

We managed to push the unit partially back into the wall but could not get it in all the way and the front remained about 2 inches out of the wall.  The screws that held it in place had actually ripped right out of the plywood and some of the facing wood around it was broken.  We made plans that when we got to Florida we would take the coach to a repair facility and leave it for a week while we go on our cruise.  We even arranged to have access to a friend’s home here to use for a night or two if we needed it and most importantly to put our refrigerated and frozen items in their refrigerator/freezer.

Two days later at about 7 PM we had just gotten set up at a campground in Fredericksburg, TX and were planning on seeing the area and its many attractions the next day when BAM, both air conditioning units shut down and it appeared that we had lost power to the coach from the power pedestal.  I checked with the coach next door and they had power and I could see others had power too.  I even hooked up my 30 amp extension cord and tried to plug into the pedestal of the vacant spot on the other side of the coach but still showing no power coming into our coach.  Then I got out my multi-meter and tested our pedestal.  It DID have power!  Now what? We have a Progressive Industries Energy Management System (EMS) that we bought and had installed in line between the power we receive from any pedestal and the coaches power distribution panel.  It is a very good power protection system and has saved our fanny on several occasions when it found things like and open neutral or other wiring problems with the pedestal power.  The EMS gives a series of codes whenever it is receiving power and its display was now blank, which is why I thought we were not connecting to power.  Now I was really confused but decided it had to be a problem with the EMS.  Since Progressive Industries has a fantastic and well-earned reputation for support I called the number on the EMS and left a message.  Within an hour I had a call back from an engineer at Progressive.  After explaining our situation he talked me through opening and testing their system.  Sure enough the EMS was not working!  He then talked me through a way to by-pass the EMS using an internal connector that Progressive has built into the system just in case it should fail.  That got us power and the engineer offered that Progressive would put a replacement board in express mail to me the next morning.  The next place we could receive mail was in Frostproof, FL where we were headed to our RV lot there, but would not be there for several days.  The part was shipped to me care of General Delivery in Frostproof.  At least we had the power working and the AC to cool us in the Texas heat. 

OOPS for some reason the next day I turned the front AC off and when I tried to restart it a while later it would not start.  I opened the ceiling access and found that when I tried to turn the “squirrel cage” which is a fan that moves the air in the coach, it was very difficult to turn.  It should be freewheeling.  I then went on the roof and took off the shroud around the AC and found that the roof fan that pushes air through the fins was also very difficult to turn.  I was sure there was a problem with the AC and called Marshall Godwin, he is very knowledgeable on RV repair matters and gives training sessions on all sorts of repairs at our Discovery Rallies in Florida each January.  Marshall said it sure sounded like the AC motor was shot and would have to be replaced.  I thanked him and then called another Discovery owner, Gary Osborn, who is a certified RV Technician to see if he concurred and ask him about getting a copy of the instructions he had given in a training session on replacing an AC motor.  Gary was more than helpful, he agreed it would be a bad AC motor and told me of an RV business about 30 miles from us that likely would have the motor we needed.  Then Gary offered that since he was currently staying in a Texas state park just west of Houston and we were only a half days drive from there, and we were headed east anyway, we should pick up the replacement motor and then drive over to see him the next day and spend the next night in the park and he would help me install it.  Boy did I jump on that offer!  Pat and I spent the afternoon going to Kerrville, TX and getting the motor.

It was now Thursday October 9^th and we headed off to see Gary Osborn and his wife Debbie and get the AC motor replaced.  We got to the state park where they were staying and Pat managed to get us assigned to the spot next to Gary’s coach.  Well bad luck found us again when I was hooking up to the electric service at that site.  Remember I had bypassed the EMS so had no protection from any power problem that we might encounter from a campsite power source.  Each time I threw on the circuit breaker at the post we got power to the coach but then it would go off again!  I was standing there frustrated when Gary walked up and he quickly found that the breaker on the pedestal was indeed loose/defective.  We moved to the RV space the other side of Gary’s RV and the power worked there.  We notified the park and they said they would have maintenance repair the defective breaker on the first spot.

Gary & Debbie Osborn

Gary and I took the new AC motor up on the roof of our coach and in a matter of about 20 minutes Gary had the motor changed out and the AC worked!  In the Texas heat we really appreciated that!  THEN I showed Gary the Refrigerator that had come out of the wall.  He too had never heard of anyone experiencing such an event.  He however has replaced refrigerators like ours and after checking the connections on the back he and I spent about an hour and got the refrigerator reinstalled!  Some of the wood facing around the face of the refrigerator in the coach had been broken but we were able to get it to where unless you were specifically looking for damage you would never notice it.  When we told Pat it was fixed she was ecstatic!  We no longer need to have it repaired in Florida!  That evening we took Gary and Debbie out to dinner!

We left Gary and Debbie the next morning and headed to Slidell, Louisiana to meet up with Dick’s cousin David Van Slyke and his wife Debbie who live in Gretna, LA.  We could not meet them that evening but Saturday morning they came to the RV and we spent the day with them.  Dave is almost the same age as Dick and they spent many weeks together when they were youngsters.  Dick would go to his Aunt and Uncle’s dairy farm by Oxford, NY.  Dave was their grandson and lived nearby and when Dick was at the farm he stayed there with him and they played and shot 22’s and BB guns and fished and helped with bailing hay and milking the cows.  Both of them were very happy to see each other and Pat and Debbie chatted and listened a lot.  For lunch we went to a seafood place that both sells fresh fish and shellfish and sells a limited menu of seafood meals.  Their shrimp platters were amazing, the Catfish platter was too and Dave’s Shrimp Po-boy was huge!  Great food and a neat experience! 

Sunday morning we again hit the road, this time headed for Florida and our lot in Frostproof but first a stop at Egland Air Force Base family camp by Niceville, FL.  We arrived a little late in the day and had a hard time finding the FAMCAMP with a little detour through a woody campground area that was NOT meant for big RVs before we finally got to the right place and set up for the night.  We chose Egland, near Niceville, as we wanted to see our friends Bonnie and Terry Rarick who live in Niceville.  Bonnie and Terry used to live in Blandon, PA and their son was a member of the Boy Scout Troop 183 that both of us and Dick Jr belonged to.  Bonnie also operated a beauty salon and cut Pat’s hair for years and sometimes even cut Dick’s hair.  We had called them while still on the road and asked if they would be available to go out to dinner so we could buy them dinner.  They said yes and we asked them to pick a restaurant and they chose a great seafood restaurant.  We thoroughly enjoyed the evening catching up on each other’s activities.

Monday the 13^th we got off to an early start, leaving camp at about 9AM but then, before we could even get off the base, the dashboard on the RV lit up with Stop Engine and Low Voltage lights and the temperature gauge pegged at the top of high.  Dick immediately pulled off to the side of the road and shut off the coach.  Now what???? Made a panic call to Marshall Godwin once again and he immediately said it sounded like a broken Serpentine Belt.  Well Dick lifted our bed in the back of the RV and opened the hatch to the top of our Cummins Diesel engine.  Sure enough Dick could see the broken serpentine belt!  

We called Good Sam’s Emergency Road Service and they dispatched a service mechanic from a nearby garage.  Too bad we were on base as it meant the driver ended up having to go through a vehicle search and delays due to base security and did not get to us for about an hour and a half.  The good news was that Dick had a spare serpentine belt and the mechanic was able to change it.  While looking at the engine Dick noticed that another belt seemed loose and when the mechanic looked at it sure enough, the belt for the coach air conditioner that runs off the fan shaft was not only loose but the idler pulley for the bolt that should be located on the air conditioner was missing!  The mechanic said it was best to just remove the belt until we could locate and install a new idler pulley so he removed the belt for us.  OK folks, if you add up all the bold and underlined items in this post you will have the quick summary of what has taken me so long to write out.  

Too many incidents in a short time!  No pictures but lengthy descriptions!