The fulltiming adventure begins

[Sugarfoot]

Just catching up. With a little luck and your needlework skills, you'll have the awning repaired. Bertha's makeover looks to be a success. She's lovely.

[azflycaster]

At least you won't have to worry about it filling with water and bending an arm.

It can happen, ask me....

[overlander63]

Originally Posted by azflycaster

At least you won't have to worry about it filling with water and bending an arm.

It can happen, ask me....

If you notice in the photos, force of habit still has me angling the awning so it won't fill with water. Even though there's not a snowball's chance in Miami that water could stay anywhere in the awning...
I had a surplus auto stereo with cd player that came from one of our fleet that we retired over the last couple of years. I spent the time Marie took sewing up the awning installing the cd player. It was an adventure, as, of course, none of the wires coming from the trailer matched what they were supposed to be, and the wiring diagram had disappeared from the case of the cd player. I took apart all the speakers, and verified wire color at the speakers, discovered a broken connector on one speaker that I repaired, and followed the wires up to the strereo mount location. I then found where the wires were spliced, and followed the replacement wires up to the new stereo. We had a "newsed" cd player for about 10 minutes, before one of the fuses blew. Now I have to find out why that happened, but it will have to wait for another day, since our daily severe thunderstorm rolled through, and I had to stop work.
It gets hot and stuffy in the trailer when all the windows are closed.

[sd90mac]

Hi,

Temporary awning repair is complete. I bought heavy upholstery thread from Joann's (ladies, all of there thread is 1/2 off) and finished it in under 3 hours. Have the sore fingers to prove it!

Marie

[eikel1we]

I still marvel each time I read this thread. It's nearly unbelievable what you have been able to accomplish in such a short time - never mind the fact Terry is healing from very severe injuries. Bertha is a butterfly emerging from it's cocoon - she's going to be sooo cozy. Good Job!!

sue

[overlander63]

We were slated to take Bertha to W.P. Franklin COE Campground Thursday-Saturday, both to run through its paces, and to help guide some new-to-RVing friends through their first few days of RV ownership. Unfortunately, things did not go exactly as planned...
Disaster #1- Our friends decided that owning an RV was beyond their abilities, as they are rather elderly, and didn't think they could adequately care for the RV. Since we had already reserved a spot, and it was too late to cancel and get a refund, we decided to go ahead with our plans for exercising Bertha.
We loaded up Bertha, and I headed out to the campground Thursday morning, arriving a few minutes after check-in time. After checking in, I hauled Bertha over to site #13 (should have been my first clue of a potential problem). The campsites are being updated with newer power and water hookups, and larger concrete parking pads for the RV's. They are also replacing the railroad tie borders arounf the sites at each site as they go. The updated sites look good, but the downside is while they are performing this work, there is more than a little noise and dust involved, and some sites are unavailable.
Disaster #2
After hooking up to electric and water, I turned on the air conditioner, and water, and unfurled the awnings. I happened to go into the bathroom, and stepped on a (very) wet carpet. I looked around, didn't see anything leaking, then opened the access door for the back of the water heater. I promptly discovered the source of the leak, as a fountain of water sprayed across the room, ending up in the bathtub. Terrific. No shutoff valve for that feed line. Of course. It's going to be a dry weekend. I called Marie, and asked her to bring a couple of gallons of drinking water, as I had to turn off water to the whole coach. Sigh...
We had a great dinner with friends Thursday evening, everything but the water system worked well. Our friends went home, we cleaned up after dinner, and got ready for bed.
Disaster #3
About 3 am Friday, I awoke to the sound of the air conditioner compressor laboring, and shutting down with a loud BANG!. Grrr.... Opened windows, and turned on fans. Friday after dawn, I grabbed a ladder, and climbed up to take a look. Turns out the condensor fan motor had failed, and the unit had shut down from high head pressure. Repeated attempts to breath life into the motor were fruitless. After a hasty consultation with Marie, I asked the campground host if we could at least move to one of the two shaded sites, and why. A few minutes later, Bertha was moved to a shady spot, less sunlight equates to less baking.
Friday went pretty uneventfully, other than the fact we did a slow roast. It cooled off inside enough to try to sleep about midnight. Marie left about 7 am, and I buttoned everything up, dumped the tanks, and departed about 9 am.
So, we are in the market for an air conditioner, and I have to repair the leaking water pipes so we no longer have an indoor fountain.
Here are some photos of Bertha, the campground, and an accidental shot that proves I was riding a bicycle while there:

[katzklaw]

ooo. bummer about items #1 and 2. nice pics, tho. as for item #3, i might be able to help.

shortly after we got our trailer, one of the many random people that just seemed to apear out of nowhere because we had a "cool trailer" sold us a bunch of trailer appliances out of a wrecked but unused trailer... one of those items was an AC unit. it appears to be in resonably good shape... its got a spot or two of rust on the metal parts that would be unseen under the plastic cover, and it was obviously removed from a previous installation, so its not in pristine condition.

ya might even manage to get my hubby to help ya install it... i dunno, tho. the whole reason its not installed on ours already was because he wasn't too keen on the idea of crawling around on that curved roof in the first place!


let me know if you're interested

[Dear Hubby]

Yah know...

I could just rip the compressor and the motor out of the A/C unit I have.. and then it is just an issue of replacing a small part (or parts) as opposed to the whole Unit.. if the lines and fins and all that is still good.. no point in doing all the labor of a full change.. unless there is an issue with the gas that used.. but I believe you can buy that at an autoparts store... let me know if you would consider that plan.

Or something along those lines.

DH

[overlander63]

It only needs the condensor fan motor. On this unit, it is a separate motor. Since it is exposed, it needs to be outdoor rated, which I am having trouble finding.. I can find one, but not outdoor rated, or I can find one outdoor rated, but 240 volts. I had as one of my contacts, a man that worked for Armstrong. Unfortunately, he has passed away, and he no longer has access to his stockpile of old Armstrong parts.
If the unit you have is one of the old Armstrongs from around 1969-1975, the condensor fan/motor is all we need to get this one going.

[overlander63]

Until you have to repair something with absolutely zero resources.
I climed the ladder onto the roof of Bertha this morning, and spent a little over an hour removing the offending motor. I took the motor over to a friend's shop, where i dismantled the motor. After taking it apart, everything worked as it should. Scratching head... Put it back together, and the motor wouldn't turn.
Took it back apart, checked everything. Both bearings worked fine, no rust, no binding. Checked the rotor in the motor, no problem. Checked the windings, they ohmed out good. Put it back together, it spun freely. Cool! picked it up off the bench, and spun it again. It wouldn't turn. Again. $%^$%%$^&^%$%%
Took the piece of crap apart again, everything worked fine. Put it back together, and noticed there seemed to be a bit of end play in the motor shaft. I looked closely at the bottom bearing. Looks like there used to be a fiber thrust washer between the base of the motor and the bottom bearing. When assembled, and put upright, the rotor would drop down and bind. Naturally, there were dozens of fiber washers just falling out of drawers everywhere in the shop. I asked my friend if he had anything that would work. He mumbled something about having thrown away a bunch of hardware last week. You're kidding, right?
I then got creative, and we started looking in the cabinets for aluminum carbeureter washers. He happened to have ONE that fit the shaft, and seemed about the correct thickness. Yay! Put it in, and the motor spun just like it was supposed to. Now, all I need is 4 #8 bolts, 4 inches long, to clamp the three large pieces of the motor back together. My friend reminded me he had thrown out a bunch or hardware last week. You tell me that again, Jack, and you're going to be wearing this motor.
So, off to the hardware store I went, with one of the bolts as a sample. No one has #8 bolts 4 inches long, the longest they have is 3 inches. Sigh. Just shoot me now. As I was leaving the last place, I noticed a rack of allthread sitting there. Gee, there's a chunk of #8 allthread, about 4 feet long. I'll take it!
I arrived home with the motor, thrust washer, allthread, washers, and nuts to reassemble this demon-infested fan motor from hell. I stepped out of the truck, walked to the back, and the heavens opened on me. A mad dash to the house, I guess I'll bolt the motor together in the morning. We have been very dry this month, with only an inch or so of rain so far. Until this afternoon. I'll post pictures of the reinstall tomorrow, if nothing else bad happens.

[katzklaw]

d'oh! well never let it be said that Airstreams aren't interesting to work on!

hope the rest of the re-install goes a bit more smoothly

[Jim & Susan]

Great post, Terry. FWIW, the local Fastenall guy has kinda taken interest in my "little" project. He's helped me find some odd-ball fasteners.

Jim

[bigeasy63]

Tagline.

[overlander63]

As I promised yesterday, I have a few photos of my attempt to repair the condensor fan motor.
To recap, last weekend while camping, the fan siezed in the middle of the night, resulting in an a/c system shutdown about 3 in the morning. We learned that 98 degrees and 98% humidity are not conducive to fun camping, so I set off on a quest to either repair the unit, or replace it with a new one.
Events behind the scenes have deteriorated financially to the point that I am considering starting my own "will work for food" franchise, so a serious attempt is being made to repair the old unit. I quickly found out that noe one seems to have one of the needed 1/6 hp ccw rotation 2 speed motors that are outdoor rated, so I decided to take the old motor apart and perform a failure analysis on it. It turned out after much cursing and gnashing of teeth that a fiber spacer had disintegrated, causing the motor to stop turning. I found an aluminum washer to use in place of the fiber washer, hopefully it will work. I also had to come up with new bolts to hold the motor together, the old ones had all snapped in half when I took it apart. New bolts were unavailable, so my choice of last resort was a stick of allthread in the proper diameter. Seems a lot of this repair is choices of last resort... I broke out a hacksaw and some wrenches, and reassembled the motor in the little workshop where we live. There is no way to safely test the motor there, so I guess I'll have to reinstall it to test it, an almost surefire way to ensure it won't work.
Our Honda generator is out on loan to our brother in law for use at a tent where he is selling fireworks, which means I now have to borrow a generator for my use. I managed to come up with an 8,000 watt generator (I hope it will be big enough) to use, and loaded it into the back of the truck.
When I got to the storage lot where Bertha is stored, I got out the ladder, set up the generator, and ran an extension cord and fan to the roof of Bertha. I learned fast I don't want to be up there in the sun with no fan.
Here are a couple of photos of the story so far:

[overlander63]

I moved everything up the ladder, onto the roof. I have a large knee cushion for when I have to crawl on my hands and knees under cars, and used the pad to keep from roasting my tush on the hot aluminum roof. After I got up there, I installed some longer wires to the motor, the original wires were really too short to get back into the hole where the motor belongs. After almost an hour, I got the motor installed back where it came from, and verified it would still spin freely. It did. So far, so good. I gathered up the tools and parts, and dragged them off the roof. It looks good, I hope it will work.

[overlander63]

I climbed down off the roof, went to the generator, hooked up the 30 amp line for Bertha, and went in and turned on the air conditioner. The compressor groaned, rattled.....

[overlander63]

...And rumbled to life.
The cheap little digital camera I have is not as cheap as I thought it was, it almost stopped the motion of the condensor fan, but be assured, it is turning about 3,000 rpm.
I ran the unit for over an hour, and the air conditioner cooled the coach in that time from 97 to 90. I would call my desparate repair a tentative success. We'll find out more next time we go camping. I also plan to install some kind of wire mesh over the fan. Not having anything there may have contributed to the initial failure. I also noted we will have to replace the ceiling vents and fans at some point. But the a/c runs!

[bigeasy63]

Lookin' good, boss. It is amazing that you have the agility to scoot around on that roof like that. Nice (and cheap) job on the a/c. I have an a/c question. As you saw in my pics I have a window unit ac. It is a Hotpoint and only pulls 7.5 amps but it doesn't cool well. I cant afford a new or used roof a/c right now but I want a new one before our 8 day trip to Lake Lanier at the end of this month. I am considering a new window unit. As far as the one thats in there, there are no signs of unusual wear and tear and it doesn't seem to be a weight problem on the forward wall. I also read somewhere (my thread I think) that the 63's didn't have the reinforced roof for a roof mount. I can get a 6000btu at Lowes or Home Depot for about $140. That should be plenty cool and will probably weigh about the same as the one thats in there now. I hope I can find a half in/half out model like the one that I have now. If not I may have to brace it on the tongue somehow.

I was wondering if you may have two cents to put in on this idea.

Remember...a penny for your thoughts, but you have to put your two cents in...so someones making a penny.

Thanks ahead,

[overlander63]

Rusty, in the thread on Goliath, you can obviously see there is a roof a/c unit there. It was installed in the center vent hole, nearly covering the original 120 volt ceiling light switch. The switch was relocated to a position near the entry door (maybe katkat can snap a photo of its location for you), and the air conditioner was installed there. The a/c was wired into the 120 volt wiring for the lights. I replaced the a/c unit when we originally got the trailer, and had no problem with the roof. Again, maybe katkat can snap some photos of the a/c unit being replaced when they get a chance to do so.
Now, one reason why your window mounted air conditioner is not cooling the trailer, is probably because it can't. You are considering installing a 6,000 btu unit to try to do the job of a 13,500btu unit, plus not mounting it in a central location, plus not mounting in in the ceiling where it will cool most efficiently (hot air rises, cool air decends). I don't want to keep shuffling the evidence off on katkat, but they have already stated that the 13,500 btu unit they have will barely keep the trailer tolerable, much less comfortable.
If you still want to go with a window unit to preserve the roofline, you should look at a minimum of 10,000, and preferably more, btu. When you start talking about that size, you are also talking about an air conditioner that will cost about the same as a roof mounted RV unit. A 15,000btu Carrier (very good unit) is currently being offered on our favorite online auction site, with a buy it now price of $499, plus about $80 shipping.
Soo, you might want to use a couple of fans parked on the floor, and wait another month, and save your pennies to get the best a/c setup you can for your trailer. You can also get a heat strip for that unit at the time you buy the a/c, for about $50, and it includes shipping with the a/c. This will also reduce the criticality (is that a word?) of your furnace not working. Being in the land of Peaches, you probably won't need much more than that most of the time anyway.

[bigeasy63]

Thanks for the two cents. I was thinking that maybe you had some reinforcements on the roof of goliath. I may just bite the bullet and go ahead and get the roof mounted one. We're saving some money anyway by going camping instead of to the beach. I do have some other good news...when I bought bigeasy the po threw in a small electric fridge. He said he had never tried the original and didn't know if it worked or not. I blew all the components out today with an air hose and lit the gas on the old dometic. After about 6 hours it was cold! The freezer was freezing too . I was happy. I also ran a new ground to the battery and solved the 12 volt problem. (Thanks to your advise with the test light).

Until my next question...,