Since I had a few maintenance chores to take care of on Winne I decided to devote pretty much all of September to getting her back into “travel shape.” Item #1 was to investigate and solve a soft spot in the floor back in the bedroom area. I noticed this soft spot on our last trip and really wasn’t sure what was causing it. The spot was next to the bed on the drivers side in an area you don’t normally walk … but it was quite noticeable if you knew where to step.
The problem became very apparent once I removed a few of the vinyl floor tiles and saw a pretty large (6 inch diameter or so) water damaged spot in the plywood floor which was in the process of rotting away! Well that ain’t good I says!
At first I thought water may have leaked in from a window above the spot … but that made little sense since the wall showed no signs of any problem? Then I thought maybe the water was coming up from underneath. That area of the floor is outboard of the engine area and consists of 1 ¼ in. of plywood with a thin metal backing glued to the bottom. I could access the bottom side and did notice some corrosion of the metal backing but nothing “major” that I thought would lead to the problem. Then I thought about the water heater which is located just behind the damaged area. Maybe it was leaking? After spending several hours checking that out I determined that the water heater itself was not the culprit. But during that investigation I did notice that the outside metal enclosure that seals the external side of the water heater to the side of the motorhome wall was missing a very tiny screw leaving a 1/8” hole in a spot that leads directly to the floor area inside! Since this enclosure area is generally open to the outside world it is easy for rainwater to get inside and then run through this hole. Fixing that problem was relatively easy … replace the screw and seal up the area with some sealant. But that still left the soft spot to repair.
It took me several days of demo, engineering, re-engineering, metal fabrication, and carpentry … but after cutting a 1 foot by 3 foot section of flooring out to make sure I removed any semblance of rot, adding in a couple of metal braces to support the new flooring I needed to install, installing and sealing a new metal protective layer, and then replacing the plywood floor and tiles .. the floor was now just like new … probably stronger than new in that area … and hopefully it will stay dry now!
With that project complete it was time to move on to the dash ventilation blower repair.
The dash area heater/ventilation system has a blower system with 4 speeds controlled by a dash mounted switch. Well … ours did until a couple of years ago when I lost all but high speed on the blower. I knew that the problem was a bad resistor module that needed to be replaced. Unfortunately … almost all of the dash has to disassembled and removed to access the resistor module. So I removed the 30-40 screws necessary to remove the necessary panels and I replaced the resistor module a few years ago. But alas … all I gained was one additional blower speed and I really didn’t have time to troubleshoot further as we needed to get back on the road again.
So it was time to try again …
Out came all those screws again followed by all the dash panels … but here is where I got lucky … I think! When I went to remove the wiring plug from the resistor module I found it was sorta loose. After plugging it back in securely and testing the blower … voila … all 4 blower speeds worked! So … back went the panels and the 30-40 screws and the blower still worked correctly. Yippee!
So … now on to the next planned repair …right?
Nope. The first step of the next repair involved bringing in Winne’s slide outs which had been moved out for the previous work. Start the engine … push the slide-out retract button … nothing … no movement … no sound! Oops … new problem.
After mentally going through all the steps necessary for the slide-outs to move … and thinking about the work I had just done on the floor and the dash blower I concluded that one of those 30-40 screws must have shorted a wire on re-installation and immediately I had 3 particular screws as suspects. Sure enough … one of those screws wasn’t quite where it was supposed to be and a wire underneath got shorted. Once that little problem was fixed all was good once again and I was on to fighting rust!
First let me explain that motorhomes are not built like automobiles. A motorhome is “built” by a specialty manufacturer (in our case Winnebago Industries in Forest City, IA) on a chassis manufactured by another specialty manufacturer (in our case Freightliner Custom Chassis in Gaffney, SC). Where today’s automobiles are dipped in special rustproofing protective coatings, neither of these RV specialty manufacturers are really all that concerned that the future owner might drive one of these things in the cold snowy states where salt, sand, and brine might be deployed for safety sake. Therefore there are plenty of spots on the undercarriage where the minimal original paint will be eroded off in no time and rust will begin to rear its ugly head!
And so it is with Winne. Another September week was spent scraping rust, chemically neutralizing rust, repairing rust damage, and repainting treated areas to slow down future rust. It is a true axiom that in the RV world .. Rust never sleeps!
One of the areas needing specific rust attention are the two battery storage compartments. Since I had to remove the 4 large “Coach” Batteries to do part of this work, and since these batteries are 6+ years old and showing signs that they are starting to lose capacity … I decided to take this opportunity to replace them. The only extra effort this took was carrying the bucket of money to the battery store!
So that was September. Winne is now back in her storage spot all ready to be awoken in January for her dash south and we are moving on to October. Time for leaf peeping, leaf picking up, leaf dumping, and annual vehicle oil changes.
I love New England.
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