Tag Archives: factory tour

2014/06/13 (F) Day 3 Shop-Learn-Eat

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Day 3 of the 2014 GLAMARAMA kicked off with coffee and doughnuts at 7:30 AM.  Those attendees going on the morning tour of the Jayco factory had to assemble early.  We had coffee and visited with friends until the vendors opened at 9:00 AM.

At the 2013 GLAMARAMA last September I had decided to buy a small video camera/recorder to mount on the inside of the windshield and record what is happening in front of the coach.  By the time I went to buy it on the last day at 3:00 PM the vendors were closed.  I did not make the same mistake this time and bought one this morning.  We still need to get a 32 GB high speed SD card to go with it.

We had spotted some Velcro straps at another vendor and decided to buy a pair to use for securing the Pressure Pro TPMS repeater to the inside rear view mirror in our Honda Element.  The same vendor had an LED light that looked like it might fit in our downlights.  They loaned us one to try.  It fit well and the light was OK.  I returned the sample and bought a new one.  Lloyd De Gerald had his Aqua-Hot service booth right next to the Aqua-Hot factory booth and I purchased an inline secondary fuel filter from him.

Michele Henry from Phoenix Paint ordered some silver (white) reflective tape for us as it was on sale and we thought it might look OK around the lower portion of our bus.  (There is a channel on all of the lower body panels, as well as the front and rear bumpers, where this reflective tape is intended to go.)  Our hope was that the tape would reflect the adjacent paint color while making the bus much more visible at night.  Alas, it did not pick up the surrounding color and the tape was a little wider than the channel, which would complicate the installation.  I did not see it, but Linda did, and did not like the way it looked.

Josh Leach specializes in interior projects and is currently working out the Phoenix Paint facility.  He teamed up with Darin Hathaway (the Aqua-Hot technician who serviced our Aqua-Hot system on Monday) and Michele Henry (who painted our coach two years ago) to get a booth at the GLAMARAMA.  We discussed our interior remodeling ideas and agreed to have him come by the coach to see it.

Just after noon Linda drove to the Whole Foods store in Mishawaka, Indiana to get ingredients for dishes she planned to serve back at the house on Sunday.  I attended two seminars, both by Gary Bunzer (the RV Doctor).  The first one was on balanced battery systems.  The key concept of that seminar was that there are poor, OK, and optimal was to interconnect multiple batteries to form a battery bank of the required voltage and energy storage capacity (Amp-Hours).  The second seminar was on controlling/eliminating holding tank odors.  Linda dropped in on this one for a little while and then headed over to the reception for vendors and chapter officers.  I joined her at the reception after the seminar concluded.  Gary has published a column somewhere on RV maintenance and operation every month for the last 38 years.

The vendor and chapter officers reception was very nice, with fresh fruit and veggies, cheese and crackers, some deli meats, and a choice of wines.  We returned to our coach for a little while after the reception before heading over to the evening entertainment.  Keith Longbothum and his sidekick, an excellent harmonica player, put on a high energy show that was initially Nashville country but morphed into gospel and patriotic.  One thing I noticed about entertainment tonight and on Wednesday was the use of pre-recorded instrumental soundtracks which make it possible for a small ensemble to produce a very full sound without having to pay a lot of musicians.

There was a door prize drawing after the entertainment.  We did not win.  The head of the parking crew also gave instructions for departure on Sunday.

 

2014/06/12 (R) Rallying Day 2

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First of all, yesterday was our daughter’s 33rd birthday.  Happy birthday, Meghan!

At most rallies “breakfast” consists of coffee and doughnuts, with a pancake and sausage meal thrown in somewhere.  We like our own coffee a lot better than what is typically served at rallies, but these breakfasts are included in our rally fee, so we go have coffee and sit and talk with folks.  Mostly it’s about sitting and talking with folks.  Larger rallies are social/educational events.  Smaller rallies tend to just be social events.

The GLAMARAMA organizers had arranged for a morning and afternoon tour of a local Dometic factory today, with tours of a local Jayco factory tomorrow.  Slots were limited, requiring an advance reservation, and a single school bus was contracted to transport each group.  We did not go, but our GLCC friends who did said it was an excellent tour of a very impressive factory.

We went through the vendor buildings when they opened at 9:00 AM and took stock of who was there and what they were selling.  We usually check out the vendors early in the rally but do not buy anything right away, giving us time to ponder possible purchases.

We did not attend any seminars today.  Most of the chapter socials were scheduled to start at 4:00 PM including our Great Lakes Converted Coaches meeting.  Linda and I were responsible for the food, most of which we had ordered from Pizza Hut on Tuesday.  At 2:15 PM we drove to the Kroger on the northwest side of Goshen to get ice, bottled water, and diet Coke.  (Pizza Hut is part of PepsiCo, so they only sell Pepsi soda products.  I do not care for Pepsi and usually forego a soda beverage if Pepsi is the only thing available.)  The food was supposed to be delivered to Gate 5 of the Fairgrounds at 3:35 PM but the driver was delayed by trains blocking his route.  (This is common in Goshen.)  He finally arrived at 3:50 PM.  We transferred all of the food to our car, paid him, and headed for the pavilion.  A few people had already arrived and they helped us unload the food and set it up on two tables.  By the time we had it ready to serve most folks had arrived and most of them were hungry.  We did not take a head count but I estimated 35 people, plus or minus.  Once everyone had a chance to eat we had a short business meeting.  By the time we were done and had everything cleaned up it was 6:30 PM.  We went back to our GLCC parking area and visited a little longer with our immediate neighbors before retire to our buses for the evening.  On the day of the chapter socials there is no evening entertainment; those who want to usually gather for cards or bingo.

 

2014/04/09 (W) The Work Begins

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[Photographs related to this work will appear in a separate gallery post.]

In contrast to yesterday, we had a beautiful day today weatherwise and otherwise.  Jim, Kevin, and Joe removed our four fogged awning windows with some minor assistance from me.  It turned out that the window frames hang from an open hinge and are attached to the lift mechanism arms on each end by pins with grooves that accept retaining clips.  Once the clips were removed the pins were slid out, releasing the lift arms.  The window frame was then free to swing high enough for the hinge to come free from the mating piece (attached to the bus).  Not only was this relatively easy to do, it will make it much easier for Suncoast Designer’s to remove the thermopane glass sandwich from the frame and reinstall it once it is repaired.  It also means that once the windows are reinstalled in the coach we can leave without further waiting as the adhesive will have already cured.  Kevin covered the openings with pieces of cardboard and plastic secured with what appeared to be green Frog tape.

I went to the office around 11AM to see if/when I could meet with Jeff, the general manager.  While I was there I picked up their informational brochure and discovered that they do a plant tour at 1 PM every day.  Customers are curious about the process and equipment used to repair the windows.  The daily tour allows Suncoast to schedule this into their workday and take care of everyone at once, minimizing disruption to the work in progress.  Fritz was our tour guide and did a good job of explaining the steps in their process and the equipment, tools, and techniques used at each step.  Linda took notes while I took photographs for a possible future article.

As soon as the tour was over I started working on the article draft.  At 3 PM I returned to the office and met with Suncoast general manager Jeff Heyen to get some additional info about the company and the process they have developed for repairing thermopane RV windows.  Jeff also confirmed that they were not going to install the windows back into the coach until Friday.  That allowed us to firm up plans to get together with Michael and Donna tomorrow in Dunedin for lunch at the Serendipity Cafe and a visit to Honeymoon Island State Park.

I finished the article draft before dinner time and had Linda proofread it.  After dinner I offloaded the photos from the camera and spent the rest of the evening selecting and post-processing images for the article.

As I was wrapping up for the night I noticed that I had received a server maintenance notification from Scott at QTH.com.  They had installed patches to fix the Heartbleed bug discovered two days ago in OpenSSL and would be rebooting all of their servers to make sure the patches were applied.  I also received notifications from the recently installed Wordfence plug-in regarding this issue and its possible effect on WordPress sites while assuring their customers that the Wordfence cloud servers had not been compromised.  I shut everything down and went to bed.