Tag Archives: Fleetwood Bounder

2015/07/13 (M) weBoost

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Linda got up before I did and went for a long walk.  I was up by the time she got back and made a full pot of the Sumatra Mandheling coffee I just got from Teeko’s.  Mara eventually joined us for coffee and then breakfast.

Mara wanted to get the engine and generator serviced in her Fleetwood Bounder motorhome and asked for recommendations in the area.  There were three relatively convenient options but we had her contact Cummins Bridgeway in New Hudson, in part because she has an Onan (Cummins) generator and in part because we took our Itasca Sunrise motorhome there and were always pleased with the quality of the service.  They said they could take her on Thursday and she set up the appointment.  They estimated three to four hours so she plans to wait for it.

Mara was also interested in a mobile cellular booster for her motorhome, and I have been planning to get one for several years, so we researched the current offerings online.  At one time Wilson Electronics practically owned the mobile booster market.  They have more competition now and their consumer systems have been rebranded “weBoost.”

After scanning what was available we focused in on the weBoost Drive 4G-M and Drive 4G-X.  I downloaded the PDF manuals for each of them and studied the specifications. I don’t care about the marketing hype.  As they used to say on Dragnet “the facts mam, just the facts.”  Both units are 5-band, multi-mode units designed for in-motion use and the specs were very similar, but not identical.  The MSRP on the X model was almost $100 more than the M model so I called Cellular Solutions and talked to Judy.  In practical terms, she said the X model would work with weaker signals.

I was prepared to order two of them but they did not have them in stock at their Sanford, Michigan location.  She thought she could have them to us by Friday but that was not soon enough and we did not want to pay $30 for 2-day shipping on top paying almost $30 in sales tax (for each unit).  So we did what we always do, we checked Amazon.  Amazon had four of the weBoost Drive 4G-X systems so I ordered two of them with Prime 2nd day shipping of $4.99 each and no sales tax.  They are scheduled to arrive on Wednesday July 15 which will give us enough time to get them installed.

The installation on both rigs will require me to attach a steel plate to the roof to act as a base for the small 4″ tall magnetic mount outside antenna.  On our rig I will probably put the antenna up front and screw the plate to the existing aluminum plate, using putty under all the edges and the screw holes, and then caulk around the edge and the heads of the screws.  The cable will come in through the front weatherhead.  On Mara’s rig I will see if I can route the cable through the refrigerator roof vent or the roof-mounted air-conditioner cover.  The route will determine the placement of the steel base plate.

Linda made an appointment for Mara with our hairdresser, Renee, at the J. C. Penney’s salon at 12 Oaks Mall for Wednesday at 1:30 PM.  By the time we had accomplished all of this it was early afternoon and time for a light lunch.  After lunch Linda and Mara went for a long, vigorous walk and I retreated to my office and worked on the custom desk design.  I e-mailed Jarel to see if he would be available on Thursday.  He e-mailed back that any day but Thursday would be OK, so I may go Friday but more likely it will be next Monday.   I thought I could have the design done by Wednesday bedtime, but it would have been a push and I did not want to rush the process and risk making a mistake.  As much as I hate to delay this until next week I may have to.  Mara may leave on Friday, or delay until Saturday or Sunday, and I want to be hear when she leaves.  Meanwhile, Madeline is coming to stay with us on Friday and will be here until Monday.  These are indeed busy times.

I came back upstairs just before 5 PM and found the ladies sitting in the shade at the east end of the deck.  Mara was busy using MapMyPlaces to plan the next leg of her travels from our house to Quebec City, a trip of just under 1,000 miles.  I got a couple of ice cold beers (Linda did not want any) and we sat and talked until Mara returned to her rig at 6:30 PM to tend to her cats and have an hour of quiet time before dinner.

We got back together at 7:30 PM for dinner, which consisted of leftovers plus a simple salad for us.  Dinner led into a long discussion about health and nutrition.  We talked about the Holistic Holiday at Sea vegan cruise, which usually takes place the first week in March, and the vegan summer fest that takes place each July in Pennsylvania.  Mara seemed interested in both and thought she might be able to get her friend, Michael, to go on the cruise with her.

The more we talked the more we thought we might like to go again.  The last time we went, in 2013, we researched places where we could board the cats.  The only place we found that looked any good was in Punta Gorda.  Punta Gorda is quite a drive from Ft. Lauderdale, but it is not that far from Arcadia where we will be parked for January and February.  It would be easy to take the cats there and then drive to the Port of Miami to catch the ship.  However, if Mara goes on the cruise we might have another option.  When she has to leave her rig for a while, such as her recent trip to Belgium, she flies her sister in from California to house and cat sit.  She assured us that “sis” would be happy to take care of our cars as well.  All that would be required would be for us to have our motorhomes at the same RV park.  That could be Big Tree in Arcadia (since we would already be there) or someplace near Miami (if we could both get in).  Adjacent sites would be nice, but not necessary.  I have no idea if we will do this, but it was fun to consider the possibility.

 

2015/07/12 (N) Mara Comes To Visit

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When I shut down the bus yesterday I forgot to shut off the air supply to the engine accessories and turn off the chassis batteries, so I did that as soon as I got up this morning.  I then made coffee and we had our usual juice and homemade granola.  After breakfast Linda went shopping and I went to Lowe’s.  She picked up a lot of fresh vegetables at the Howell Farmers Market and finished up at Meijer’s.  I bought a 4-piece screw extractor set and then stopped at O’Reilly’s and bought two gallons of 50/50 pre-mixed universal antifreeze to top up the Aqua-Hot in our bus.  I stopped at Teeko’s Coffee and Tea and had them roast a pound of Sumatra Mandheling beans.  We have not tried these before but Mary thought we would like them.  They are not decaffeinated, but we try to keep a regular coffee bean on hand for company, after dinner, or when we want (need) the high octane in the morning.

Linda had been in contact with our friend Mara for the last few weeks so we knew that she might stop here on her way to the Canadian Maritime Provinces.  Late last week she confirmed that she would be here on Sunday so after our morning errands we turned our attention to getting ready for her arrival.  She lives/travels in a Fleetwood Bounder (Class A motorhome).  We saw it in Quartzsite, so we knew it was somewhere between 35 and 40 feet in length and that she does not tow a car behind it.  Yesterday we moved our bus so she could park on the level pad with easy access to our 50 Amp electrical hookup.  I cleaned up the coaxial cables that I had spread out all over the rec room floor and Linda vacuumed the carpets and wood floors and cleaned the bathrooms.  We keep a clean house but it is not always tidy as we are involved in a lot of projects at the moment.  But when company is coming we like things to a least start out tidy.

Mara was coming from Michigan City, Indiana so she only had 200 miles to travel.  Most of it would have been on Interstate highways but she decided to detour over to Three Rivers, Michigan to visit a Latvian community located nearby.  She finally arrived at our house around 2:30 PM.  We met her in the street and I directed her into her parking spot.

It’s always exciting, and a bit intense, to meet up with an RV friend and that was certainly the case here.  Mara had enjoyed her stop at the Latvian community even though she found them in church.  We had last seen her in Quartzsite, Arizona in February.  We had all had a lot of RV travel adventures since then, and it was also her first visit to our house, so we had lots to talk about.

Linda made bow-tie pasta with mushrooms, onions, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and basil pesto using basil that she grew on our back deck.  We had a simple green salad and Italian bread with the meal and enjoyed 1-1/2 bottles of the 2013 Egri Merlot between the three of us.  We sat on the deck enjoying the last of the wine until it cooled off and we went inside.  By 9 PM we were all tired but we insisted that Mara stay for fresh sweet cherries.  Rejuvenated by the cherries we all got our second wind and had a long conversation about RVs, cellular and Wi-Fi communications while traveling, and a cool routing app that Mara uses (MapMyPlaces).  By 11 PM we were all tired for real and Mara returned to her rig for the night.  It had been a long, but very satisfying, day for all of us.

 

2015/07/11 (S) Impactful Tools

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We had a small crowd for our SLAARC breakfast this morning but good conversation.  After breakfast we drove to Chuck’s house and picked up the manual impact screwdriver.  Barb was up in the thumb visiting her brother-in-law who recently lost his wife (Barb’s sister).  We lingered for a while and then left for home, stopping for gas on the way.

Back at the house I started a load of laundry and then went to work on the stop block screws.  Linda helped steady the ladder and pass tools and parts back and forth.  I got three of the four screws out of the two stop blocks but the head stripped on the forth one so I was only able to remove the aft stop block.  I tried different bits and even tried drilling a small hole in the center of the head to allow the bits to go in farther but it did not work.  The next approach will be a screw extractor, but first I have to go buy one.

We had soy yogurt for lunch with red grapes and I had a few pretzels with roasted red pepper hummus.  I kept trying to get to the basement to work on the desk design but kept getting detoured.  Once I finally reached my office I found that the mouse trap that I had placed under one of my desks was out in front of it.  The food was gone but there was no mouse, only mouse poop.  I realized that the trap was upside down which allowed the door to swing open.  Our best guess is that a mouse was trapped and the cats pulled the trap out from under the desk and accidentally turned it over while pawing at it trying to get the mouse.  Since there was no sign of a mouse having been caught by one of the cats my best guess is that it escaped, for now.

I checked e-mails and found the one with the credentials and instructions for the QTH.com web-hosting of SLAARC.com so I shared those with the other members of the SLAARC website team and then logged in to check out the log file I had created the other day as a test.

I decided to reconnect the Yaesu FTM-400 radio to the Diamond X-50 antenna on the tower so I could monitor the Novi and South Lyon repeaters while I worked in my office.  I had quite a mess on the ham shack desks and decided the best way to deal with it was to install Mike’s Icom IC-2820H in my car in place of our Icom V-8000 2m rig.  At least that would get the 2820 off the desk.  I checked that the mounting brackets and they were identical so I removed the V-8000 but left the mounting bracket installed in the car.

Mike had modified the power cord on his radio by cutting off the T-connector and replacing it with Andersen PowerPoles so I had to modify the power cable in my car to match as I could not modify Mike’s radio.  I removed the fuse from the positive (+12VDC) lead and then cut off the T-connector, leaving about 6″ of wire so I can add PowerPoles and make it into an adapter cable.  I brought my Hakko soldering station up from the basement, set it up on the floor behind the center console, ran an extension cord from the garage, and used it to solder PowerPole contacts to the two wires.  I then inserted them into the black/red housing pair and snapped them in place.

I mounted the IC-2820H, connected the power cable and connected the coax from the antenna.  I reinstalled the fuse in the positive lead, started the engine, and turned the radio on.  A couple of hams were chatting on the Novi repeater, one of whom I knew (Jim, KB8TAV).  When they finished I gave Jim a call and he came back to me, the first time I have been able to use the Novi 440 repeater from my car.  Jim signed off and I switched to the South Lyon 2m repeater and gave a general call.  Steve (N8AR) came back to me and we had a short QSO that verified the radio/antenna was also working on 2m.  As we were wrapping up Linda started fixing dinner.

Linda fixed a simple salad and Dr. Praeger’s vegan hamburgers with Daiya non-dairy cheese.  These patties were also squishy rather than firm and, like the ones at Zingerman’s Roadhouse the other night, where not very satisfying.  They tasted OK, and we ate them because we are not inclined to waste food, but there is a lot more to what makes food satisfying than just taste.  Sight, smell, and texture (mouth feel) are also important.

Linda had several TXT messages from Mara letting us know that she would be arriving tomorrow sometime before 2 PM as she wanted to watch the Wimbledon finals at that time.  Linda and I considered how best to accommodate Mara’s motorhome and finally decided to just pull our bus straight forward until the nose was at the edge of the concrete driveway.  That created more than enough space on the level part of the pull-through driveway for her to park and plug in to our 50 amp service.  The only loads we have in the bus at the moment are battery chargers so we used our 15 amp cord to plug it into a garage outlet.  Since I had to start it to move I switched it to high idle once I had it positioned, leveled it, turned on the OTR air-conditioning to put a load on the engine, and let it run for 30 minutes.

I returned to my office after dinner and work on the desk design for a while but by this point I was tired and not really in the mood.  The last time I updated the BCM page on our website was after the February 2015 issue came out.  I have had articles in the March, April, and May issues and will have articles in the June and July issues.  I captured the covers from March, April, and May and updated the page.

I exchanged e-mails with several people and spent some time looking at dual and triple monitor stands on EBay.  We rarely use EBay and the site made me change our password before it would let me log in.  There was a large selection of products but none of them were exactly what I am looking for.  There wasn’t any rush so I decided to revisit this tomorrow.

 

2014/04/04 (F) Converted

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AALL*BRITE showed up this morning as scheduled to wash the coach and clean/polish/seal the Alcoa wheels.  The three man crew started on the roof and worked their way down and around.  They used a “spot-free rinse system” that did not require them to hand dry the coach.  When they were done with the wash and rinse they went to work on the wheels which were a messy job that involved a lot of hand work.  The coach looked good when they were finished.

I went down mid-morning to check on Jeff and Kathy’s motorhome.  Everything had worked through the night.  I went back later and disconnected John’s 20 A battery charger.  I then had Jeff disconnect the +12 VDC house battery cable.  With the converter 120 VAC power cord was still unplugged the voltage at the converter output terminals was zero, as it should be.  I plugged the 120 VAC cable back in and re-checked the voltage at the output terminals.  It measured 13.5 VDC so the converter was, in fact, producing an appropriate voltage with no load attached.  That did not prove that it was functioning properly as it could still be unable to maintain that voltage while supplying current to a load, but it was at least trying to do something.

The house battery bank had been disconnected for over 15 minutes.  The resting voltage was 12.7 VDC, so the batteries were fully charged.  My best guess was that Jeff and Kathy did not have a battery problem.  I unplugged the converter and reattached the DC negative cable.  We then reconnected the battery bank positive cable and plugged the converter power cord back in.  The voltage measured 12.68 VDC.  We decided to leave it this way and check it every couple of hours.

The RV technician who does work in the park stopped by and talked to Jeff for 5 minutes.  He said he would order a new converter and schedule them for service on Wednesday, April 9.  Apparently he presumed that Jeff and Kathy were being taken care of in the meantime as he offered no assistance or suggestions for how they might keep their rig functioning for the next five days.

Over the next four hours the voltage gradually dropped to 12.45 VDC, strongly suggesting that the converter was not maintaining the charge on the batteries.  Just before dinner we unplugged the converter 120 VAC power cord and reconnected the 20 A battery charger.  Later at the fire pit Kathy mentioned that the air-conditioners had stopped working so I walked over to check the situation.  I found the battery charger set incorrectly, so I reset it, but I was not able to get the HVAC controller/thermostat to turn either unit on.

We spent the rest of the evening at the fire pit talking and enjoying Smiity’s music.  Our friends from Ontario, Jack, Silvia, Doug, and Paulette came for a while and Smitty did quite a few Gordon Lightfoot songs.  (I don’t know if Canadians like Gordon Lightfoot more than anyone else.  He is certainly one of our favorite singer/songwriters.)  Kathy brought down a couple of bottles of Moscato as a thank you for helping them with their electrical problem.  That wasn’t necessary, but I certainly appreciate it.  Charles and Sandy joined us for a while.  They have relocated here from Texas and are looking to buy a business and settle in.

By 9:30 PM it was just John, Ali, Linda, and me.  John has assumed increased volunteer duties at WCRVR from April 1 through November that include closing up various buildings at night.  I spread the fire logs out on the grate and we returned to our rigs while John attended to his chores.

 

2014/04/03 (R) Electrifying

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Two days ago Jeff and Kathy’s Fleetwood Bounder developed a problem with its 12 VDC house electrical system.  From the symptoms Jeff described it appeared that the AC-to-DC converter may have developed a problem.  Several people stopped by to help so I backed out of the situation.  Too many cooks, etc.

We were gone all day yesterday so I did not have a chance to check with Jeff to see if anything got resolved.  He stopped by our coach this morning to see if I could come down and have a look, so that answered my unasked question.  There is a RV technician who services many of the rigs in the park.  He stopped by briefly yesterday and said he would be back, but had not made it back yet.

The Bounder is equipped with conventional RV appliances for heating, air-conditioning, and refrigeration as well as low voltage DC lighting.  Some appliances operate on propane, some on 120 VAC, and some on both (selectable).  What they have in common is that they all require 12 VDC to operate their control circuits.  If the DC house voltage is not high enough none of these appliances will work.

Failing house batteries would be one possible cause of a DC house voltage problem.  A failed AC-to-DC converter would be another.  A main function of the converter is to maintain the charge on the house batteries which act like a large capacitor in the system and can supply 12 VDC power (for a while) when then rig is not plugged in to shore power and the auxiliary powerplant is not running.  Without the charger function the energy stored in the battery bank will be used by the various appliances.  As the state of charge drops so does the voltage.  Eventually the voltage drops low enough that the appliances will not work.

Jeff had already disconnected the ground cable from the chassis/starting battery, removing it as a load on the converter output.  We turned off the shore power and then disconnected the ground cable from the house battery bank, which consists of two 6 VDC deep cycle batteries in series.  I checked the voltage of both the chassis battery and the house battery bank; both measured 11.5 VDC.  A fully charged “12V” battery with no load and no surface charge measures 12.6 VDC.

I had Jeff turn the shore power back on and measured the voltage across the two house batter cables (with the ground cable still disconnected).  It measured 4.5 volts.  That was obviously not going to charge the battery bank or operate the appliances, but it was odd and not what I expected.  I thought it would be zero, indicating a total failure of the converter.

We left the ground cables off of both the chassis battery and house battery bank.  We connected Jeff’s small battery charger (6 A) to the engine battery and borrowed John’s 20 A charger to charge the house battery bank.  After a couple of hours the house battery bank was up to 12.4 VDC; not fully charged but apparently accepting charge.  Ditto for the chassis battery.  The refrigerator, however, had lost most of its cold and we needed to get it turned back in.

We decided to leave the shore power to the rig turned off so the converter would not be energized, plug the refrigerator AC power cords directly in to the shore power pedestal, and reconnect the house battery bank ground cable to supply 12 VDC to the refrigerator control module.  This allowed the refrigerator to run on 120 VAC and the 20 A battery charger to act like a converter and continue to charge the house battery bank while we figured out what to do next.

This makeshift arrangement worked but was intended to be temporary.  What I really wanted to do was get the converter disconnected so we could restore 120 VAC shore power to the motorhome and not have a faulty converter causing problems.  Up to this point, however, we had not been able to physically locate the converter.  The AC breaker panel did not even have a circuit breaker labeled for the power supply to the converter.

I examined the point of entry for the shore power cord and decided the converter had to be somewhere in the driver side rear of the rig.  The bedroom is located in the rear of the motorhome and that corner of the interior is the shower.  Just forward of the shower is a built in dresser.  The toe kick had a grill that I originally took to be a heat register for the furnace.  It seemed likely, however, that the converter might be under there as this area is directly above the bay where the auxiliary power plant is installed and both the DC and AC distribution panels are close by.

We figured out how to remove the two large lower drawers and there it was, along with the AC power transfer switch.  The converter was a WFCO-8865 rated at 65 A. It was plugged into an AC outlet box on the floor of the cabinet and had two large DC output cables and a chassis ground wire.

I unplugged it, disconnected the DC output ground cable, and taped the exposed conductor to prevent a short circuit.  Jeff restored the shore power and we figured out which circuit the outlet box was on; a 20 A circuit breaker marked “small appliance.”  I plugged it back in and measured the voltage at the converter DC output terminals.  13.5 VDC.  Again, not what I expected to see.  It turns out that I think the reason I was seeing 13.5 VDC may have been that I was looking at the battery voltage.  The case of the converter is bonded to the chassis and so is the  negative terminal of the house battery bank.  Apparently the DC negative connection on the converter is also bonded to the case.

While I was disconnecting the DC negative cable from the converter I discovered that the end of the red (DC positive) cable was not secured properly at the converter and could easily be pulled out.  Yikes!  That could account for the 4.5 VDC we saw earlier at the battery end of the cables.

In order to make their rig as usable as possible I unplugged the converter, plugged the refrigerator 120 VAC cords back in to their outlets, and left the 20 A charger connected to the house battery bank to act as a temporary converter.  With any luck  they were able to use any of their AC or DC devices through the evening and overnight hours.