Category Archives: Airstream

New routine

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Having a home again to stay in and stretch out is a bit different than what he had been used to for over 5 years. We had a couple of different routines in our full-timing: one for a travel day, a different one when we were somewhere for a few days, and another for more extended stays. Now in a home, we have to change again.

We were here for almost 8 weeks before we had to hit the road again. We took care of numerous projects around the house (there are still more!), appointments in town, shopping and sometimes not doing much of anything. I had a project that I needed to do on the trailer before we left. We had issues with the water pump losing pressure and not working. We carried a gallon jug of water with us to ‘flush’ the toilet when this happened so I decided to replace the darn thing. Replacement is easy, two wires, two screws, and two water connections. However, the pump itself is under the floor in our 6′ wide wardrobe which means remove everything and take up the ‘floor’. Then put everything back again, but it worked!

Another water-oriented task was to replace the water compartment that was almost completely rusted out. The original, from 2012, was some coated steel component and it was pretty bad after all this time:

There were also some water connections and a connection for the sewer flush I had to fix also. The gaskets in them were pretty old and I was unsure of how secure the connections would be. The tubing is PEX and I am not a PEX expert and oftentimes the crimping tool is so big it has a hard time fitting in some spaces:

I discovered a PEX connection type that didn’t require any special tools. The white ones in the next photos are a simple twist-on attachment for connecting to the components in the water compartment. In the elbows and T’s are the black connectors. These simply require a pair of pliers to ‘crimp’ the plastic pieces on. Very nice and removable.

The new compartment is stainless steel so I hope it will last at least 10 more years! All the parts were added back, water inlet (squarish white part), water petcock, black tank flush (black part), and external hose access. Plus I had to reattach the door.

Another quick fix was to secure the black/grey tank access panel on the belly pan. You can see some of it in the above picture. Initially, I attached it with screws and foil tape across the edges. We lost some screws over time and I decided to go with rivets this time. While the trailer was elevated on this side, it was a great time to take care of this.

Off to California again, to see the high school graduation of our granddaughter Paige:

Paige (r), her father (our son), and her sister (our other granddaughter)

It was weird not going to Visalia to stay when we went there. We stayed at our son’s house (he set up RV parking also). We did go to Visalia to visit our old neighbors (across the street from our old house). We coincidentally saw the new owners while we were there and she asked about the B-Hyve sprinkler remotes when I was there. I helped her out with it and was interested to see what they are doing to the house.

We changed our plans a bit after Visalia and went to Redding to see Roxie’s sister and then came back home through Bishop to see my sister. We were gone for just at 2 weeks but have plans to turn around and head out 2 weeks after we get back. During these 2 weeks at home, I had one other rather large trailer project to get done. Trailer brakes.

We have had the trailer now for over 10 years and 68000 miles on the trailer, it ‘might’ be time to change brakes. I had an appointment with Toscano’s in Los Banos to get the brakes done but schedules never allowed it. The brakes are Dexter Nev-R-Adjust brand where you can either change the shoes (drum brakes) or the entire brake assembly. Given the mileage and age, I was unsure what it would look like inside so I opted to replace the entire assembly on all 4 wheels. Toscano’s sent them to me and I had them whenever I was ready. I also purchased 4 shock absorbers since they have the same story as the brakes.

This was the time to do it! The first one is always the toughest. I could have used my Trailer Aide to get the first wheel off the ground but I wanted a bit more security against it rolling off while I was working so close to being underneath the trailer. I also chocked the wheels on the other side. I could have left the truck hooked up to it but we only have one vehicle and I knew it would take more than one day!

Wheel off, showing the Centramatic balancer and the old shock absorber
Ready to take off the nut

This is where I hit my first snag. I had a 1 1/4″ socket and a 1 1/2″ socket. In research, it was either a 1 5/16″ nut or a 1 7/16″ nut. Off to Kingman. None of the hardware stores had such sizes but I knew Autozone did. They had many metric sizes and luckily the two I was looking for. I took them to the counter and the sales guy asked what I was doing. I was looking for an impact socket and these weren’t. He told me that they rent such large impact sockets in a set but they were metric. He also mentioned when the sizes get that big, metric and imperial are very close. The set had a deposit but no rental cost. I took it. I was going to use my Dewalt 20v impact driver but decided to get a true pneumatic impact wrench.

I found out that the 36mm socket worked great, I needed a 1 7/16 and 36mm is only .001 in smaller. I have a 2-gallon air compressor and was able to get the nut off but just barely. I ‘had’ to go buy a larger air compressor as I had 7 more uses for it on this project. The new air compressor worked just fine.

I removed the snap ring on the end of the axle and then the nut. The hub should come directly off. These are also Dexter Nev-R-Lube hubs so there was not a lot of grease nor did I have to repack them. Unfortunately, the hub did not pull off easily, I had to do some prying but it eventually came off.

I would not have been surprised if parts just fell out when I removed the hub given the age and mileage. But they looked intact, with decent wear still on the brake pads. What this shows me is that I might not be using the brakes enough and relying on the truck too much. I have to re-evaluate this.

As mentioned, I also have shock absorbers to replace. Just two nuts and it was done. Old vs new:

The hub showed some wear especially where the magnet potentially contacted the hub. I am putting them back on as I don’t have an alternate plan.

Here we have the spindle of the axle ready for the new parts:

I cleaned things up as best as I could, considering all this is going to get extremely dirty very soon. I reconnected the electric brake lines with shrinkable connectors to try to keep things waterproof. Then mounting the entire plate and torquing the nuts to 50lb.

I just needed to put the hub back, screw the large nut on, torque it to 150lb, the dust cap, the Centramatic balancers, the wheel, lugnuts torqued to 110lb. Then one was done! Three to go.

The other three went pretty quickly, especially when you get a sequence. The only major issue was on the last one, naturally. When I went to take off the old shock, there was no nut where it attached to the axle! I think it was still working but I had to go to town and get a replacement. At our old house, Home Depot was only 1/4 mile away, but here the closest town with hardware is 15 miles.

The next step was to adjust the ‘never adjust brakes’. Sounds odd. Some sources say to manually adjust them while still jacked up. But Dexter says to drive up to 40mph and hit the brakes hard down to 20mph and do this 20-40 times. Other instructions I found say go to 20mph and hit just the trailer brakes at full boost. I did a combination of the two. I did the 40mph option on paved roads and the 20mph on gravel/dirt roads around here. Near the end, I could feel the trailer brakes helping with the 40mph stops. I don’t remember feeling this quite as good before. I feel confident it will get better as we drive it more.

Here is the graveyard of old parts:

I now feel good about our upcoming trip but will be very diligent in checking this as we travel.

Next chapter

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Our lives really work out like chapters in a book. You can define different portions of life with distinctive start and endpoints. I don’t mind closing out a chapter and going to another one, I am just not ready to finish the book just yet.

Prior to leaving Arizona, we got a few tasks completed or scheduled. The first was a chain-link fence on the eastern part of the property, about 310′ and 2 gates.

We also added a small section of ‘field fence’ to the southwest portion of the property. It is now fully fenced. We also took advantage of our absence to replace the existing flooring. It had carpeting and roll vinyl and was most likely original to the mobile home. We replaced it with LVT (Luxury Vinyl Tiling). This was done while we were gone so all we got to see were pictures when it was done:

We are also able to have a quick visit from our friends George and Marcia in their trailer. I smoothed out a spot for them:

Having purchased the house in Arizona we headed back to California to accomplish a certain set of tasks so we can get back here. The first step was to help our son move to their new home. Their home was being remodeled and was not quite done. This gave us an opportunity to fix a few things around the old house and get some logistics lined up, like renting a UHaul truck and trailer.

The moving day for our son did come and so did the movers to clear out the house. The house was now virtually empty so we had to start filling up the garage. We have been renting a 10’x10′ climate-controlled storage unit for our stuff which was primarily a large oak bedroom set. We took up one side of our garage with our storage unit items along with some other items that were accumulated from our son’s move. Prior to moving all their items, a pile grew on the other side of the garage that held items for a yard sale. Oh, happy day! Not a real yard sale fan. The garage was very difficult to walk through at this time.

Time to think about the sale of the house. Clean things, repair things, paint things, replace things, a whole lot of things, to do. Now the house is ready to show, just don’t look too hard in the garage. Our realtor had it lightly staged, and had photos taken. The house was listed on a Friday in the morning. That day we had around 10 showings, the next day was close to the same number. We had an open house on Sunday where the agent ran out of flyers. It was very popular. By Monday we had 8 offers and narrowed it to the primary and 2 secondary offers. They were all very generous offers.

The offer we took turned out to be the best one by far. The buyers had an offer on their house that technically was a contingency but the way it was structured, it really wasn’t. Everything went amazingly smoothly and escrow closed in 2 1/2 weeks! And just like that, we only owned one home.

During all this escrow time we were focused on getting back to Arizona, with all our stuff. Roxie didn’t trust anyone else hauling our items so we decided to rent a UHaul truck. Our son, Aaron, volunteered to drive the truck as we had the Airstream to drive back. How does he get back to California though? He could fly back from Vegas but that was a lot of moving parts. We decided to have him rent a car, we hauled it on an auto trailer behind the truck, and he was to drive it back when we completed the move.

We got the trailer on a Wednesday and took about 2 days to load it:

Finally, we hit the road on a Friday and did the whole trip in one day, it is around 400 miles. The truck started having some unknown issues about 20 miles from our place but we made it there. We unloaded the truck the next day and Aaron left, heading back to California. We were back home, again.

We weren’t able to sleep in the house yet, though. We had to find all the parts for our bed and that took a few days, but we still have the Airstream to sleep in. On the 4th night, we were able to sleep in our new home:

We had to take back the UHaul and trailer to Kingman, about 15 miles away. Given the minor issues we had, I decided on a more rural route. Boy did that pay off when the major issue arose:

It started losing power, then gave a message about low oil pressure, then the engine shut off and I had to coast to the side of the road. Three hours later and the truck was being towed to Las Vegas and the trailer was being towed to the UHaul drop-off. Good thing we are retired and didn’t have anything pressing.

We are settling in slowly, getting furniture and TVs installed, unpacking boxes, etc. One thing that happened was I get my Starlink Dishy delivered and installed! This is it after a night of 50mph winds:

We will now take a break from our full-timing but have plans to go see fall colors in the east with our friends. Roxie is looking forward to this respite and I can deal with it also. From the time we started in May of 2017, we have spent around 1760 nights in the trailer. End of this chapter.