Since we have been home one thing I have been working on is getting everything off of the truck to get it ready to trade on a new vehicle to be towed by the motorhome. We accomplished that yesterday after many visits to several auto dealerships.
I removed the tow bar base plates and installed the tow hooks back in there place. I also removed the 5th wheel hitch, bed rails, tow wiring, the 19.5 inch wheels, the brake system as well as the tool box. I then started shopping the truck around to trade it in on a new Honda C-RV. We are limited as to what we can buy since only certain vehicles can be towed four wheels down behind a motorhome. I learned quickly that you need to shop around when buying a new car. The lowest trade value I received on the truck was from Gurley Leep Honda in Elkhart which was $16,500 while the highest was from two dealers one being Basney Honda in Mishawaka, Indiana which was $27,500. Gurley Leep in Elkhart, Indiana was by far my worst experience at any car dealership I have been to over the last three months from West Palm Beach, Florida to Northern, Indiana. All of the other offers I received were all in the "expected range".
As it turns out I could have almost traded my truck, that I have had for seven years, even for a new Honda CR-V. One problem. The CR-V made me feel old just sitting in it. The interior was very bland and plain. The color Kona Coffee that we wanted turned out to be almost black when you saw the entire car and not just the little square in the brochure. After visiting Don Ayres Honda which was my last Honda dealer to visit I just didn't feel any excitement for the Honda CR-V. I thought due to the great experience and reliability I had with my truck I owed it to Chevy to give them a visit. That was on Saturday. Yesterday we picked up our new Chevy Equinox from Kelly Chevrolet in downtown Fort Wayne which I absolutely love. I feel as if the car is made for me even though it is much smaller than the truck.
I ordered the tow bar and electrical diodes needed to wire the vehicle so it can be towed with the motorhome. I had the truck wired by Northtrail RV but decided to do the car myself. The tow bar base plates will also be much more difficult to install due to having to remove the front facia of the vehicle but I plan on doing that also so I fully understand how they were installed. I will also be installing a trailer hitch and some other misc items like a fuse master which enables you to turn off a fuse with a switch rather than having to physically pulling the fuse. This is necessary on this vehicle in order to not run the battery down while towing. For those of you interested I will post some pictures after I get started in this process. I have the entire month of May to get it done since we don't leave for South Carolina to attend the Freightliner school until the end of the month.
Why we came home this early is beyond me. The weather here sucks.
Jack
A journal written about life, retirement and our journey throughout the United States in a 5th wheel, along with our two Shih Tzus, Tanner and Syndey. Written not for notoriety but for our sons, family and friends, so they know where we are at any given time. And particularly for ourselves. Finally, we get to slow down and smell the roses and we don't want to forget any of it. You are welcome to join us as we go 'Down the Road a Piece'.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
Back Home with a lot to do.
We are back home and our youngest son and his significant other and their awesome six month old dog Libby were here for the weekend. It was a pleasure spending time with the two of them after not seeing them for several months.
I have been working on getting our truck back to stock as much as possible by removing the wiring harness for the lights when connected to the motorhome, the tow bar base plates, the tool box, the fifth wheel hitch, the air brake system, and other little accessories I added. Wednesday I am taking the truck to a local tire/auto repair facility to get the wheels and tires removed and have the stock wheels and tires put back on the truck. I am also going to have them remove the bed rails for the 5th wheel hitch while it's there. I will then be ready to sell the truck.
I requested quotes today from three Honda dealers for a Honda CR-V. I would like to get the new car as soon as possible so I can get the new base plates, air brakes, and wiring harness installed for the tail lights while being towed by the motorhome. If we can get this all done by the end of May we will take the motorhome to Gafney, South Caroliina to the Freightliner school instead of staying in motels.
On a sad note our 13 year old Shih Tzu Tanner had a seizure today that the vet said was more than likely a stroke. He flopped around on the floor like a fish for about 10-15 seconds. I picked him up and Janet and I held him for a half hour or so while he settled down. We put him down on the floor after that and he walked like he was drunk but slowly seemed to recover. We took him to the vet in the afternoon and the vet put him on some pills for seizures and gave us another prescription for his arthritis. We hope this helps and he fully recovers. We have had Tanner for 12.5 years, longer than any other dog we have owned. He has given us so much pleasure over those 12 plus years.
We are happy to be home for awhile.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Clarksville Indiana at the Louisville Metro KOA
Well as the heading to the post implies we are back in the Hoosier state. We are just across the Ohio River from Louisville in Clarksville, Indiana at the Louisville Metro KOA rv park. The KOA park is located in an old neighborhood with zero grass in the park. We are here just over night so we aren't that concerned about what the park has to offer. On our trip today up Interstate 65 included us, some truckers, and thousands of Louisville fans coming back from Georgia and the Louisville win over Michigan. It was a fairly easy day except there was a lot of traffic but it was mainly on interstate 65. We left the campground in Rogersville, Alabama around 10-10:30 ish and drove east around 25 miles before we picked up 65 that we took north for two states. We stopped at Camping World in Bowling Green, Kentucky to pick up a couple of things and again for fuel and that was it. I drove in the economy mode for the entire trip and set the cruise at 62 mph. For todays trip we averaged 8.5 mpg which amazed both of us. The motorhome also did well going up and down the mountains. On the interstate you get to start up the mountain going 62 mph while in the Alabama mountains last week in the Cheaha Mountains we were in very winding roads so you might only be going 20 when you started your climb. In any event today we usually had to wait for someone slower ahead of us to get up to the top. Going down the mountain is good too with the two stage engine brake. On moderate declines I use the low brake setting and on the steeper declines I use the high setting. In most cases this eliminates the need to even touch the brake pedal. The mountains on route 65 north through Tennessee and Kentucky aren't really too steep. Overall we are very pleased with the driving performance of the motorhome and the mileage is surprisingly much better than we expected. We will leave tomorrow morning at about the normal departure time of 10:30 ish and will park the motorhome in our driveway in Warsaw while we unload tons of things we don't use. This house cleaning alone should get us another tenth of a mile per gallon or so.
Oh by the way since I had the middle part of the dash out and tightened the connections to the monitor the door side camera has been working great ever since. I am going to keep our appointment with Newmar since the front windshield screen needs to be looked at. I wrote Newmar this evening and told them what I thought about their whole appointment process and warranty disclaimer contracts. I basically said the entire process is set up for their convenience and is done at their customer's expense. For example, they tell you to be there by 6:00 am but they may not see you until 8:30 am. They want you to check into the office when you get there but later tell you the office people don't show up until 7:30 am. In other words be there and be prepared to sit and wait for up to 2.5 hours until they get around to seeing you. In addition they continue to email me little contracts to sign and return in the mail explaining the 99 ways they will get paid no matter what is wrong and they determine it's not covered under the warranty. The Amish may build good motorhomes but their customer service skills suck. They need to go to the Bob Tiffin school of customer service. Today two ladies across from us with a newer Tiffin Allegro Bus are heading back to North Trail RV in Fort Meyers, Florida where we bought our motorhome to have some work performed. They said some were not under warranty but Tiffin has already told them they would extend the coverage of the warranty for the non covered items. Instead of telling you about all the ways things may not be covered Tiffin finds ways to take care of things that shouldn't be an issue regardless of the 12 month warranty period. Oh well the warranty on the Newmar is only good for one year so I won't be dealing with them for too long. I haven't even visited the plant yet and I already think they suck just from my interaction with them trying to get into the factory for an appointment. When I get there I will have to see if Newmar's Mahlon Miller is as accessible as Bob Tiffin is to his customers.
We enrolled in a Freightliner class on June 3rd and 4th to learn about the motorhome chassis and maintenance items on the motorhome. This is held in Gafney, South Carolina at the Freightliner factory. We are going to make a week long vacation of it by visiting Pearl Fryar's topiary garden (the guy who trains shrubs to grow in all kinds of unusual shapes). In addition, we are also going to visit Mount Airy, North Carolina which is the home of the Andy Griffith show. Several people have told us this is a neat little town to visit so we plan on checking it out. We haven't decided whether we are taking the motorhome or staying in hotels. I tried to attend the Freightliner school on our way home but there were no openings.
Oh by the way since I had the middle part of the dash out and tightened the connections to the monitor the door side camera has been working great ever since. I am going to keep our appointment with Newmar since the front windshield screen needs to be looked at. I wrote Newmar this evening and told them what I thought about their whole appointment process and warranty disclaimer contracts. I basically said the entire process is set up for their convenience and is done at their customer's expense. For example, they tell you to be there by 6:00 am but they may not see you until 8:30 am. They want you to check into the office when you get there but later tell you the office people don't show up until 7:30 am. In other words be there and be prepared to sit and wait for up to 2.5 hours until they get around to seeing you. In addition they continue to email me little contracts to sign and return in the mail explaining the 99 ways they will get paid no matter what is wrong and they determine it's not covered under the warranty. The Amish may build good motorhomes but their customer service skills suck. They need to go to the Bob Tiffin school of customer service. Today two ladies across from us with a newer Tiffin Allegro Bus are heading back to North Trail RV in Fort Meyers, Florida where we bought our motorhome to have some work performed. They said some were not under warranty but Tiffin has already told them they would extend the coverage of the warranty for the non covered items. Instead of telling you about all the ways things may not be covered Tiffin finds ways to take care of things that shouldn't be an issue regardless of the 12 month warranty period. Oh well the warranty on the Newmar is only good for one year so I won't be dealing with them for too long. I haven't even visited the plant yet and I already think they suck just from my interaction with them trying to get into the factory for an appointment. When I get there I will have to see if Newmar's Mahlon Miller is as accessible as Bob Tiffin is to his customers.
We enrolled in a Freightliner class on June 3rd and 4th to learn about the motorhome chassis and maintenance items on the motorhome. This is held in Gafney, South Carolina at the Freightliner factory. We are going to make a week long vacation of it by visiting Pearl Fryar's topiary garden (the guy who trains shrubs to grow in all kinds of unusual shapes). In addition, we are also going to visit Mount Airy, North Carolina which is the home of the Andy Griffith show. Several people have told us this is a neat little town to visit so we plan on checking it out. We haven't decided whether we are taking the motorhome or staying in hotels. I tried to attend the Freightliner school on our way home but there were no openings.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Joe Wheeler State Park
Hello Everyone,
We have just been chillin at Joe Wheeler State Park in Northwestern Alabama. The park is on state route 72 about 18 miles east of Florence, Alabama which is the home of North Alabama University. It is a nice progressive city with new buildings going up everywhere you look. Today we went to Florence to pick up a couple of things and decided to go see the downtown. On our way back we saw a Mexican restaurant that was packed and since we hadn't had lunch yet we decided to stop. Well the food and atmosphere was awesome. Below we posted some pictures of the place.
We decided the weather in Northern Indiana is warming up so we plan on returning home the middle of next week. We have a lot of things we want to get done the first of which is getting the truck ready to trade in on what we believe will be a new Honda CRV. We have been researching vehicles to tow with the motorhome four wheels down and narrowed it down to the Ford Edge, Chevy Traverse and the Honda CRV. The Chevy is bigger than what we want so we have ruled that one out. The Ford Edge while it appears bigger than the CRV the actual inside measurements and cargo carrying capacity is actually smaller than the CRV. While we like and have owned Fords we have also owned Honda's and have seen many CRV's towed by motorhomes so we are leaning toward the CRV as of today. We went to a dealer in Florence today and I was impressed with the room inside for a person my size. If we get rid of the truck we will also try to sell our 5th wheel hitch, 19.5 inch Rickson wheels, truck bed tool box, and more than likely our swivel wheeled trailer.
We finally ran into a problem on the motorhome that I can't easily solve. The passenger side camera occasionally comes up on the screen as "No Signal" . After a while it starts to work again. I took out the middle drawers out of the dash and tried to make sure all of the connections to the screen from the camera were tight and they appeared to be. The camera now works great but it seems to work intermittently which may be tough to fix. We called Newmar and made an appointment to take the motorhome in and have them look at it on May 30th. It was a pretty exhaustive deal just to get it in to the plant for service. First you make and appointment and then they send you an email with a form that you have to sign and send back in the mail. The form basically says they will keep your motorhome for any reason they want if you don't pay the bill and they will be the ones to decide if the work is covered under warranty or not. It's probably the least customer friendly process I have ever seen but I am trying to keep an open mind. This process is slightly different than a Tiffin owner here at the park I spoke to yesterday described. He had a problem with his satellite dish that was over a year out of warranty and Bob Tiffin said your right it's out of warranty but I will still take care of it and told the rv shop to do whatever was necessary to fix it and he would take care of the bill. Hope we didn't make a mistake by going with Newmar instead of Tiffin. One reason we went with Newmar was it being so close to Warsaw but it seems it is very difficult to get into the factory since they are normally booking three months out so that may not have been a reason to buy Newmar. We'll see how things go. My hope is we don't have any more problems so we don't have to take it in again.
Right now it is pitch dark and I am outside watching the NCAA final four games sitting by the campfire. The weather down here was great today with highs in the mid 70's. We are going to try and rent a boat tomorrow to explore the water around here. Monday I plan on hitting the golf course then Tuesday we will head toward home stopping in Louisville for one night.
Enjoy the pics.
This is a great place to stop for Mexican food if you are ever in Florence, Alabama.
We have just been chillin at Joe Wheeler State Park in Northwestern Alabama. The park is on state route 72 about 18 miles east of Florence, Alabama which is the home of North Alabama University. It is a nice progressive city with new buildings going up everywhere you look. Today we went to Florence to pick up a couple of things and decided to go see the downtown. On our way back we saw a Mexican restaurant that was packed and since we hadn't had lunch yet we decided to stop. Well the food and atmosphere was awesome. Below we posted some pictures of the place.
We decided the weather in Northern Indiana is warming up so we plan on returning home the middle of next week. We have a lot of things we want to get done the first of which is getting the truck ready to trade in on what we believe will be a new Honda CRV. We have been researching vehicles to tow with the motorhome four wheels down and narrowed it down to the Ford Edge, Chevy Traverse and the Honda CRV. The Chevy is bigger than what we want so we have ruled that one out. The Ford Edge while it appears bigger than the CRV the actual inside measurements and cargo carrying capacity is actually smaller than the CRV. While we like and have owned Fords we have also owned Honda's and have seen many CRV's towed by motorhomes so we are leaning toward the CRV as of today. We went to a dealer in Florence today and I was impressed with the room inside for a person my size. If we get rid of the truck we will also try to sell our 5th wheel hitch, 19.5 inch Rickson wheels, truck bed tool box, and more than likely our swivel wheeled trailer.
We finally ran into a problem on the motorhome that I can't easily solve. The passenger side camera occasionally comes up on the screen as "No Signal" . After a while it starts to work again. I took out the middle drawers out of the dash and tried to make sure all of the connections to the screen from the camera were tight and they appeared to be. The camera now works great but it seems to work intermittently which may be tough to fix. We called Newmar and made an appointment to take the motorhome in and have them look at it on May 30th. It was a pretty exhaustive deal just to get it in to the plant for service. First you make and appointment and then they send you an email with a form that you have to sign and send back in the mail. The form basically says they will keep your motorhome for any reason they want if you don't pay the bill and they will be the ones to decide if the work is covered under warranty or not. It's probably the least customer friendly process I have ever seen but I am trying to keep an open mind. This process is slightly different than a Tiffin owner here at the park I spoke to yesterday described. He had a problem with his satellite dish that was over a year out of warranty and Bob Tiffin said your right it's out of warranty but I will still take care of it and told the rv shop to do whatever was necessary to fix it and he would take care of the bill. Hope we didn't make a mistake by going with Newmar instead of Tiffin. One reason we went with Newmar was it being so close to Warsaw but it seems it is very difficult to get into the factory since they are normally booking three months out so that may not have been a reason to buy Newmar. We'll see how things go. My hope is we don't have any more problems so we don't have to take it in again.
Right now it is pitch dark and I am outside watching the NCAA final four games sitting by the campfire. The weather down here was great today with highs in the mid 70's. We are going to try and rent a boat tomorrow to explore the water around here. Monday I plan on hitting the golf course then Tuesday we will head toward home stopping in Louisville for one night.
Enjoy the pics.
A little excitement at Walmart with a car fire in the parking lot.
This is a great place to stop for Mexican food if you are ever in Florence, Alabama.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Cheaha State Park the Highest Point in Alabama
Yesterday we stopped for one night at Cheaha State Park in Alabama. This is about half way between Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama. It is known for being the highest point in Alabama. The park is in the Appalachian mountain range so we got to see how the motorhome did pulling the truck up some fairly steep and winding mountain roads. All I can say is we will never win any races to the top I can tell you that. It was like driving my 1964 VW Beetle 40 years ago. You stepped on the gas and pushed it to the floor and then you looked down to make sure you had your foot on the gas pedal and then you waited. If you were going on a long trip you would put Sunoco 260 octane in the tank and you increased your top speed by 5 mph to 72 miles per hour. Overall the motorhome did great but did slow down going up some of the steeper climbs. I think a lighter tow vehicle will help since our truck weighs more than double the typical tow vehicle. On the freeway to get to the park I also slowed down from 67-68 miles per hour which I did the day before to 62-63 miles per hour. Our trip mileage for yesterday including the mountain driving improved to 7.5 miles per gallon. To some this sounds horrible but it really pleases me. My mileage is only 20-25% lower than what we achieved with the truck pulling the 5th wheel. I used the economy selector for part of our trip today also which gets you into and keeps you into a higher gear longer than normal. With the motorhome we leave the park in the morning and Huli fixes breakfast on the road. The inverter using the eight house batteries will run the appliances like the coffee maker and things like that but if she wants to use the electric stove we just start the generator. Yesterday we "exercised" the generator for an hour while running down the road with two of the roof air conditioners running. The experts say you need to do that every month. So the motorhome is great for getting something to eat or drink while traveling. That's good since it is not as easy to get this thing into places I could get the 5'r into like Mickey D's parking lots but I have done two u turns with the motorhome and the truck so I am starting to understand what it's capable of doing. Cheaha park only had about 25 spaces and the camping spots were a little small but we did fine finding one where we would fit. By the way while at Cheaha park we had no telephone or internet service so I couldn't update the blog yesterday. We left Cheaha State Park this morning around 10:30ish and drove to Joe Wheeler State Park which is in northern Alabama about 20 miles west of Huntsville. We are staying here for about six days. This park has a golf course which I plan on playing at least once during our stay. From here we don't know where we are going but it will depend on the weather in Indiana. We could be home in a day or take three weeks to get home. Below are some pictures from the last couple of days.
This is what Valdosta, Georgia is best known for. The courthouse
Getting to Cheaha State Park we were actually in the clouds. Here we stopped at one of the overlooks.
Sydney has adjusted great to traveling in the motorhome and Tanner did much better today.
A semi on the left kept us from getting any better shots of the Taledaga speedway.
This is what Valdosta, Georgia is best known for. The courthouse
Getting to Cheaha State Park we were actually in the clouds. Here we stopped at one of the overlooks.
We made it.
This little "hippie girl" which is what I called her has walked from Miami to this mountain top in Alabama with her dog who is tied up out front of the restaurant. She could out eat me but I could out drink her. That's true, I think my weight is a function of my thyroid problem. Oh well.
Sydney has adjusted great to traveling in the motorhome and Tanner did much better today.
A semi on the left kept us from getting any better shots of the Taledaga speedway.
