Happy Birthday Trekker from Lazy Days

We arrived at Lazy Days RV on the 8th of December and will be leaving Saturday.  It seemed only right that the Trekker should celebrate its 1st birthday (yesterday) at the place where we bought it and took possession of it.

It's been an eventful 12 days.  It began with having 5 nights of free camping.  We had a coupon included in the initial package of "baubles" they gave us when we bought the Trekker.  It was time to cash them in.  For our 12 nights we would only have to pay for 7. Cha-Ching!

Just as a matter of serendipity but last weekend (Friday-Saturday and Sunday) they had Bob Tiffin and numerous of the front office personnel here for a "2015 Tiffin Product Line Introduction Rally".  I decided we should go just to see the newest offerings and talk with Bob and Danny Inman again.

They had the newest Allegro Bus 45 here.  It is our Bus on 'roids.  It is built on a new Freightliner Chassis which has a Front Axle with an 18000 lbs GAWR.  It has a 600hp Cummins Engine.  It is a monster.  I'll bet it gets 2-3 miles per gallon.  Because of its 31.5 wheels all the way around it sits about 5" higher on the road than the Trekker.  The one here is called a 45HL.  They are also making another floorplan on this chassis, the 45OL (or it could be an OP).  It was nice to see the newest line-up.  It also convinced us again that the Trekker is the best of all the available RVs and the mods we have made to it only made it better.

Another thing we wanted to accomplish while we were here was to get our new wifi antenna and external cell antenna installed.  We asked to make an appointment the day we came and were told they had a cancellation so they could fit us in at 9 AM on the 16th.  So on the night of the 15th we moved over from the Lazy Days Campground to the Lazy Days Crown Club Service area (which is free).  It ends up that even though the appointment was for the 16th that THAT isn't the appointment to get worked on, but an appointment with a Service Advisor to SCHEDULE the actual work.  So we got worked on yesterday.  Here are pictures of the new antennas and our new wifi service area in the rear of the Trekker.

The above picture shows the finished products:  A RogueWave Long Range Marine WiFi antenna on the right (the white one) and on the left side of the ladder (with the black "thimble" on top of it on the left side of the antenna).

Below is a picture of where they had to drill through the Trekker's roof down into the rig itself.  We had them put it in the very back of the rig - in the closet/washer/dryer area -  on the driver's side.  The white "goop" is a self-leveling weather impervious caulk designed specifically for RV roof usage.

The picture below shows the plastic black "grommet" that they put into the bottom of the hole they had drilled to give it a more "finished" look.  Unfortunately they didn't have a white one they could use.  The black wire is from the External Cell Antenna and the Gray-White wire is from the WaveRogue WiFi antenna.

The picture above shows (on the right toward the top) our MBR95 cradlepoint wireless router.  Right in the middle of the photo is our Wilson Signal booster.  Under it (literally) is our Novatel Wifi Jetpack which was sold to us by Verizon our WiFi signal carrier.  The Jetpack is picked up by the router since we have the router set to "Wireless as WAN (Wide Area Network)."  The black wire going out of the Wilson Signal Booster goes up to the External Cell Antenna.  The gray-white wire which enters into the black connector wit 2 green LEDs on it comes down from the WaveRogue WiFi antenna.

Tomorrow we are going to Green Cove Springs to pick up our mail.  Irene's got 3 packages which would be monstrously expensive to ship to here and would get caught up in the Christmas Mail rush.  So we are taking the day to go get it all.  It's a 3 hour drive - ONE WAY.

There's an RV in that there tent OR We are outta here!

The final stop in our (almost) fully-expenses paid luxury vacation to the Tiffin Motorhomes Service Center and Allegro Campground was the body shop.  The Trekker had cracks developing in both of the front slideouts - On both sides it was where the exterior wall of the slide met the floor and the vertical wall of the slide.  The slides are a single piece fiberglass.  So the bus is essentially a 45 foot, 43,000 pound Corvette!  (And JUST LIKE A CORVETTE gets about 6 mpg of fuel.)  Below are the two corners AFTER they've been fixed.  They are so nice and pretty now.  Just like new.

The big thing that had to be done is the repainting of the Trekker.  This is NOT a monochrome colored vehicle like most cars and trucks.  RV's have multiple colors on them.  In the case of the trekker there are 4 different colors: Biarritz White, Ebony Satin,  Oceana Teal and Silver Sage.  To repaint the slide out after the fiberglass was repaired required taping off and repainting each stripe of the slide out individually.  After the four colors have been repainted then the 3 coats of polyurethane "clear coat" had to be sprayed on.

Travis and Chase did a great job with our body work.

AND

Oh, by the way, as an added gift, at ABSOLUTELY NO additional expense to us, they replaced our spotlight - F-R-E-E.  Of course that happens when their employee waves you into the repair bay BEFORE the bay door is all the way up and your original spotlight is torn off on the bottom of the door.  OUCH!

We left Red Bay early Saturday morning and drove down to Monticello, Florida just east of Tallahassee.  There we stayed in the Tallahassee East KOA.  Sunday we went to church at the Monticello church of Christ.  A congregation of about 35 with a minister and his wife and 3 children that have been there about 6 months.  That evening we went to the Timberlane church of Christ in Tallahassee.  Between the 2 services I got the "privilege" of watching the New Orlean Saints get the stuffing knocked out of them by the Carolina Panthers.  (Just a note: As I am writing this I heard that Cam Newton, the Carolina Panthers quarterback was in an automobile accident today.  His truck was hit by another vehicle and rolled several times as a result.  He has (as Irene calls it) a "seat belt injury" - 2 broken transverse processes in his lower back.  He is in "Fair Condition" and will be in the hospital overnight.  He will completely recover fairly quickly but he will be sore for a while, of sure.  We send our best to him in his recovery.

We arrived at Lazy Days in Seffner, FL yesterday and will be here until the 20th when we drive over to Kissimmee, FL for Christmas with the family until the 28th.

Remember the one about the NASA engineers that forgot to convert inches into centimeters and buried a Mars probe INTO Mars instead of landing it ON Mars? OR "We will OWN our mistakes!"

September 30, 1999

Web posted at: 1:46 p.m. EDT (1746 GMT)


(CNN) -- NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because one engineering team used metric units while another used English units for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday.

For that reason, information failed to transfer between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin in Colorado and the mission navigation team in California. Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft.

"People sometimes make errors," said Edward Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science in a written statement.

"The problem here was not the error, it was the failure of NASA's systems engineering, and the checks and balances in our processes to detect the error. That's why we lost the spacecraft."

If you've read this blog since the beginning you know that we have had to replace the Trekker's radiator fan clutch and fan twice.  The first time was immediately after it was delivered to us in January of 2014.  The second time it broke we had to be towed 75 miles to Pharr, TX to have it replaced.  Here's the www.JITrekking.com blog postings about that menagerie: 

http://www.jitrekking.blogspot.com/2014/03/red-bay-we-have-problem.html
http://www.jitrekking.blogspot.com/2014/03/o-o-there-goes-my-baby-o-o.html
http://www.jitrekking.blogspot.com/2014/03/red-bay-we-have-problem-part-ii.html

The fan clutch originally put into the rig and the 2 that were installed each time it was previously replaced were a NEW type of fan - a "squirrel cage" type.  Here's picture of it:

You can see that it has about 30 blades.  It is about 10 inches high.  You can see that it is quite substantial in size and weight.  Below are 2 pictures of the fan clutch that turns the fan on and off as needed to keep the radiator coolant within an acceptable temperature range.  This top one shows the fan clutch with the pulley that turns the clutch when it engages.

 The one below is the fan clutch with the pulley removed (it was reused on our NEWLY installed fan and fan clutch assembly).

Now, WHY?  Why was there a constant breakdown in these fan and fan clutch assemblies.  I mean this is the newest "fan" technologies, right!  Why the high failure rate?  Well, it seems that the engineer(s) that designed it at Tiffin forgot to factor in the additional weight of the new fan, the clutch and the additional air weight that is compressed by the multiple blades and the additional torque by the new fan.  OOPS!

Now, before you say "You've got to be kidding me."  I think it's VERY IMPORTANT to reiterate something that Bob Tiffin (the founder of Tiffin Motorhomes) told Irene and I when we spoke to him personally BEFORE they started building the Trekker.

"All Motorhome manufacturers make mistakes.  The difference is we OWN ours and will replace any item, ANY TIME (in or OUT of warranty - JRG) that is OUR fault.

I was talking to the Parts Manager today at the repair facility and was saying that we were having our fan and fan clutch assembly replaced.  I made the statement to him that I'm sure there are other Allegro Buses out there."  His reply was "384 of them."  They intend to replace EVERY ONE OF THEM at NO COST to the owners as Warranty work.

So, here are pictures of the new fan and clutch:

As you can see they are significantly lighter.  We also have it on good authority (owners who already have the "fix" installed) that the new fan and fan clutch do an excellent job of keeping the rig's engine well cooled.

Below is a picture of he new fan installed into the Trekker I got before they lowered it to the ground again.

As an additional added touch to this post.  Below is a picture of the Trekker being "Prepped for surgery."  The rig is lifted up on 6 jacks (one on the outside wheel of each axle - front, drive and tag axles). These lifts are electronically connected to lift it in unison.