Pre-Departure Maintenance Checks

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our E-mail Digest or RSS Feed. We will then send you the stories that are posted each day in an e-mail digest. We use a service called Feedburner for delivery of these emails. You will receive an e-mail from Feedburner after you subscribe and you must click on that email to activate your subscription. Thanks for visiting and enjoy all the information! RV.Net Blog AdminWhen you head out on a trip in your RV you look forward to the sights and scenery along the way, and to the fun you will have when you arrive at your final destination. Nothing will ruin all of the fun and adventure quicker than an unexpected breakdown.    There are three basic types of maintenance for your RV, preventive maintenance, scheduled maintenance and emergency maintenance. The lack of preventive maintenance and/or scheduled maintenance will eventually result in emergency maintenance. If you don’t check the air pressure in your tires (preventive maintenance) the under-inflated tire over heats and prematurely fails resulting in emergency maintenance.  There are pre-departure safety checks and pre-departure maintenance checks you should make on your RV prior to leaving on a trip. Today we are going to concentrate on some of  the maintenance checks you should make before hitting the road.  Check all fluid levels: a      Engine Oil: Automotive wise this is perhaps the most important PM check you can make. Check your engine oil on a regular basis.... Read more

RV Winterizing 101 (Part 2)

We enjoy using our RV as much as possible throughout the year.  But when you can’t use your RV, for whatever reasons and temperatures are approaching freezing, it’s important that you protect it. Last week I talked about preparing your RV’s interior, exterior and chassis for storage during the colder winter months. I mentioned at the beginning of the article that the RV plumbing system is the most vulnerable to damage caused by plummeting temperatures. The good news is it is really quite easy to protect the RV water system from this potential threat.  I am including a checklist from my “Checklists for RVers” eBook to help walk you through the winterizing process. Read more  Read More →

Check the Chassis

It’s a fact of RVing life: Things wear out and break on your rig, and require maintenance and replacement. When it’s something you can see, it’s no problem—it’s what you can’t see that can fail and cause a potentially dangerous situation. We’ve been reminded of this numerous times in the past, but the most recent example is the rear control arms on some Monaco motorhome chassis, which have a tendency to crack or even fail completely. The chassis in question is the Roadmaster RR4R with the four-airbag “Monaco Gold” suspension. I’m not about to speculate on the cause of the problem, and I’m not going to suggest that the part was improperly engineered, but the fact is, the problem exists. We’ve seen it in our shop several times over the last couple of years. If you own one of these coaches, there is good news. Source Manufacturing, LLC offers heavy-duty rear control arms for these coaches under part number TRA-1002. These arms are a direct replacement for the factory components, and include upgraded axle mounting hardware. Even if you have already had these parts replaced under warranty, Source warns that the replacements are the same design as the original, and therefore are susceptible to the same problems. The TRA-1002 control arms are designed for Monaco Knight (’02-’04), Monaco Cayman (’02-’09), Holiday Rambler Ambassador (’02-’04), Holiday Rambler Neptune (’02-’09), Safari Cheetah (’02-’04) and Safari Simba RD (all years). We have... Read more

RV Winterizing 101 (Part 1)

It’s always sad to come to the realization that another camping season is winding down.  Part of this realization is preparing the RV for winter storage, so it will be ready to go camping again next spring.  My guess is that most RV owners, especially those in cold climate regions, refer to this winter storage preparation as winterizing your RV.  When you hear the term “winterizing” the first thought that comes to mind is to protect the RV water system from potential damage caused by exposure to freezing temperatures. Frozen and damaged water lines are in fact the most common problem related to not winterizing your RV, or not properly winterizing your RV; but there is more to winterizing your RV than just protecting the water system from freezing. Read more  Read More →

Battery Voltage, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

This column is in reply to a question about the charging voltage being delivered to batteries while driving. The question from Bill is “I would like to know what the maximum battery charging voltage should be when the engine is running. My rig runs around 14.4 volts at anything over 1000 RPM. Is this voltage going to shorten the life of the battery? We usually drive 5 hours or so between camping stops. The coach battery is a group 24 deep cycle flooded cell type.” Read more  Read More →

Why Weigh your RV?

Weighing your RV can be the difference between a safe, enjoyable trip and a costly, disastrous trip. With multiple slide out rooms, amenities like washers and dryers, large holding tank capacities and the ample amount of storage space available on today’s RVs it’s easy to see why so many are overloaded. Overloaded RVs are extremely dangerous. Actually there are a lot more reasons for weighing your RV than I listed here, but my intent was to highlight some of the most important reasons for weighing your RV. Read more  Read More →

Your RV Oven – What’s it used for?

Kay Peterson, co-founder of the Escapees RV Club, used to say in her “Living in a Sardine Can” talk that her RV oven was strictly for storage. She wasn’t even sure how it worked. They ate out a lot. In our case, our oven stores extra pans and it gets used frequently. We much prefer to eat our own cooking. I am lucky – George loves to cook and cooks almost all our dinners plus bakes gluten-free English muffins weekly. Frankly, his cooking tastes better than 99 percent of the meals we do eat out. Using your own facilities – stove and oven – has other benefits: control over the quantity of food you are served and eat limit portion size for weight control keep food expenditures down. Some newer RVs don’t even have a regular oven. That should tell you about how much they are used! Instead, they have a combination convection/microwave oven. Some RVers love them, others have never figured out how to cook using their convection oven. How about you? Does your RV have an oven? What’s it used for? If you have a convection oven, are you able to bake with it or would you prefer the old fashioned kind? Let’s hear from you!  And, if you’d like to participate in a poll on what your oven is used for, click here. We’ll share the results in a future blog. Jaimie Hall Bruzenak  Read More →

Freightliner Leads the Way in Environmental Responsibility

By Bob Difley Though this achievement doesn’t yet save you money or increase your miles per gallon, the fact that Freightliner has taken serious steps to reduce pollution and landfill waste in their manufacturing operations indicate where their collective heads are. The initiation of their Zero Waste to Landfill program as of May has achieved a 94.1% waste-free status. They expect to be 100% landfill waste-free by 2010. Read more  Read More →

Extended-Stay Maintenance Checks

Normally when you plan a trip in your RV you conduct some type of pre-trip checks to make sure the RV is properly prepared for travel. When it’s time to leave the campground you perform these checks again for the return trip. But what happens when you find that perfect campground or RV Park and stay put for extended periods of time? Do you conduct routine maintenance checks on the RV to make sure it is in a safe and operable condition while it’s parked? Most likely you do, but if not here are some extended-stay maintenance checks to consider performing. Read more  Read More →

Rear Radiators Vrs. Side Mount

Class “A” coaches are available with many options, but there are some things that can’t be changed. Depending on the make and model, you may get a rear mounted radiator or a side mounted unit.  So, what is the difference? Well, if you think one is better than the other, you might be wrong. Even though all high end coaches have side radiators and most of the entry level diesel pushers have rear, not cost, but specific design issues, may be the real reason.   While there is no question that side mounted radiator systems cost more to build, we have to look at why they would be designed and used on larger engine equipped units.  That is, on all diesel pusher engines in excess of 360 horse power. These radiators consist of two main cooling sections, the charge air inter-cooler and the engine coolant. The charge air section has large internal tubing that cools the already boosted air pressure between the turbo charger and the intake manifold.  The engine coolant section works similar to that of your automobile, that is, it keeps the coolant at a reasonable operating temperature.  The larger the engine, the larger the radiator size has to be. Ideally the radiator works, design wise, best if it is mounted in the rear, directly behind the engine.  This design requires less horse power to drive the cooling fan than does a side mounted cooling package.  Additionally, some natural air movement, due to its location, is also a benefit.  As far as blocking access... Read more

Next Page »