It’s amazing how, sometimes, you don’t think of the obvious until it rears up and bites you!
We live in New Hampshire and snows here, sometimes heavily. Our travel trailer spends the winter out in the yard, so it’s exposed to whatever the weather brings. I take some of the weight off the tires and suspension by putting jack stands under the frame. We put a big, heavy duty tarp over the top and hold it down with bungees, rope, and tent stakes. I don’t let too much snow build up on the roof, and this has worked well over several years and multiple RVs, with no roof leaks or other, winter-related problems.
We got some heavy, wet snow acouple of weeks ago in one of those late spring storms. Some called it the April Fool’s storm. Saturday morning, after Deb took some things out to the rig – I think she’s getting the “let’s go camping” itch – she came in and asked how come I had the front of the trailer jacked way up? I very intelligently said, “Huh?” We both walked out and, sure enough, the tongue jack was all the way up and the frame was up off the front jack stands by about six inches! The front tandem tires were barely touching down, and a lot of the 30 foot trailer’s weight was on the rear jack stands and the tongue jack.
After assuring my wife that I hadn’t jacked the thing up, I pushed the button to lower the jack. Nothing happened. I tried the light on the jack, but that didn’t work either. No power. We keep the rig plugged into shore power over the winter, so we checked and we had lights and power inside the trailer. The jack has an access port to allow manual raising or lowering using a socket wrench or manual crank. At first, I couldn’t move the mechanism up or down. I finally put enough muscle into it to break it loose and lower the thing back down to the proper level.
The tongue jack is wired directly to the battery, with an inline fuse on the positive side. That fuse was good. Since we had replaced an older tongue jack with a new, Ultra-Fab Odyssey a couple of years ago, Deb quickly located the owner’s manual with a parts diagram. Sure enough, there’s a 20 amp circuit breaker mounted inside the jack’s motor housing.
 The guilty breaker I took the thing apart, got my multimeter and found 12 volts DC on the input side of the breaker, but nothing on the output side. Problem solved! All I needed to do was find a replacement circuit breaker and install it. I could order one from Ultra-Fab for about $20 plus shipping. Camping World had a 30 amp unit $17. I finally stopped at a close-by Advance Auto Parts store and bought a replacement breaker for $3.49, installed it, and now the jack is good to go again.
What caused the problem in the first place? Well, I guess a practical joker or a would-be trailer thief could have come into the yard while Deb and I were at work. Could have. My best guess is, however, that the last heavy snow did it. The toggle switch to raise or lower the jack is right on top of the housing. The edge of the tarp extended out past the jack motor housing. I’m thinking that enough snow accumulated on the tarp to activate the switch. That would have held the switch down until the gears jammed and the motor pulled enough current to toast the breaker.
Seems obvious now. Mother Nature can sure keep you humble. Before next winter, I’ll have to make something to go on top of the jack housing to keep Mother Nature’s hands away from the switch!
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We had a great time in Virginia early this fall. Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Williamsburg all offer interesting and entertaining things to see and do. We saw and did and really enjoyed ourselves. But, vacations are only so long and, sooner or later, you have to head home.
Since Williamsburg was our last major stop in Virginia, when we left there we headed west on I-64 and connected up with I-81 in Staunton. From there, we turned north with the intention of enjoying a peaceful trip through Virginia, across a bit of West Virginia and Maryland, into Pennsylvania, some of New York, a lot of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and finally back to our home state of New Hampshire. A lot of driving, with overnight stops in northern VA and another in northeastern PA.
And it WAS peaceful, until we left Candy Hill Campground in Winchester, VA and crossed into WV heading north on I-81. Traffic was very heavy on I-81 in the Martinsburg area and was really moving! It was a hot day; bare feet on that pavement would have been well done in short order.
In a scared voice, Deb said, “What was that?” Strangely, I didn’t immediately hear or feel what she did, but about the time she spotted bits of rubber flying out from the side of the rig, I felt it in the steering – big time! One of the trailer tires had blown and we’d started to sway. Not good in traffic that was very heavy and moving at only slightly less than the speed of light! I hit the flashers and slowed as quickly as I could. We made it into the breakdown lane and came to a stop without any difficulty, but MAN that breakdown lane was narrow. I got the curbside wheels right on the edge of the pavement and it seemed as though the traffic was buffing the streetside paint.
I got out the lug wrench, the jack and some wood spacer blocks and started to jack ‘er up. Now, normally, changing a tire is just a pain. This was no different…until the first tractor-trailer zoomed by and buffeted the rig so that I thought it would slip off the jack. Then before it stopped swaying back and forth, another one blasted by, and then another! About that time I remembered that we have the Good Sam Club’s Emergency Road Service. We’ve paid for it for several years, but never had to use it. It was clear that NOW was the time.
I pulled out the cell phone and called the ERS toll free number. A very nice and helpful customer service rep took all the information about our rig, our tow vehicle and the exact nature of the problem. She offered to have a police officer come to the scene if I felt that there was any traffic-related danger. Then she asked permission to use my cell’s GPS signal to pinpoint our location. After I held for a brief time, she came back on the line and said they could have a service vehicle to us within an hour.
The Good Sam ERS rep. Called again a few minutes later to confirm that a truck was on its way and to make sure we didn’t need any police assistance. In less than an hour a fellow from Resley Tire Co. in Hagerstown, MD showed up. I don’t think he liked our location any better than we did, but in short order he had the trashed tire off, the spare in its place, and we were ready to go again. The technician from Resley was friendly, professional, and got the job done quickly.
As for Good Sam Club’s Emergency Road Service, all I can say is that this one service situation was WELL worth the the annual price of membership! Stuff happens, but knowing you can call for help and count on getting it is a nice feeling.
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Manassas, VA: the site of not one, but two Civil War Battles of Bull Run. As I’ve come to understand it, Union troops tended to name battles after natural features of the immediate area. Bull Run was, and is, the name of a stream in the midst of the battle area. Confederate troops, on the other hand, named battles after man-made objects such as towns, inns, taverns, and so forth. Manassas was, and is, a [Continue reading...A Visit to Bull Run (Manassas)]
We arrived at Aquia Pines Camp Resort, in Stafford, VA, on a Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago. It’s kind of an urban park in that it sits between Route 95 and Route 1 and is surrounded by businesses of all kinds, noise, and traffic. The campground, though, is surprisingly quiet and peaceful in the midst of all this. Yes, you can hear traffic, particularly that on I95, at all hours. The noise was [Continue reading...Aquia Pines Camp Resort, Stafford, VA]
Funny, I used to think that Spam was a processed meat product with which you could make sandwiches, fried slices to go with your breakfast eggs, and so on. Remember the little blue can that said SPAM, with the attached “key” that you used to roll open the top? Then, when you got it open, there was that clear jelly goo surrounding the Spam luncheon meat. You’d have to stick a knife in along the [Continue reading...Spam]
The Great New Hampshire Wind Storm of 2010 struck Thursday night, February 25th-26th. Friday morning, there were around 400,000 power company customers without electricity! We were among them. The power lines that run from the transformer on the telephone pole to our house were ripped loose by a falling tree. We were fortunate to have a generator to power our furnace, water pump, and refrigerator. As a matter of fact, I started writing this post under [Continue reading...Wild Thing]
We’ve been to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania a couple of times. Most of you know that Gettysburg is the site of one of the most decisive battles of the Civil War, and certainly one of the bloodiest! General Robert E. Lee played a huge role at Gettysburg, along with his key subordinates General James Longstreet and General George Pickett of “Pickett’s Charge” fame. On the Union side, General George Meade was in command and played a key [Continue reading...Review of Artillery Ridge Campground]
We made our second trip to Gettysburg, PA in September. Last time we were there, we parked our rig at the Artilary Ridge Campground, out on Taneytown Road to the south of town, and enjoyed our stay there. This time we stayed at Gettysburg Campground on Fairfield Road to the west of town. This was a great place to stay, too. It was after Labor Day, so during the week, the campground was definately not crowded. [Continue reading...Review of Gettysburg Campground]
Continuing from yesterday’s post, we’ll finish installing a new pleated shade on one of our travel trailer windows.
Measure 2½ inches in from each shade-end mark and put light marks on the wall where the centers of the mounting brackets will go [Figure 6]. Now that you’ve got everything marked out, it’s time to actually mount your new shade.
The shades are mounted to the wall using brackets that come with them. Narrower shades take only two [Continue reading...RV Window Makeover II (Part 2)]
Over a year ago, we replaced the mini-blinds in our travel trailer with pleated shades and wrote a blog post about the project. Well, we recently bought another travel trailer and replaced its mini-blinds with the same type of pleated shades. Why another post on the same topic? This time we took a few pictures showing some of the installation steps and thought they made it worth another post.
I guess there are many possibilities when it [Continue reading...RV Window Makeover II (Part 1)]
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