Winterizing the RV and More....

The Rogue Leader has sat in her hangar bay since our trip down to Deal's Gap in mid-June. For aged vehicles and homes, that translates like dog years as some band-aid fixes began breaking down.

As expected, both the house and vehicle batteries are exhausted. The marine (house) battery was easy to jump, and then put on trickle charge until full with very little difficulty. The vehicle battery, however, had been swapped out when the Walmart-special battery in my daily driver called it quits. We need to replace that vehicle battery, but for the intents and purposes of starting the RV this weekend, we had to make do with the house battery.

With a few squirts of starting fluid and the turn of the ignition key, she fired right up. This took us by surprise because both of us recall how the long, grueling trip through the mountains emptied our main and auxiliary tanks. There was enough gas to start and run the Rogue Leader and--with a marvelous display of manhandling and pushing a motor to its limits--move the vehicle about fifteen feet forward.

Alas, it moves! The man has reported transmission slips, but that is a problem that had been brought to our attention the first time we drove the RV home after we purchased it. He believes that adding tranny fluid to it should clear that right up.

Living in an Eastern Virginia climate means temperatures that vary widely across extreme humidity, heat, and frigidity from day-to-day. This year, we got lucky and had a long streak of mild weather, although we cannot quite call it autumn. Temperatures stayed up in the high 50's through the 70's with a handful of cold nights in between. Lows hit 32 this weekend. Call us smart, or call us lucky, but draining both waste tanks and the fresh water tank couldn't have come with better timing.

The water lines are full of bleach since there wasn't enough in the fresh water tank to do a complete flush. We are hoping to let the bleach sanitize the lines for a while before running more city water to clear it all out.

The man must really have his heart set on a family Winter trip. As we recall, of all the things on the gas line, only the stove works. Pilots on the water heater and the furnace refuse to light. We know a pipe on the water heater is rusted and clogged, but we have not done anything with the furnace to determine its condition. The maintenance weekend ended with Johnny crawling through the improv-cubby hole on the side of the furnace cabinet and unbolting the furnace. He says he plans on cleaning and inspecting it to see what he (and his fix-all ingenuity) can do with it.

I am excited to be working with the RV again.