70000 miles!

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We purchased our current Airstream in January of 2013. It is a 2012 31′ Classic. Since the 31′ was not the most desirable floorplan (they no longer make the floorplan) and the trailer had been on the lot for over 6 months we got a pretty good deal on it. We just had to drive to Portland OR to purchase it.

We had our ’92 Airstream, given to us by my parents, for about 12 years prior and they had it for about 10 before that! I had no idea how many miles were put on that trailer. I know we took the ’92 all over the western states, to Canada once and Mexico three times. I was determined to keep track of things better this time!

Google to the rescue! I was still working when we got the trailer and my career was in technology so what better way to track than a spreadsheet? Google allowed me to do this but keep the information in the cloud without needing a PC/Mac with software installed specifically for spreadsheets (Microsoft Office). I can keep track of things on my phone.

I started tracking after our trip bringing the new trailer home. I even added on mileage for the trailer being transported from Jackson Center OH to the trailer dealership in Spokane WA and then the mileage to get it to Portland. However, that is not our mileage.

The next question was how actually to track the mileage that we travel. I know that some big rigs have odometers that physically attach to the hub of their trailers but I didn’t even think of that or probably didn’t want to pay for one. One app that I found for the iPhone was MapMyDrive. It worked pretty well, as long as I could remember to start it when we began each drive.

A few months into our tracking, I added a few items to each drive. One was the latitude and longitude of each stop. This was in anticipation of having some type of dynamic map that shows our path for each trip. But, what path did we take?

It is always fun to go back and look at some trips but we don’t always take the most direct route. If we have time, I don’t like to travel exclusively on Interstate freeways, major off roads have a much greater appeal. But how do I remember where we went? Once again Google to the rescue.

After every trip, drive, etc. I sit down at the laptop and use Google Maps to lay out where we drove. I start with the starting point and the destination and drag the route to show the correct path. By now, I don’t use MapMyDrive and use Google Maps exclusively. I then create a goo.gl link with the path. For example, here is a drive we did in 2017 when we drove from Walmart in Greensboro NC to Walmart/Ashley furniture in Durham NC.

Our route
Meandering around Greensboro

On this leg, we had some things to do before we got to our next stop. We left where we spent the night (Walmart), stopped at a laundromat, teeth cleaning for Roxie, had lunch at Longhorn, then stopped at Bed Bath and Beyond for a wedding gift (unmarked dot by Walmart) and headed on to the next stop.

With Google Maps, I can put in all the stops in order and it will figure out a path. I can then tweak it to match our actual path. In this situation, if I had only put in the starting and ending points, we would have missed all the extra mileage that we put on the trailer.

Tracking the mileage accurately gives you a baseline on which to apply service items. This way I knew that we got almost 50K miles on our Michelin tires on the trailer. I also knew we got over 68K miles on our original brakes. These numbers are very helpful!

Here is a snippet of the spreadsheet with some recent info:

This shows us creeping in on 70000 miles on our trailer and 1900 full-time nights. With all this spreadsheet and map tracking, I feel that I am easily within 1% of accuracy.

I also keep track of our nightly camping expenses since we started full-timing in 2017. Here is a snippet of that part of the spreadsheet:

I track all the above so I can get a ‘total’ cost at the end of the year and an average cost. I can also keep track of what states/provinces we have been to. The current list is:

Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming and Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon Territory. 33 states and 3 provinces.

At this writing, we are officially at 71627.3 miles and still going. We are getting ready to head east and add more states to the list!

New routine

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Having a home again to stay in and stretch out is a bit different than what he had been used to for over 5 years. We had a couple of different routines in our full-timing: one for a travel day, a different one when we were somewhere for a few days, and another for more extended stays. Now in a home, we have to change again.

We were here for almost 8 weeks before we had to hit the road again. We took care of numerous projects around the house (there are still more!), appointments in town, shopping and sometimes not doing much of anything. I had a project that I needed to do on the trailer before we left. We had issues with the water pump losing pressure and not working. We carried a gallon jug of water with us to ‘flush’ the toilet when this happened so I decided to replace the darn thing. Replacement is easy, two wires, two screws, and two water connections. However, the pump itself is under the floor in our 6′ wide wardrobe which means remove everything and take up the ‘floor’. Then put everything back again, but it worked!

Another water-oriented task was to replace the water compartment that was almost completely rusted out. The original, from 2012, was some coated steel component and it was pretty bad after all this time:

There were also some water connections and a connection for the sewer flush I had to fix also. The gaskets in them were pretty old and I was unsure of how secure the connections would be. The tubing is PEX and I am not a PEX expert and oftentimes the crimping tool is so big it has a hard time fitting in some spaces:

I discovered a PEX connection type that didn’t require any special tools. The white ones in the next photos are a simple twist-on attachment for connecting to the components in the water compartment. In the elbows and T’s are the black connectors. These simply require a pair of pliers to ‘crimp’ the plastic pieces on. Very nice and removable.

The new compartment is stainless steel so I hope it will last at least 10 more years! All the parts were added back, water inlet (squarish white part), water petcock, black tank flush (black part), and external hose access. Plus I had to reattach the door.

Another quick fix was to secure the black/grey tank access panel on the belly pan. You can see some of it in the above picture. Initially, I attached it with screws and foil tape across the edges. We lost some screws over time and I decided to go with rivets this time. While the trailer was elevated on this side, it was a great time to take care of this.

Off to California again, to see the high school graduation of our granddaughter Paige:

Paige (r), her father (our son), and her sister (our other granddaughter)

It was weird not going to Visalia to stay when we went there. We stayed at our son’s house (he set up RV parking also). We did go to Visalia to visit our old neighbors (across the street from our old house). We coincidentally saw the new owners while we were there and she asked about the B-Hyve sprinkler remotes when I was there. I helped her out with it and was interested to see what they are doing to the house.

We changed our plans a bit after Visalia and went to Redding to see Roxie’s sister and then came back home through Bishop to see my sister. We were gone for just at 2 weeks but have plans to turn around and head out 2 weeks after we get back. During these 2 weeks at home, I had one other rather large trailer project to get done. Trailer brakes.

We have had the trailer now for over 10 years and 68000 miles on the trailer, it ‘might’ be time to change brakes. I had an appointment with Toscano’s in Los Banos to get the brakes done but schedules never allowed it. The brakes are Dexter Nev-R-Adjust brand where you can either change the shoes (drum brakes) or the entire brake assembly. Given the mileage and age, I was unsure what it would look like inside so I opted to replace the entire assembly on all 4 wheels. Toscano’s sent them to me and I had them whenever I was ready. I also purchased 4 shock absorbers since they have the same story as the brakes.

This was the time to do it! The first one is always the toughest. I could have used my Trailer Aide to get the first wheel off the ground but I wanted a bit more security against it rolling off while I was working so close to being underneath the trailer. I also chocked the wheels on the other side. I could have left the truck hooked up to it but we only have one vehicle and I knew it would take more than one day!

Wheel off, showing the Centramatic balancer and the old shock absorber
Ready to take off the nut

This is where I hit my first snag. I had a 1 1/4″ socket and a 1 1/2″ socket. In research, it was either a 1 5/16″ nut or a 1 7/16″ nut. Off to Kingman. None of the hardware stores had such sizes but I knew Autozone did. They had many metric sizes and luckily the two I was looking for. I took them to the counter and the sales guy asked what I was doing. I was looking for an impact socket and these weren’t. He told me that they rent such large impact sockets in a set but they were metric. He also mentioned when the sizes get that big, metric and imperial are very close. The set had a deposit but no rental cost. I took it. I was going to use my Dewalt 20v impact driver but decided to get a true pneumatic impact wrench.

I found out that the 36mm socket worked great, I needed a 1 7/16 and 36mm is only .001 in smaller. I have a 2-gallon air compressor and was able to get the nut off but just barely. I ‘had’ to go buy a larger air compressor as I had 7 more uses for it on this project. The new air compressor worked just fine.

I removed the snap ring on the end of the axle and then the nut. The hub should come directly off. These are also Dexter Nev-R-Lube hubs so there was not a lot of grease nor did I have to repack them. Unfortunately, the hub did not pull off easily, I had to do some prying but it eventually came off.

I would not have been surprised if parts just fell out when I removed the hub given the age and mileage. But they looked intact, with decent wear still on the brake pads. What this shows me is that I might not be using the brakes enough and relying on the truck too much. I have to re-evaluate this.

As mentioned, I also have shock absorbers to replace. Just two nuts and it was done. Old vs new:

The hub showed some wear especially where the magnet potentially contacted the hub. I am putting them back on as I don’t have an alternate plan.

Here we have the spindle of the axle ready for the new parts:

I cleaned things up as best as I could, considering all this is going to get extremely dirty very soon. I reconnected the electric brake lines with shrinkable connectors to try to keep things waterproof. Then mounting the entire plate and torquing the nuts to 50lb.

I just needed to put the hub back, screw the large nut on, torque it to 150lb, the dust cap, the Centramatic balancers, the wheel, lugnuts torqued to 110lb. Then one was done! Three to go.

The other three went pretty quickly, especially when you get a sequence. The only major issue was on the last one, naturally. When I went to take off the old shock, there was no nut where it attached to the axle! I think it was still working but I had to go to town and get a replacement. At our old house, Home Depot was only 1/4 mile away, but here the closest town with hardware is 15 miles.

The next step was to adjust the ‘never adjust brakes’. Sounds odd. Some sources say to manually adjust them while still jacked up. But Dexter says to drive up to 40mph and hit the brakes hard down to 20mph and do this 20-40 times. Other instructions I found say go to 20mph and hit just the trailer brakes at full boost. I did a combination of the two. I did the 40mph option on paved roads and the 20mph on gravel/dirt roads around here. Near the end, I could feel the trailer brakes helping with the 40mph stops. I don’t remember feeling this quite as good before. I feel confident it will get better as we drive it more.

Here is the graveyard of old parts:

I now feel good about our upcoming trip but will be very diligent in checking this as we travel.