Projects Continuing, Cleaning and Making Ready

While we are still waiting for those expensive tag axle shocks from Bilstein, we are continuing to make ready by working on a variety of related projects.

After changing the oil, filter, adjusting the carburetor and choke, I fired up the Onan (6500W On-Board) generator and plugged it into the new 30V box installed in the cord access compartment.  Before I did this, I went into Gypsy and moved the generator switch from the Rear position to the Front position.

With the way this generator is wired, the Front position allows one of the generator circuits to go to the outlet that has the long cord plugged in,   This electrically duplicates what happens when you are plugged into a 30A service in a RV park.  When I started the unit up and then fiddled with the choke a bit, I could keep it running.  So, I went inside and turned on the TV, microwave, Front Air Conditioner and ran the shop vac off of one of the outlets.  To my great delight and, with a sense of accomplishment, found that we were off the grid and everything was running well inside!

Now my tasks moved on to getting the wheel bearing on the tag repacked, installing the hub/drum and picking up all of the tools that were scattered about.  The shocks are coming direct from Bilstein in Kansas and I was temporarily stopped in moving on to the other side until they arrive and I installed the port side unit.

One of my newest improvements is shown here in the photo of the bedroom in the rear of the coach.  We pulled out the original full size mattress that was installed and dropped in this new Seely unit that I picked up for about 10% of list at an online auction.  It is a Sealy Davlin Ltd Cushion Firm Tight Top mattress.  We are looking forward to many restful nights in the future crashed out on this beauty.

 This is the way that the dining area looked before I did some rewiring/rerouting of the electrical and TV cables.  We had a temporary hookup that plugged a six-strip into an outlet on the aft side of the dining area with a cord that rested on the dinette table and then plugged into the TV and other items.  It was a bit messy and I set about the clean it up a bit.

I found a square surge suppressor with a longer cord, routed it over to the forward side and tied it off with cable clamps so the cord ran under the table.  I then proceeded to tidy up the wiring for the TV so the antenna for off-air channels was moved to the window, an HDMI cord was run from the DVD player up inside a cabinet down to the TV and everything was clamped off so it appeared more tidy.


The DVD player is inside of the cabinet above and has feed wires running down to the power supply and TV.

The wires to the TV are tidied up and can be made even more tidy if I run the antenna wire up the wall and down with the HDMI to the TV through the upper cabinet.

The TV is mounted so it can be rotated to favor viewing from the galley as shown here or from the settee and chairs in the living room as shown below.