Upgrades and Warranty Work

After our test weekend at the Ovens Nature Park it was back to Jerry's R/V in New Minas, Nova Scotia to get the water system looked at under warranty. We also had a common problem...the trim along our slide out had popped off when we opened it because the cushion was in the wrong position. A lesson learned...we will be watching that in the future.

I had already made an appointment for May 17 for Jerry's to add anti-sway.

Warranty Work:

The tech hooked the trailer up to the water system and we quickly discovered that there was indeed a leak under the bathroom. He blanched at the thought of having to rip the thing apart to find it. In order to find out where the leak was he used a camera on a flexible hose and ran it under the bathroom. Luckily, the leak was not in the water lines, rather the connection to the trap under the little bathroom sink was loose and that was allowing the water to run down the inside bathroom wall and come out onto the floor close to the bed in the front of the 179. It was a fairly quick repair and we both breathed a sigh of relief.

The other water problem was the weak flow from the kitchen sink tap. It turns out the water line had a substantial amount of wood chips and sawdust from construction and once the filter on the tap was cleared that problem was solved.

It was also an easy fix to re-attach the trim along the slideout.

Upgrades:

We added anti-sway to the hitch. We are going to be on the road for 6 months and the trailer did have a slight sway when we towed over to the Ovens, so it was an easy decision to make in the interests of safety and comfort. The cost, which would have been $175 installed, was covered by Jerry's. Nice people

We also added an electric Jack. After hand cranking the trailer it seemed like it might be a good idea. Total cost, installed was $265.

Tires:

We are heading out for a monster trip, and part of that trip will be on less than perfect roads in Wood Buffalo National Park, in Canada's Northwest Territories, and a month on the roads of the Yukon and Alaska. Although the factory supplied load range 'C' tires seem just fine, in the interests of safety and security on the road, we upgraded to Goodyear Endurance load range 'D' tires. They have much stronger sidewalls and should last the entire trip.

We were also somewhat worried about the life of the factory installed tires. We expect to tow the R-pod for about 21,000 kilometers on our journey and thought we might have to replace them somewhere on the road, or risk a blowout as they wore. We have seen pictures of the damage a blowout could do to these trailers.

We will keep the factory tires stored at home and use them in future years when we travel much closer to home. Total cost, installed, and filled with nitrogen, was $450.

Preparations:

The small closet in TaJ did not work for us, as we carry almost no clothes that require hanging. So Jenny devised a shelf system made out of chain and metal shelving cut to fit. It looks pretty darn good and makes much better use of the space for us.

She also used the image from an old T-shirt of mine to make a pillow for our bed. Kinda cool:

As this blog entry is written we are just 5 days away from departure and are working on getting ready to get on the road. All winter long we have listed the things we need to take with us and estimated weights so we would have an idea of how to load everything.

The distribution of the weight is very important and it must be balanced side to side as well as front to back. We estimate we will be carrying almost 1000 pounds of stuff, so about 600 pounds will go in the tow vehicle and 400 in the trailer. When fully loaded our rig will weigh about 8,000 pounds, with 4,800 pounds in the tow vehicle and 3,200 in the R-pod.

We weighed the trailer and tow vehicle at the scale at the local garbage dump to get our base weight of 7,000 pounds. Over the next few days we will get everything loaded, and probably re-loaded until we are satisfied, or until we run out of time.

The next blog entry, on May 31, will cover the rest of our preparations to depart. Following that, we will update the blog at least twice a week.

Our first two days on the road will be to tow from our home in Nova Scotia to Ottawa, Ontario, a distance of about 1500 kilometers. We will make two overnight stops in Walmart parking lots, one in Edmunston, New Brunswick, and the second in Neapean, Ontario. There is a site online that lists which Walmarts welcome overnight stays. Our first camping adventure will be in Algonquin Park, in Ontario, where we are booked for 4 nights, beginning June 3