Dreamers, this from Living the RV Nightmare, sent to me today from a neighbor in our community. Ive left the guys name of to save him more embarrassment. Now have a laugh or shed a tear, your choice: Nobody ever said owning a motorhome was easy or inexpensive. However I think this most recent trip is a bit over the top. After you read this you will be stunned that I said “most recent trip” instead of LAST trip and that Martha and I are still married. To begin, we own a 42 foot, 2008 Gulfstream Tourmaster that we purchased in March of this year. At the time we bought it we also purchased an extended warranty for $5,000. Thank God!!!! Or whoever. So we are going on a 2 week trip to the Santa Barbara area. We will spend most of that time in a beautiful RV Park called Rancho Oso about 20 miles north of Santa Barbara, CA. For 3 days we will be visiting with friends who have rented a house above the beach.. We want to get an early start so that we can get to Palm Springs around 2 or 3 pm. We leave the house almost an hour later than planned and get out to where our bus is parked. I hit the 2 battery cutoff switches and try to start the engine. Nothing. I check things I can check and even try to jump the batteries with my truck. No go. Fortunately I had just signed up for Good Sam’s Roadside Assistance, (I am awaiting their notice that they are returning our money and terminating our coverage.) I called them and they sent out a guy about an hour later. He tried everything and nothing worked. About a half hour into this I am sitting in the driver’s seat and look at the battery cutoff switches and don’t see any lights. I had hit the wrong end of the switches, (the way our old coach switch is). The bus started immediately. Fortunately the mechanic had just tried some other useless attempt at the same time. I told him what a genius he was, gave him a $20 tip and sent him on his way. We are now almost 3 hours behind schedule, but we get rolling!!! We arrive at our park around 6 pm. I start setting up; jacks down, power hooked up, slide outs out. All of a sudden I hear a sound like a coyote giving birth to an elephant and all kinds of black rubber and smoke coming out of my air conditioner vents. I am guessing that one of my AC units bit the dust. Power in the coach is really limited. This is not a good thing. TV’s are not working. AC outlets are dead. Our fridge, (residential) is dead with about 2 or 3 hundred bucks worth of food. Fortunately the freezer had made a substantial amount of ice before it crapped out so we didn’t miss our cocktails. What a relief! The next morning we found a local repair shop. This is not a Camping World or La Mesa RV shop with huge clean bays and smiling clean handed service advisers. This was a dark dirty garage with motorhome remnants everywhere. It looked like a place old RVs came to die. The owner of this fine establishment was in his 70’s. He was skinny, with dirty stringy hair and only a few teeth. As he sat on an old AC cover smoking an unfiltered Camel he asked what the problem was. I told him I thought I had blown an AC unit and fried the electric system in the coach. Hal gets up and goes into the coach. I tell him it was AC number 2 of 3. He pulls the grate and reaches up and undoes a couple of screws. He sniffs around up there and says, ‘Your AC is okay. You got a bigger problem.” Turns out our inverter had blown up. For you non RVers the inverter converts 12 volt battery power to 110 AC power to run things like residential fridges. Well Hal bypassed the inverter which meant if I kept my generator running while I went down the road the food would still be safe to eat until I hooked up. We left Palm Springs and headed north. I called an RV repair facility in Ventura and he waited for us, on a Friday, and looked over the situation. Yup, dead inverter. We went on to our campground and checked in only to find that they only had 30 amp service in the park. We normally get 50 amps. SOOO, save the food or be cool. Decisions, decisions. Compromise: run one AC and the fridge. Did I mention that when I was backing the coach into our site that Martha and I neglected to pay attention to a slope in front of us? Yea the one that ripped up part of the left side face of the bus. Undaunted, Martha and I decide to head in to Santa Barbara and explore the city. We are 10 miles out of our park and our truck dies with a groan and a horrible smell; clutch. “Hi Good Sam. I need a tow.” An hour later a tow truck shows up and hooks us up. Turns out the driver is a highly educated man with more higher ed credits than an MD. He lost his teaching job due to the California budget cuts. He was only making mid 20’s anyway. Now he is driving a tow truck for more than twice that amount. Boy are our values screwed up. Obviously we need to rent a car. “Call Enterprise. We’ll pick you up”….. except in Goleta, CA on a Sunday afternoon. You see they need a 1 hour lead time for a pick up and it was 1:05 PM and the agency closes at 2:00PM on Sunday. So Sorry. Our friendly, over educated tow truck driver offered to take us to the Santa Barbara Airport where we could get a car. We get to the airport and I purposely walked past the Enterprise booth. Can’t treat me that way and expect I will do business with you again. Next counter; National Car Rental. I signed the paperwork and got in the car when I noticed that one person was working the lot and handling Alamo, National and Enterprise returns. National owns them all!!! Can’t win for losing! The car had a keyless ignition. You just put a foot on the brake and push the starter button and off you go. I thought that wasn’t very smart. What if I didn’t lock the car? Someone could just climb in and take off. I’ll tell you how I found out I was wrong about that. The RV repair shop called and said the warranty adjuster needed to see the coach in order to authorize the claim. We had no idea how long this would take so Martha was going to follow me in the rental car. I started un-hooking everything so that I could pull the motorhome out of our parking spot. Un-hook the water, the electric, and the sewer. Bring the slide-outs in, raise the leveling jacks….raise the leveling jacks….RAISE THE FLIPPING LEVELING JACKS. It’s supposed to be fully automatic. Hit one button and up they go! NOT! I finally get them up manually and off we go. I started out and went about a quarter mile and noticed she wasn’t behind me. I stopped and waited a few minutes. Still, no Martha. I decided to back up and go see what the problem was. You guessed it! Another unseen slope ripped up the right side of the face of the coach. A nice balanced look now. As it turns out you need to have the remote with you in order to start the car….which I had in my pocket. While we are waiting for the adjuster we get a call that our truck is ready to be picked up. When the adjuster got finished we decided to get gas in the rental so we can turn it in and the coach needed diesel fuel. Finding a gas station that has diesel and is larger than a postage stamp in sunny southern California is a challenge. Martha is following in the car and I am finding places to turn around. In the process of one of those turn around efforts Martha was behind me and trying to make a turn in someone’s driveway. Yep, you guessed it….an unseen low brick wall manages to crunch up the left rear quarter panel, GRRRRRRR! We got back home and re-parked the coach without incident. We went and played a game of miniature golf. Martha took Maya for a walk and I went back to the coach to start getting dinner together. Unfortunately the damn door won’t open. I try the key. I try force and I even tried cursing but the flipping door won’t open. After about an hour I found a window I could open. Martha had returned and I convinced her to climb through the window. The low edge of this window is 6 feet off the ground. She climbed the step stool and lifted her foot as high as she could and just barely got it over the sill. I gave a mighty heave from the back and propel her into the coach. She was able to open the door from the inside. I quickly jammed a screwdriver into the lock so that the door couldn’t close. Later that evening a fellow in the camper next to us came over and asked about the screw driver in the door. Turns out he is pretty handy. He told me sometimes the inside handle and the outside get out of sync. He starts manipulating the handles like a chiropractor and, presto, the lock works. Finally, we catch a break: No damage; no Roadside assistance; and no cost, (other than a beer for my new best friend)! Everything was going along smoothly until the following night at around 10:30. We were getting ready to go to bed and I was taking Maya out for her nightly constitutional but the door would not open…..from the inside! My new best friend had pulled out of the park earlier in the day. Besides, How would I get his attention? Throw knives and forks at his camper? “Hi Good Sam’s Roadside Assistance. It’s 11:00 at night and I am 20 miles away from civilization and I need a locksmith.” Well a half hour later I get a call from one and he wants to verify my location. Nope, too far! “Hello Good Sam’s…….” Around midnight we get a call and a locksmith is at the gate. We toss Martha out the window so she can get in the car and lead him to us. The locksmith is a good natured fellow about five foot seven and 350 pounds. No way he can open the door from the outside but I don’t know how he is going to get inside through the window. He must have played some football in his younger days. He launched himself from the step stool, headfirst into the coach and did a head roll. The bus shook, plates fell out of cabinets and the dog’s dish got upended, but he was in! It took him 5 minutes and he had the door open. Maya ran out and quickly relieved herself. The locksmith jammed a screwdriver into the door so it couldn’t lock and told us we need a whole new door mechanism when we get home. Out with the bungee cords so we can go down the road without closing the door. Time to go home. I figured we could make it to the California-Arizona border on the first day. The ride is smooth and traffic is light. We should make it. Unfortunately we need to stop and take on some of that super expensive California fuel, ($4.89 for Diesel), in order to get to the border. Martha had been out walking Maya and was getting back into the motorhome. She reached down and picked up the screwdriver that had fallen out of the door and absentmindedly pulled the door shut behind her…..”Hello Good Sam’s Roadside Assistance……” Two hours later we were freed from our coach. At least we will be home tomorrow. We get a reasonably early start the next day and all is going well. Traffic is flowing well through Phoenix. I asked Martha to get me a glass of water. She got up and went back to the fridge. (Please, no lectures. I know it was stupid.) All of a sudden some jackass pulls in front of me and cuts me off. I slam on the brakes and Martha comes flying 25 feet to the front of the coach and falls on the floor. She ended up with a headache and some soreness but nothing broken. I could say that was the end of the trip from hell, but unfortunately it wasn’t. We had noticed that the truck was running pretty rough so I took it to my mechanic. After exhausting all other possibilities he had to conclude that the transmission and clutch EXPERTS that put in our clutch and fly wheel did it incorrectly. I authorized him to pull the transmission to check it out but to take good video of it. Sure enough the fly wheel was installed 30 degrees off so the timing sensor was not functioning properly. I sent the video to the people who installed the clutch; the shop that specializes in clutches and transmissions, the people who have a kabillion years experience, the people who are certified EXPERTS. Their explanation was priceless, “Our mechanic said the flywheel was that way when the truck came in so he installed the new one the same way” So if I brought a car into you with a flat tire you would put the new one on with no air???? You can’t make this stuff up folks!!!! Well that was it. The trip from hell made up in equal parts of operator error, mechanical breakdowns and plain old bad luck. Can’t wait to do it again!
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 02:03:55 +0000
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