And more tasks!

Carl always has a to-do list going -- I do too, but mine is generally more on when I need to make reservations for different campgrounds, while his is on tasks around the "house" that he wants to get done. We worked on a few on Saturday...

He had put lights up above the front windshield to light up in the evening... but they had not stayed in place... so we stuck them back up and then he put a few staples in this time. Let's just say that it required quite a lot of stretching and strange contortions!

We don't currently have the "recently-fixed" slide extended... we're still a little concerned and want to wait until we're in a place where we could get a mobile RV technician if needed. During the time when the slide had been stuck "in", it became more apparent that the foam weatherstripping on its edges needed attention (it totally fell off so we rolled it up and kept it in a zippered bag for a few weeks). Since he had the staple gun out, Carl tried stapling it, but we've decided that we need to get new foam and the part above the top of that slide needs to be fixed too... and maybe other slides need attention too (but we would need to bring the other slides in to figure out how much other areas need attention, and we decided to deal with that later). I did find some foam weatherstripping on Amazon that seems to be the right stuff... though we're going to look at Home Depot or Lowe's in Yuma first.

This picture represents is another project that is in preparation, not active work yet - Carl took pictures of the BIM, Battery Isolation Manager, that is currently installed on Gracie. One thing we have found is that, since we replaced the AGM (lead acid) batteries with lithium, the batteries do not charge via the alternator when we are driving. This is because the current BIM is programmed/tuned for AGM batteries. We would like to replace this with a BIM that is engineered to support lithium batteries, which takes into account the higher voltage of the lithium batteries. One important component that a BIM will contain is a capability to limit how much time will be used to charge the batteries - generally 15 minutes in every 35 minutes - so it disconnects for 20 minutes. This is needed because the lithium batteries, if they were very low on charge, could require so much current that they could overheat the alternator installed on Gracie and make it fail. (This is Patti's attempt at an explanation of what Carl has told her, any errors are based on Patti's misunderstanding, not Carl's!)

Unfortunately, the BIM is installed behind the cord reel (an electric reel that rolls up that big cord that Carl replaced the end of a couple of days ago) -- not exactly an accessible location. The new BIM, of course, does not have exactly the same configuration, and we're not sure how much "give" there is in the wires attached to the current BIM (is there 6" of additional wire that Carl can work with?) - and no way to find out until he gets into it. There's some other tasks he would like to do in the cord reel compartment too (like installation of our EMS (Electrical Management System) and Autoformer within the rig rather than having them at the power pole and available for potential theft). So, that's the beginning of a big project... not sure when we'll move forward with it!

Carl started on another project and asked me to come out to help getting it set up -- some of the screws used to hold the entry door together had had their heads broken off which has caused our door to be "loose" between the inside and outside of the door. He wanted to clamp the inside and outside together so the holes in the side of the door would line up with the screws that are broken off in the holes so he could attempt to correct it. I helped hold the parts in place while he placed the clamps. (You might notice some grey cloth on the outside of the door - he is using to protect the paint on the door -- and he has a piece of metal down the inside and the outside of the door to help to apply pressure over a length of the door.)

One of the holes where the head of the screw has broken off.

Carl drilling out the body of the screw -- the bottom screw...

... and the top screw.

Unfortunately, the screws proved to be harder than the drill bits... it seemed that the drill bits were quite dull... causing us to look for where more were stored...

... which took me to our spreadsheet that attempts to list everything we have and where it is stored -- this sheet of the workbook is for everything stored in Gracie's compartments. You may be able to see that I did a search on "drill bits" (at the top in the overlaid window), and the sheet is positioned where it found them -- there are some in the Teal Makita bag (which were the dull ones he had already started using), and others in "Red 1 - drill accessories..." -- we have 6 red boxes, numbered 1-6, and the spreadsheet keeps us from having to look into all of them for items we need to access. We found red box #1 and got the other drill bits - unfortunately, the bits in one of those sets would break almost before he started drilling, almost like they were plastic instead of metal. He finally got one hole drilled (the top broken screw), but when we tried to put a screw into the hole, it ground off the threads of the screw rather than going into the hole. We decided that we really needed self-tapping screws, and again checked the spreadsheet to find that they were in red box #5. We did not find self-tapping screws, but we did find one screw that would work, and put it into the top hole. We added to our Home Depot / Lowe's list for the other screw. With the one replaced, the door feels more solid, and we can finally latch the deadbolt if we want to (in addition to the standard door lock).

Note: the workbook has other sheets with inventory of what we have in the container on the farm in Virginia, and in the shed in Mesa, and what is stored inside of Gracie too! Of course, it is only as useful as the last time we inventoried and is dependent on things making their way back to the same location, but it works better than our brains on their own!

Finally, an "after" picture of the lights in the front of Gracie after it was getting dark - the light strip can be changed to different colors, so right now, it is green, in honor of St Patrick's Day coming up soon!

It felt like we didn't *finish* many projects, but we made progress, and that is a help!