It's always somethin'!

We planned to continue east on Sunday and to stay at another Harvest Host Sunday evening, but in the morning before we left the vineyards, Carl realized that the batteries were not getting charged by the generator. This was a concern as we need to have battery power to get converted by the inverter to run the refrigerator as well as the other 110V electric devices on the rig. He opened the battery bay to disconnect the inverter/charger from the batteries momentarily -- sometimes this type of reset will correct problems that are occurring between the inverter and the batteries, but this time, it did not seem to help. While there, he noticed that there was some oxidation that had occurred on the connectors of the fuse link -- over time with rough roads, the nut holding the connection had loosened some and allowed vibration, arcing, and the oxidation. He cleaned it up some and tightened the nut, but none of that seemed to allow the batteries to charge from the generator.

You may be able to see some darkening at the nut on the right side...

... the cover showed that it had experienced heat (melted plastic)...

... so Carl tightened down the nut, but there were still issues.

We headed out from the vineyard on our way to Johnson City, Tennessee, where we hoped to connect with our friend, Kim's mother-in-law, Lisa. We were planning to stay at a Harvest Host in Johnson City, but with the batteries not charging by the generator, and clouds minimizing our solar charging, we decided we had better look for a campground for Sunday night.

We contacted the Harvest Host and let them know that we weren't going to be able to stay with them that evening. We met up with Lisa at a Sam's Club and she took us to Cheddar's where we shared a delicious meal with good company -- Lisa and her mother -- such good company that we totally forgot to take a picture!

We continued north, planning to get to a campground in Virginia where we've stayed before...

... "Welcome to Virginia" and "Virginia is for Lovers"

I called the campground and they had availability -- the office would be closing at 4pm, but they told me that we could pay in the morning.

We were a little concerned because of the distance to the campground and the fact that we would be crowding sunset in our arrival. We made it to the campground just before sunset, got into a site quickly, were greeted by the campground host (he ensured that we knew that the office was closed and that we'd need to pay the next morning), and got the electricity hooked up. We had a little bit of problem with the electric hookup and finally totally removed the positive cable from the fuse link and that allowed us to get it to work.

Everything worked fine at the campground, we were able to provide power to the refrigerator and other 110V appliances. We weren't charging the batteries, but figured sun on Monday would charge them as we drove.

On Monday, we drove on to my brother and sister-in-law's farm in Virginia, arriving about noon. We again had a problem getting power when we plugged in, so Jimmy helped in cleaning up the fuse link to allow it to work...

... you may be able to see that the plastic that the fuse link connects down onto is melted -- when Carl tightened the nut on Sunday morning, he didn't realize it was hot enough that the plastic was melted.

It turns out that the plastic base had also cracked. It just seems a poor design that all of these plastic parts are there that negatively impact the ability to effectively tighten the nut down.

Jimmy provided an air-powered metal sander and suggested a re-design that had nuts on both sides of the connector -- so Carl implemented that on Monday afternoon and we were able to get the shore power to successfully come into the rig.

We also found a replacement fuse link component that we've ordered.

As Carl often says, "It's always somethin'!"

And as some of the readers of our blog have commented, "It seems like you are *always* having to fix something!"

And, my response is: I am SO thankful that my husband is able to (1) notice that there is a problem (the batteries weren't getting charge by the generator) before we're in a critical situation, (2) he is able to figure out what the probable cause is to the problem, and (3) we have alternatives (we didn't *have* to stay at the Harvest Host and boondock when that would have caused us issues - we could find a campground and have electrical hook-ups that got us past that particular issue!).