Fun Comes to a Halt

Friday July 25, 2014
Red Trail RV Park
Medora, North Dakota

 

You will be amazed to see there are almost no pictures in this post.  Don’t be shocked.  That’s because not a bit of this is picture worthy.  So instead of too many pictures, now you get too many words.  

For those of you considering full timing, read carefully. It is not all great hikes, kayaks and terrific campgrounds.   Sometimes you’ve got big problems and you are out in the middle of nowhere.

 

 

WEDNESDAY

As you may have noticed, the last post was all about a great day at Painted Canyon on Tuesday the 22rd. That’s a link to it and it is much more fun to read than this one.

Now it is Friday the 25th..  And that is not because we were so busy having fun on Wednesday and Thursday.  It is because Tuesday was the last day we’ve been able to do any of the great things to do here in this fantastic place.  

Why you ask?

On Tuesday night we noticed that our fridge was not staying cold.   It was in the 40’s in the refrigerator part.  We turned the temperature up to the highest setting thinking it was the less efficient propane causing the problem and we’d just tell it to work harder.

We don’t run our refrig on our inverter because it takes too much power.  When boondocking we run it and the hot water heater on LP.  We do run the microwave and toaster for their short periods of time on AC with the inverter and of course all the outlets for the laptops and charging and all the lights.   So far the solar seems to be working well.   WHEW!!

 

 

We wake up the next morning, Wednesday, and things are worse.

 

Moving the temperature control up didn’t help.  So we go into research mode.  I google the problem and find all sorts of advice. 

David calls Winnebago. The tech advises that we call Norcold.  We do and find that Norcold only has customer service, they have no service technicians to answer questions.  

So I email my friend Annie, a veteran boondocker who says clean the flue, check the flame.  We do.  The flue turns out to be not that dirty but David cleans it anyway and  checks the flame which looks lazy by comparison with some photos I found on the web.  

More research.

I find on line that the burner orifice might need cleaning. But taking that off to clean it looks like it requires further investigation.  You are dealing with propane here.

As all this is happening we are monitoring the temperature of the fridge and recording it every 45 minutes. Remember David was a statistician in a former life and has ‘records’ of everything.  In spreadsheets of course.

We turn on the generator to make sure it is only the LP that is a problem.  The generator takes the temperature down into the lower 40’s.  Still not low enough but we know that it takes these RV refrigs a long time to cool down once they get heated up.  We can’t leave the generator on that long.

We decide we just need to find an RV service center, so another call to Norcold.  Knowing we have a Class A rig, they give us two names of places 45 miles away.  We call them both.   Each of them says yes they work on Norcolds but not on Class A’s.  Only trailers and 5th wheels. 

 

What?   An RV refrigerator is an RV refrigerator whatever type rig it is in. 

 

They are the same refrigerators.    I’m pretty disgusted about this.  

One of the RV places gives us the names of two mobile techs and says he thinks one of them is certified by Norcold.

 

 

David calls the two service techs. They will have to come from the closest town, Dickinson, also 45 miles away. (Aside:  This is also the only place to get groceries. So come here with a full pantry and fridge.)

The first tech charges $100 for the service call, 80 cents a mile for 90 miles round trip and $85 an hour for the time he is here. And if we need a part he doesn’t have that would be another trip. On a 10 year old motor home no one has the parts you need. They always have to be ordered.

Second guy is at least willing to discuss the details of the problem and make some suggestions. He doesn’t charge a service call but he does charge $2.00 a mile for 90 miles and $100 an hour for his time once he gets here. They both end up being $172-$180  just to get them out here to look at it.  That seems like a lot of money to not guarantee that it would be fixed

As things do this takes the entire day so our plans for doing the rest of the drive and hikes falls by the wayside and we still have no solution.

 

 

THURSDAY

 

Overnight there is a tremendous rainstorm.  We wake up on Thursday morning to find a little bit of water on the dashboard and a drop hanging from the trim pieces above the windshield.  Oh great, another problem.  

So before going back to the refrigerator problem, David  goes up on the roof to look for cracks that need to be sealed. None.  He inspects Winnona’s outside front cap to the roof seam and finds it all well sealed too.  He does find that the black trim across the top of the windshield was not sealed and had never been sealed. So a call to Winnebago to find out if that is the way it is intended to be. Should we follow recommendations found on the web to seal that? 

 

 

Have you been counting up the number of phone calls?

Winnebago says no do not seal that. Water might get behind there but there is no way for that water to get into the coach.  It would drain down the center or off the side outside. However if there is rust then that strip should be removed, the rust removed and the metal primed and repainted to stop the rust before reattaching the strip. There is rust.  So that definitely needs to be done.  But that’s for after the refrigerator.  SIGH……

I find on line another useful tip that the five overhead clearance lights might be the source of the leak.  Since they are above the windshield the water could be running down from there.

Back on the ladder, David takes one off and finds that the gaskets are dried and cracked.  Possible solution to this problem, order 5 new gaskets, take out all the lights, clean them thoroughly of any rust, put the gaskets in and reseal them.  

 

He calls Lichtsinn Motors and orders 5 new gaskets and puts white duct tape over the lights until the gaskets come.   Problem solved for now we think.  But we have no water to run a rain test.

Back to the refrigerator. In spite of having run all night on LP, the temperature is at 50 degrees this morning although the freezer still has ice in the ice tray so there is some cooling going on but not enough to do the refrigerator too.

 

 

More research. THANK GOODNESS we have internet and phone service here!

 

In National Parks this is definitely not a given.   I find someone on an RV forum who advises to tap on the cooling tube to dislodge any clog.  Perhaps things aren’t circulating.  David does and puts a fan blowing into the back of the refrig through the access panel on the side of the coach. The idea being that if the heat isn’t being cleared then the fridge won't cool properly. Neither of these improves the fridge temperature.

More research which turns up this plan.  David takes the circuit board cover off and checks the fuses and thinks he will disconnect the thermistor.  Perhaps it is cutting off too soon.  After studying the manual’s wiring schematic and checking outside, he finds he cannot do this from the outside back of the fridge because the thermistor has in a wiring harness that connects a lot of other things.   So unplugging it would remove power from the front circuit board and he couldn’t see what the unit is doing. 

Scratch that.

He looks inside the refrigerator and discovers that both the thermistor and the light have a wiring clip that can be unplugged from inside. Therefore if the thermistor is faulty it will stop shutting off cooling prematurely. Maybe that’s the problem. 

No luck.  After several hours, no effect.

 

So now what?

It does better with the generator and terribly on LP so we need to know what it does when directly connected to AC.

Therefore we are going to have to leave our wonderful campsite and move to a commercial campground where we can hook up to electric and see what the fridge does so we know what we are up against.  If we can’t get the temperature down with electric then we may be seeing visions of $1500 for a new refrigerator.

We cannot boondock, solar or not if the refrigerator won’t run on LP.

I check RV Park Reviews for local campgrounds.  It is 3:00 on a Thursday during the height of tourist season.  Oh dear!

There are 4 campgrounds.  One is a state park with only boondocking.  NIX.  One is a Guest Ranch and 6 miles away.  Of the two in Medora, one has better ratings.  I try calling them.  Busy. 

I try for a half hour, busy busy busy.   This is making me nervous so I get in the car and drive over there.  Its location is pretty nearly just across the street from the park. Perfect IF they have a space.

 

Time to get lucky.

But the park entrance is 6 miles from the campground and they are working on the road so it takes me a total of an hour to go over and happily arrange a site there for two nights.  I am lucky to get it. 

AND more lucky that they give a Good Sam discount and MOST lucky that the owners are RV Technicians.   They say they will come over and take a look at the problem when we get there.

Things MAY be looking up.  That’s a lot of luck here at the end of the day.

I return to Winnona, we go into pack up and leave in 30 minutes mode.

Our great site is paid for through Friday so we put our bikes chained to the picnic table, leave a chair and the table cloth and pads out to make sure we can keep the site and head over to Red Trail RV Park.

Will the technicians have even more ideas about what could be the problem? 
Will they be able to fix it? 
Will it need parts? 
Will they have those parts? 
Can they get those parts? 
Stay tuned for the continuing saga of sh*t happens on the road.