With regards to our newly purchased 1972 Holiday Rambler travel trailer, it’s been an interesting ride thus far, and I’m sure there’s more in store. But what can you expect from a 1972 vintage trailer? She’s a beauty to behold, as you can see from the pictures posted in our last blog entry. Ok, so maybe beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 😉 And, as we learned, appearances can be deceiving! On our second viewing of the trailer, we discovered some electrical problems. Basically, the 12-volt circuits powered up fine when plugged in, but didn’t power up at all when running on batteries. Ken, the RV guy, came over before our second viewing, cleaned up the contacts on the solenoid in the circa 1972 converter, and all worked fine. The seller did allow me to look things over pretty thoroughly. I discovered the water heater worked great, after loosing some of my eyelashes and singeing some facial hairs. 🙂 Oops! Oh well. During our inspection, we discovered a number of problems. Most involved plumbing, but the scariest problem was that the brake controller was telling me there was a short in the trailer brake system. Cathy, the seller, called Ken and he said he’d fix it up free of charge for us (since he had looked it over a few weeks ago), but we had to get it to his shop. We agreed with the seller to pay full price for it and took delivery. So we were happy… at first.
With the trailer brakes malfunctioning, we limped over to the shop without issue. I left plenty of space so the truck was able to stop the trailer on its own. Once we got there, we found that the oven door had fallen off… a sheared pin (circa 1972), no big deal. Ken fixed up all the problems we knew about, including the brakes. When we returned to pick up the RV, I asked Ken if we could fill it up with water and pressurize the system to make sure that all leaks were gone. I’m glad I did. At some point in it’s recent history, someone definitely failed to winterize it properly. There were two to three more broken pipes, a broken shower fixture, and a leaky bathroom sink fixture. Thankfully, Ken talked with the seller again and she agreed to pay all repairs. She did sell it to us assuming “everything works,” so we are glad she stood by her word!
We probably could have taken it out to the property, but instead we decided to head back to Edwards. My parents were coming into town, and it just didn’t make sense to get it out there, then have to winterize it for a 3-4 day trip while we visited with my parents. We’ll pick it up on Monday, look it over thoroughly, then take it out to the property until we head back to Atlanta in November.
Also, after much deliberation, I decided to pick up a lightly used Honda EU2000i Generator. Some quick calculations showed a properly sized solar system would have been too expensive right now. I also spent a few hours researching diesel generators. It would have been fun to play with biodiesel, but unfortunately, small, used diesel generators, are extremely rare in this country. And a new quiet diesel generator costs serious bucks! The Honda is incredibly efficient, and should be sufficient enough to charge up our batteries for running our furnace at night. I suppose we shall see!
Finally… We got an e-mail today from Fremont County. We finally have a street address! Since there is no mail delivery in Spruce Basin, we now have to get a post office box and pick our mail up at the Cotopaxi post office. We’ll send out a mass e-mail once we get our new post office box address.