The south end of the beach at Hua Hin, Thailand.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Hua Hin, Thailand.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Maldives on March 23rd.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Fixin' Friday!

(Third blog post of the day! If you missed the previous two, you might want to read them first.)

Yesterday was "fix it" day!

Once again, we didn't get up until almost 8:00am. This is unprecedented for us. We're almost always up between 6:30am and 7:00am. I know, we had a one hour time change that we're maybe still getting used to. And, it was another chilly night.

I got up and put the furnace on, but crawled back into bed for another 15 minutes while things warmed up a little.

Hot chocolate warms the soul, and I think our souls needed warming twice over. So, two cups later we were feeling better, and with the sun now shining in Sherman's front window, it was time to get to work!

Watching the elk out our side window.

I remembered that we had previously had a problem with Sherman's heater fan, but it just took a tap with the palm of my hand to get it working. No such luck this time around. There was no power at the fan itself, and tracing back through the system told me that there was no power at the switch either.

Strange.

Following the wiring back to the fuse block, there was no power at the heater fan fuse. The fuse was good. There was power at the other fuses on the block, so I have no idea why there was no power at that particular one. I did some further tests, and with Ruth's help holding the test lamp, I fashioned a jumper cable from a live terminal to provide power to the heater fan motor. Sure enough, the fan started and the switch worked perfectly.

So, with that problem solved, I moved on to the water pump that supplies the water pressure to the motorhome. These pumps are reasonably inexpensive ($100 or so) and I've torn this one apart once before so I figured it was time for a new one. But a new one can't be had down here in Mexico, so I took it apart again.

Workbench slash kitchen table!

This pump will be 20 years old this year.

Sure enough, there was some corrosion that was stopping things from turning, and a bit of cleaning and lubricant in the right places got things spinning freely again.

So, Sherman is back in working order and it only took a few hours of effort.

With that done, we went out for a walk. It was a been a bit of a funny day. A few snow flakes in the morning, and then a few rain showers. But we had about two hours straight of nice clear skies, so the batteries are all charged up again. We love our solar power!

Ruth, having fun on the obstacle course.

Some of the stuff isn't in very good shape though.

Trying something different!

They don't only have elk here. They have another large enclosure with two Mexican Grey Wolves.

What a great place to be camped up for a couple of nights. Muy tranquilo (very peaceful).

But, it's time to move on. Only about 80 kms (50 miles) today to the city of Durango, but we have no idea where we're going to park up. We'd like to stay for two nights to enable us to explore the downtown core. Durango seems like it's definitely off the tourist radar for most people, and there are no official RV parks in town so that crowd tends to pass it by as well.

As always, we'll figure something out!

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8 comments:

  1. Wow! with skill and patience you fixed it.....reckon not having a panic attack and being systematic works....but then you guys have loads of experience......happy travels....cheers

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am very happy that Kevin is such a mechanical kind of guy, if not we would have been paying out some bucks...err pesos to get these things fixed if they could even figure it out.

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  2. Hm. WD-40 and Vice Grips. Duly noted.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Amazingly with all these things that have been going wrong, Kevin hasn't had to bring out the duct tape yet! ;-)

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  3. Great view of the Elk-can even have that morning cup of coffee as they pass by the window:)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice to get those repairs done. I replaced our water pump a few years ago. And did the same repair on the old one, now we have a spare.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think if we head into Mexico again we will have a spare pump with us because who knows how much longer this one will last.

      Delete

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