Trailer Repairs

As with all vessels, the HMS Beagle requires maintenance and repair from time to time.  Normal maintenance, like winterizing and repacking bearings, is anticipated and can be planned. However, the real problems arise when things unexpectedly go wrong.  Such as….

 

The Furnace

 

This year, winter in southern Florida has been much cooler than usual, and certainly more so than we experienced last February, necessitating the use of the furnace at night. The furnace worked well when we first arrived but a few days into our stay, on a particularly cold night,  it didn’t respond at all to the thermostat.  The crew was warm enough in their beds,  but it was only about 10 ºC in the Beagle. 

 

Getting access to the Beagle’s furnace is not easy.  It’s in a small space under the kitchen counter and behind a set of drawers, and even Darwin was having a hard time getting under there.  Still, the intrepid Master Chaffers was able to remove the back of the housing and figure out how the furnace is actually installed.  After some elegant sailorly cursing,  he managed to expose the furnace, letting air in and around the burn chamber and thankfully, the furnace began to work again.  This incident occurred after a whole night and day of torrential rains and high winds.  Our theory is that water had got into the igniter and it took a little time to dry out.  As you can see,  Mr. Darwin took an active part in the repairs.  

 

The Awning

 

The Beagle is equipped with a 21 foot electric awning. It rolls out and in at the flip of a switch.  Not quite like a sail, but almost.  Last year we had not properly tied down our awning during a very windy day and suffered a tear in the fabric which was repaired by our RV dealer at home .  This year, with new fabric, we thought we were all set, until one day the awning motor just stopped working.  A call to Sean, the RV repair guy, revealed that our awning motor had been the subject of a recall by the manufacturer due to just such failures.  The good news was that the manufacturer would replace the motor at no cost, saving us $350 US.  A service call was all that we needed and our new awning motor is now in place and working splendidly.  Why our dealer didn’t know about this recall is a mystery to us.

 

The Water Filter

 

Every RV comes with some type of water filter system, which can be particularly important if say, you are camping in or around Flint Michigan.  As bad luck would have it, the Beagle came equipped with a system that is installed by the manufacturer (Forest River), and is exclusive to that manufacturer.  It cannot be replaced except by purchase on a website that doesn’t actually allow you to purchase anything (you’d think Warren Buffet could afford to hire someone who knows how to construct a decent online product purchase website).   There are basically two parts to this crappy system, a housing and a filter cartridge.  Many Forest River owners have commented unfavourably about the filter as the replacements are much more expensive than other similar or better products and the claims of its effectiveness are greatly exaggerated.  We just found that they are impossible to obtain on the useless website.  However, our real problem occurred when the filter housing itself failed.  The bottom of the thick plastic housing just broke away and the sweet sounds of a waterfall filled the trailer.  Here is the broken part.

 

This is a serious problem for the Beagle, as this internal contraption is an integral part of the water system.  When there is a hole in the filter housing, no water can be used and it  must be shut off until a repair can be made.   Because, trying yet again, we could not purchase the same system on the useless website, we decided to remove it altogether and go to a different system.  This meant an expedition or two to the RV parts supplier about 20 miles away to purchase the bits and bobs needed to bypass the old filter and remove the housing.  As usual, and again with much colourful language, Master Chaffers was able to completely reconfigure the plumbing, picture to your left, so an internal filter system is not needed. A new and completely different filter system, now ordered from  Sean the RV repair guy, will be mounted outside and will not become a problem in the future.  We hope.