Our Wonderful Followers who come back again and again to read about us...

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS - *L* Ladder, Lights and Louverectomy~


I am going to start off the new year with posting some of our motorhome modifications, a few at a time. I will post repairs, modifications, or neato things we have found for RVing.  I have lots of pics in my files so I will do them in alphabetical order.

Underneath that stuff, I will post my regular daily stuff..... kinda sorta fun, eh?

So here it goes, we are up to the letter L now!

MOTORHOME MODIFICATIONS 
STARTING WITH THE LETTER L


Ladder (telescoping):
Steveio said he just HAD to have one.... so I bought this for him about ten years back for Christmas. He had NO idea it was coming and was pretty surprised. Our friends, Rich and Mary, had a collapsible ladder for their motorhome  and Steveio was drooling over it.

the ladder

 
It reaches all the way up to the motorhome roof, as our rig does not have a built-in ladder on the back. I think it is 12 feet tall.  Just perfect for the motorhome and stows away in a small space next to his tool drawers.


Ladder helpers:
These are foam blocks that are made to haul a canoe on the roof of a car or truck.  But Steveio figured out that they would clamp on the sides of the ladder. Here they are on our regular household aluminum ladder.



Here they are while using Steve's telescoping ladder. Not only do they protect the painted edge of the roof or the awning (like in this photo)  ..the foam surface also grips to prevent the ladder from sliding or slipping sideways!


Light Replacements:
Our rig had two of the most useless "map lights" on each side of the cockpit area. The lights were very dim, and didn't shine down, they showed out instead. arggh!

Steve took care of that right away.  It was my idea to paint a used CD disk with black paint for a backing fixture base for the new lights.  I am happy to say they work wonderfully now.

map lights replacements

We also replaced some of the 12 volt lights with LED bulbs. I am not nuts on the blueish green light they emit, but Steve seems to like them. We use them when the power is going down and we are not getting much sun on the solar panels till the next day.

led light replacement1
LED bulbs use a lot less power than anything else.  We will soon upgrade all of our lights to LED’s now that price is coming down on them.


Little speakers for MP3 player:
I know I am a bit of "old school" with a tiny MP3 player.  But this little device runs forever on a AAA battery.  Even old batteries from other things like remotes or flashlight that are seemingly used up will still play for hours yet on this little MP3 player.  The speakers let me play it without using power on the rig, or wearing down my cell phone to play music from my own files on the phone.  It is pretty basic and I load up the songs by plugging in the USB end of the device into my laptop and copy them over. Easy peasy.
mp3

The speakers we ran across on a clearance one time at Walmart years ago.  They do not need any power source of any kind, they just run off whatever device you plug them into.  They deliver such a clear good sound, better than any other speakers we have tried.
little speakers for music


We like this little set up so much, I bought two more of the little MP3 players and two more sets of speakers I found on Ebay.  I have one set in our house and one out on front porch to enjoy tunes and not need to be plugged in. I can take it outside and set on the table, or bring into the bedroom and set on the bedside table.  Of course I can use it with headphones too.

P.S. for me it's all Celtic, New Age and soft 70's like Jim Croce, John Denver, Carly Simon and Neil Young.  Then for fun it's Supertramp, Fleetwood Mac, Simon and Garfunkel and America.  For Steve he has a full set of The Sounds of the Seventies that we crank out when he is feeling frisky!  LOL


Louverectomy:
This is a common modification among the Safari owners of this vintage.  It really helps to increase the air flow around the engine compartment. I just love the phrase that fellow Safari owners coined to describe the process!
louverectomny

That is it for the letter L .... tomorrow we will start out with the letter M---- and an early Happy Birthday to our youngest daughter Heather who turns 32 tomorrow!



~~~~~~~~~

Steve didn't have to drive the Old Fart Party Bus today... so he set to working on the inside of the attic fan installation.  See yesterday's post for the resaon and the outside portion. 

He started out in the upstairs hallway with a ladder and went up into the crawl space (scattering insulation all over the floor!)  I handed tools up and down while he did the technical stuff. 


The fan installed easily and he had quick access to a power supply to plug into. He tacked up the cord with little clips to be sure it never falls down into the insulation.

While he was up there, he didn't find any family treasures (sorry Paula, Laura and Debbi)  But he did find a piece of newpaper from 1978 with an ad for Joann Fabrics in the Milwaukee Sentinel!


Our oldest daughter Erin and husband Waylen had a little lunch date today, and brought their oldest daughter along with them to Waylen's place of work.  She got to learn about air craft maintenance! haha  Wonder if she will grow up to be a pilot? Or a mechanic?


The reason she was along for the day, was because it was time for her annual checkup. I will post this totally embarrassing pic of her, so 20 years from now she can holler at me! 

I love the look on her face,
 and I can just hear her admonishing her mother 
for taking the pic in the doctor's office....


"MOTHER ---- HOW COULD YOU????" 


No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking the time to comment on my blog! I moderate all comments so it may take a little while for your comment to appear.