Getting Through The Cold Times… 🏂… And Dreaming Of The Warm Ones!

So we still had some events happen as we impatiently waited for winter to transition through spring so we could go back to work. Here are some tales from those times…

The first story is about our new mudflaps. So I continued to happily cruise The Ohana around during the winter time, and I was having a blast doing it! About a little more than a month after I put the new mudflaps on, the “too good to be true” card was slapped down in front of me.

Over the course of the winter we had a small burm build up at the end of our driveway where the grater would come by when it was clearing snow. The burm became a small hump for us that we had to clear each time we backed into our driveway.

One night we arrived home slightly late, and as always I went to back the RV in. I didn’t quite gas it enough to clear the hump, and the RV sloughed back down in front of the burm. This time I gave it a little more gas and as I cleared the burm, I heard a loud pop from underneath the vehicle. As I rolled back a little further I could see a mudflap laying on the burm in front of me. As I inspected the wheel well, I could see I had clean ripped semi-grade thick mudflap right apart! Laura and I sighed unhappily and then decided to head inside for the night, resigned to the fact that we would be dealing with it in the morning. The next morning this is what I found…

😠 Yep, ripped the mudflap apart, tore out some of the mounting screws, pulled a portion of the inside of the wheel well inward, and…

…pulled down and bent the whole fender panel on the driver side. 🤬 The way it had warped the fender when it pulled it down, it was no longer allowing the drivers door to open up most of the way. Now I had to figure out how to remedy this problem. I began by taking my flat pry-bar and working out the panel where it butted up to the drivers door. I slowly worked it out and forward to allow the door enough space to pivot behind the fender as it swung.

After that I removed the fender flare so I could inspect the situation. I found that the fender was pretty close to the tire on the drivers side. I resolved to try and bend things into place and then inspect my clearance afterwards. I was able to get the inside of the wheel well flattened back out, and the fender lifted back up into place where it was supposed to be- but I noticed my wheel well was still too close to the tire. In comparison to the passenger side it was still much lower. This is when I decided I would need to keep an eye on the vehicle to see if it was a natural lean (like I had seen in Serenity) or a suspension issue, and would need to have my front suspension looked at to see if there was something wrong going on. Until I could get it into a shop, I decided to bend the inside, rear, outer edge of the fender up to maintain clearance.

I also decided that in the future if I wanted to have mudflaps that were to hang low enough to prevent rocks kicking up, I was going to have to design them to be further back. So using some L brackets, I set out to mount the new mudflaps into the bottom of the fender flare and truck.

A little while later I had my first mudflap- and I did not like the result at all! I felt it was short and goofy looking. I decided that it would work for the time being, because it was doing what it was supposed to do which was stopping rocks from kicking back. In the summer I would re-design it and take another try when I didn’t have to work in the snow.

The next story is the drive-through incident. Over the course of the winter I had been successfully taking The Ohana through the drive-through at the bank. On this particular day, I swung the RV in to clear the mirrors so I could reach, but forgot to swing the rig back out all the way to clear ladder. 🤦 Here’s what I did…

Snapped the ladder hinges right in half! When it happened I hopped out and inspected the pneumatic tube and it barely had a mark. I checked with the the teller if I needed to do more and they said it was okay. I finished my transaction and went to find somewhere I could park to further inspect the damage.

It had not only broke the ladder in half, but it had bent the upper supports out of the camper and bent up the support plates. Without question I knew my next mission, I would have to get new ladder hinges.

So I spent the next week researching what brand, type, and purchasing options to get new hinges. I had finally done my research and was about to pull the trigger on placing the order when Laura came up with an awesome idea…

“Maybe David & Lyla would sell us their ladder? They said they weren’t going to use the roof…”

Bam! That was a great idea! I had completely forgotten that they had said that! Right away I gave David a call and asked him if I could purchase the ladder. He told me no. 😢

😂 He told me I could just have it! I swore to clean up and seal the openings after I had removed it. The next day I was at his house to retrieve the prize! I wasn’t long before I had the ladder removed.

I had a tube of brown silicone caulking at the house- so I used that to patch up the holes with on the side of the camper and Lexel on the roof. I let the camper sit open like this for a day before I went down to make sure it was covered back up nicely.

A thousand Thank You’s David, you saved me so much trouble!

So I was out to design my new ladder system! I began by removing the old hinges and the broken mounting supports.

David’s ladder matched up perfectly! I got to swapping in the new parts. The ladder fit so nice and tight once it was re-built I decided it was not necessary to bolt the hinge in place, seeing how it had a nice tension fit.

A few stainless screws later and it was good to go!

Now I had all these extra ladder parts left… what to do… it was time to knock another dream idea off our bucket list! Laura and I headed to our local True Value Hardware Store (Ulmers) and walked the aisles for awhile. I knew what I wanted to do, I just had to figure out how to do it… After a little while we had our design! We took 2 sets of 2 U bolts…

…added an all thread nut between each end of them and were able to make 2 “links” to work as a safety for…

…the extra ladder we had created with the extra parts!

That’s right, when Laura and I were at the store we also got feet for the bottom of our new ladder as well as stoppers to keep it from catching water when it was down.

The links are a safety in case it falls. Not pictured here we used a large heavy duty twist tie to pinch the top rung of the new ladder down onto the top of the bottom rung of the original ladder.

Pretty cool-huh? Laura was having a hard time getting up on the first step of the ladder because it was so high off of the ground- so we made this!