So as I hinted at before: we came home from our week trip to a few new surprises.
Our Sandhill Crane couple had two colts this year! Ain’t the ridiculously cute!?
Meanwhile, our talk with the fine gentlemen at Midnight Sun Solar had gotten me to thinking about how we can overhaul our system. Even though we had a charge converter in The Ohana, which was an upgrade in comparison to Serenity, technology had gotten a lot better in the last 23 years…
It was time to get a smart charger that would multistage charge, as well as go through and organize the “rat’s nest” of wiring under our bench- so we could fully understand our electrical system. After lots of research, comparisons, calls, and emails I decided on this Progressive Dynamics model: The PD4045KV. We also ended up finding a really good deal on it through a business called Pleasure Land RV Surplus store. They had a scratch and dent model that didn’t scare us- so some really good savings came with an open mind! 😉
Anyway- we had it shipped up, and the bench evaluation and overhaul is now on our July project list.
While we were out on our travels- something super exciting arrived: The Road Atlas that Laura had ordered through our local book store!
With it finally being June an epic event was occurring, we could officially start planning the details of our trip around the country!!!
Let me tell you, the smile under this mask is big! I have been wanting to start planning where we would be traveling for quite some time now, but Geoff had the good sense to reign me in, and say that planning could start a year before out trip- so here we are about a year before we leave and Let the Planning Begin!
With the map laid out, my heart starting going all aflutter with excitement! Oh the possibilities! First things first, we connected with a bunch of friends from around the States, and made plans to meet up while we would be in their neck of the woods
You see those yellow dots? Those are the places that our friends and family are at, so we will make a point to zig zag around and make memories with those who make us smile! – Laura
Much, much, more on that to come- but we have definitely started working on the details. 😁
Also, along with our new crane family- there were now baby moose abound! We had two different mother’s with calves running around our home as we worked. 😊
We decided it was time to start checking out one of our new investments: our solar generator! I began by opening up one of the solar panels that came with it. Immediately I was impressed by the build of the suitcase style panel, as well as the nice neoprene case that it came in.
The generator we bought is made by a company called LionEnergy. We had not planned on starting this project until next summer, but the deal at Costco was just too sweet to pass up. Needless to say, we plunged a year early! 😅
We pulled the unit from it’s packaging, plugged it in to top it off, and read through the manual.
Back when we had bought the Ohana- I already had a dream of a battery bank style “generator” for Serenity. I had planned to install it by the water tank under the galley style seating in the back.
When we were repairing The Ohana during that first fall with her, I had re-built this compartment as well. When I explored this space, I knew exactly what I wanted it for: our future battery generator. So since then, for the last year and a half the space has remained empty: until now.
The generator fit perfectly, with extra room for cables and accessories in the future! We started testing the unit by plugging our shore power into it, and running everything at once. We turned on water heater, heater, water pump, lighting, fan, refrigerator, and even brought out a vacuum cleaner and ran it. It did just fine, constantly evaluating and adjusting it’s numbers as we added and subtracted things.
And that was test one: So far. so good!
We tested the solar portion of it over the next few days. The kit had come with 3 solar panels, and we were hoping we could get away with only packing and using 2 for what we needed. The first day it was overcast, and we were able to charge the unit utilizing 2 panels.
The second day it was bright and sunny, and 1 panel easily did the job! Perfect!
Just so you all can see this; here is the Crane Family less than a week later; Look at how much the Colts have already grown!!! 😲
The next thing I was tackling on our list was the broken dipstick situation. I pulled the dipstick tube and attempted to find the broken off piece had made it’s way down into the oil pan. ☹️ I called Robert @ Sunny Services and as usual he was awesome with his advice. He lent me a large magnet to put on the oil pan by the drain hole. During my next oil change at the end of summer I would warm up the engine so the dipstick piece would move down and catch the magnet (if it wasn’t already stuck there) and I could extract it out the drain hole when I did the change. I should be okay until then- so all I needed to do was get a new dipstick. I immediately got online and ordered one for a my 3.4 Liter engine.
When it arrived we happily popped the new one in…
… and found out it was still to short for my situation. 😖 I was going to have to go with a universal dipstick kit.
In the other half of our lives- a big thing happened: we had our family all in one place! My Mother was up visiting Alaska for the first time in 17 years! We got together with her and our daughters Lia & Kera for the very first time ever at our home. It was super fun to give her a tour of our world as well as our Ohana! Here is a picture of all of us: ❤️
During our last travel, we had another epic item arrive in the mail: Our Awning! With that- it was time to figure out how we were going to fasten this awning to the racking on The Ohana. We decided we would like build our own brackets- so we went and asked the huge hearted Mike Devaney if we could utilize a little of his scrap pieces and his shop for an hour or so. Here is some pictures of use cutting and smoothing out the metal pieces for our brackets:
Once we had our bracket pieces made, it was time to buy the stainless bolts we needed, and begin piecing, drilling, and fitting all of the pieces in place. Within the next few days, we were hanging our new awning!
Man did it turn out sweet!
We had just put the awning on Serenity and only gotten to use it once before we sold her…
…So we were really excited to finally be to this point on The Ohana!
This time we decided to go with the upgraded version of the ARB awning we had gotten before.
This one came in an aluminum casing to protect it.
As well as having a built in LED light strip! With The Ohana being so much taller than Serenity- we barely managed to open and put away the awning utilizing an ammo crate I had as a step stool. But the camper door was able to open and close beneath it- which was super important for our future plans.
Though the ammo crate worked- we voted to find a lightweight step ladder to pack with us to make awning operations super easy!
On a side note: we have been working away at getting our house ready to become a rental- so we can help have income while we are on our big trip. Here is a picture of the faux wood paint job we did over the old white metal trailer panel. We think it turned out pretty good!
With a bit of new weight added on, we decided to celebrate by taking some weight off! If you have been with us from the beginning- you might know the history of this big aluminum brace that sits under the front cab of the camper. Originally the camper sagged so bad that it needed bracing. The previous owner had screwed small plates into the bottom of the camper to the ends of the arms you see reaching upward. When the camper sagged down (due to the bottom being 1 1/4″ water logged plywood) the plates just pushed up into the bottom of the camper.
We (working with Mike Devaney) removed the screws from the bottom of the camper and created this beam and end cap system, so it would support the camper but allow it to sit freely and move as necessary.
Well… here we are a year and a half later. With the camper being properly fixed, and it having dried into it’s proper positioning, we realized the camper wasn’t even sitting on the brace anymore. As you will be able to see from the pics below; it was no longer making contact with the cab except where we had accidentally painted it together with Gaco. This just caused the brace to move a lot, and inhibit our windshield wipers from time to time. Plus it added quite a bit of weight.
So with this moment we removed the brace, and said goodbye to it for the time being while we evaluate the cab in the future.
Duuuude!
Here she is for the first time since we have owned her, brace free!
Then it was time to bend the fenders back to straight where the arms had been, apply gasketing for that area of the door, and of course…
…Lots of Gaco touchup! (Always 😆)
And just a reminder of how bad the seams where before she was all sealed up- check out where the brace had been in the second picture! I’m glad we are finally getting it taken care of. 😤
Now for another tale that had been going on for awhile, and through this whole time.
When we had the exhaust re-done on The Ohana, the mechanic had told us that we needed a new clutch. I had a few times where the clutch was a little hard to shift when she was running hot since, so we decided to schedule a clutch job.
The job ended up being scheduled weeks out, and was going to take all day. We made a plan that when we took it up to Soldotna to have the job done, we would take our pickup and run up to Anchorage and back that day to take care of a few things we needed to do.
After thinking on it, we decided to use the time we had between scheduling and the appointment date to find out if a clutch was really necessary. I called Robert @ Sunny Services again and asked if he knew of anyone that could look at it locally in Homer. (To explain- Robert would be my go to guy if I had my choice, but his shop cannot handle the height of The Ohana) He made a recommendation, which led me to another recommendation; which was the local Toyota guru I had heard about for years yet never met. So I called and scheduled meeting up with him.
At his shop, we looked over the situation. He said that from what he could tell from the outside it looked like a newer clutch, but that didn’t necessarily mean it didn’t need it. Plus it wasn’t acting like it as far as he could tell.
He recommended we drain the transmission, and run the oil through a paint filter to see if there was any signs of brass metal shavings in there. It would be a shame to find it was a transmission issue, have fixed the clutch, and then to have to do the clutch again when the transmission was fixed. Very good point!
So a couple of days later we had the oil to re-fill the transmission and a pump to refill it. We were ready to drain and ascertain.
A few hours later we had seen what we needed to see; which was good news. We found a minuscule amount of particles. We weren’t able to get ahold of the Toyota Guru again, so I called Robert again and asked him if he would be willing to take The Ohana for a test drive.
When he did, I got an ear full of how he was walking into a death trap. He is always giving me a hard time about our rig- telling me I should just buy an new RV and save us the hassle. I cannot oblige… we love this one way too much!
I realized as I watched him drive it away for the test drive I felt extremely awkward… I had never seen it drive away before. The feeling was kind of a cross between an out of place wow and a heart-wrenching feeling for it’s safety. But I knew better… it was in very safe hands.
When he returned, he said he thought it handled fine. In fact… I think The Ohana won him over! He seemed super impressed with how it handled, and he was all chipper and talkative about it afterwards. She does that, ya know… 😉
But anyway- he thought she seemed fine. But he made a good point, we hadn’t had the clutch done. I had checked with Tim and he had never had it done before us. I knew he had bought it back in 2011… so it hadn’t been done in awhile. Robert thought we should have it done if there was any doubt- after all, it would be a shame for something to go wrong with it in the middle of our trip.
It was a good call, we decided we would go through with getting it done. As the date approached, Laura came up with a good idea to drive up and stay in Soldotna the night before. We had to have the rig up there at 8 AM- and it would be way easier to not have to drive a few hours super early in the morning. So we spent the night up there. Here is a pic of Laura happily cooking up a quick and easy dinner the night before.
The next day we dropped her off bright and early. I asked them if they had time or an idea how to get the sway-bar bracket to stay in place as well I would highly appreciate it. I had been trying for over a year now. (You can read about it in old posts)
We were only 45 minutes out of Soldotna when we received a call asking more questions about the clutch, and they asked us to give them a call in the next few hours once had gotten out of the dead zone of the mountain pass.
When I called after the drive, it was all good news! They determined I didn’t need a clutch, and they had fixed the sway bar bracket. This took our expected $1400 mechanical bill for that day to a whopping $64! 😌 Once again- Thank You So Much to C&M Muffler!
We arrived that evening from Anchorage and happily picked up our favorite place to be. We spent another night in Soldotna so we could do a few errands and take it easy the next day and drive home slow. Here are a few pics from the Soldotna Park by the Kenai River. 😀
To end todays stories- here is chalk board painted door from in our house:
Laura decided it was time for the latest quote to finally come down, and for us to start listing what bands and artists we wanted to see on our big journey around the country.
Trust me, this door will be overflowing by the time we leave next year!!! (If not a few times over 😄)
Geoff Murphy 6/29/2021
It’s good you are planning your routs a year in advance. I don’t know if you are planning to visit any national parks but if you are make your reservations for campgrounds in the parks as soon as you can. We found parks like Yellowstone and Moab and arches fill up very fast. Have fun.
That is a good point Arnie, I was wondering about that myself. I guess I am a little nervous to actually pick a date…. but might as well put our pick in the sand!