Fixes and mis-steps

Saturday, March 18, 2016

Today was not a trip, but some much needed fixes and upgrades. 

Both the sliding bathroom door and our closet doors were not in the optimal locations. 

The bath door, when closed, left a large gap between the door and the wall. Almost an inch! Which meant, when I'm in bed and someone used the restroom, I got light from the bathroom in my eyes, and they had a lot less privacy! So Tony moved the sliding door track inward toward the bathroom. The gap is very small now. :)

Our closet doors have been a challenge since we got the rig. We use metal hangers, most of them recycled from the dry cleaners. Why? Well, they hold up well over time, and hold our "larger" sized clothes well. 

The problem is that our hangers are big. 17" or so wide. And in this closet, at the point the hangers hang at their widest point, the tips hit the back of the closet, as well as the front door of the closet! So unless you can tilt the hangers to the side as you close the door, there's no easy way to slide the closet door closed. 

Well, some folks have had issues with the hangers hitting the door in other HL products, and the solution was to move the rod back inside the closet an inch or so. Since our hangers already hit at the back, that was not an option. We determined there was room to move the closet door tracks forward nearly an inch, so Tony worked on this project as well. 

We had to relocate the locking mechanisms that hold the doors closed during travel, but that fine, at least now we can easily open/close the sliding doors! 

Metal tracks of the closet doors moved (to the left) nearly an inch, giving more room for hangers to hang inside.

Locking mechanism moved over

Tony also hooked up our tire pressure monitoring system's repeater antenna today. We had it on the Mammoth, we took it out before we traded. We tried the monitor without the repeater, but it doesn't seem to be reading accurately, so we knew we needed to wire the repeater in again. He wired it into the front compartment, tapping into wiring of  a light controlled by a switch. Now we can turn the repeater off when not in use. 

We then took some things out of the basement to put in storage, and then we tackled our new steps.

We got a new set of coach steps from Torklift International. I've been wanting these for a while! The steps are much lighter than the original steps, and are made from aircraft grade aluminum. They actually "scissor" to fold up, and have feet that reach the ground to make them more secure and less bouncy. Because they scissor, they are much more adjustable to the terrain of your location -- you can make them taller or shorter as needed. They fold very easily, as well. They also have an additional long grab handle that can be added.  

Anyway, upon ordering, I gave them dimensions they requested, and along with the steps we received some shims as well. Tony and I removed our current steps (6 bolts), then went to install the base unit. The new unit was easy to hold up to install because it was lighter, but we found the shims were not enough to fill the gap between the base unit and the framed opening for the steps. The bolts were not long enough, either. So, unfortunately, we had to reinstall the original steps and I'll call Torklift on Monday. I'm sure they will be wonderful once we get them installed! 

After that, it was just time to stop for dinner. We have more projects to do... But they will have to wait for another day. Always something!