On Monday, 03Nov, my appointment at Red Bay for warranty repairs began. I was assigned to Bay 13 with Sammy and Bryan, and I had to be there at 7:00am. When they raised the door, I was there with my list of about 25 items, some fairly big, some just nuisances, and a few upgrades. It turned out that Sammy and Bryan were the same technicians that our friends, Connie and Manuel Esparza had been assigned to about 4 weeks earlier. They did a real good job for me.
They got most of my warranty items completed, but on two items, the parts were not in stock. Those parts are set up to be shipped to me to either do myself or get done at Tiffin's expense at a local shop. While there, I also had some upgrades done.
First of all, Patsy was not satisfied with her stove vent because the air was filtered and then discharged into the interior of the motorhome. We had Sammy and Bryan put an outside vent on the Bus, and it turned out to be a very nice installation. Sammy is a very good technician and craftsman, and he won't do sloppy work. Here are close-up shots of the outside vent unpainted, then painted, and then a side shot of the Bus with the vent position........ right above Mark's head at the top:
Another upgrade was the addition of better venting of the DVD cabinet. Sammy added the same vent on the bottom of the cabinet as Tiffin is installing on the '09 models:
I had read a lot of good stuff about Verizon Wireless, and have been monitoring a couple of people who have been testing it. Early in our trip, we met up with Mark and Sue Didelot at Tom Sawyer's Campground in West Memphis, AR, and he had already subscribed to Verizon. He had also bought a wireless router and had set up his RV to have wireless internet. With Mark's help, I ordered the same equipment, and had it shipped to the campground that we were headed to in Washington DC. When we arrived, the package was waiting, and I immediately called Mark, and he walked me through the setup to get WIFI set up in my Bus. It has been really nice. Now that I am home, I still need to finish up the installation by putting the router in a side compartment. For now, it has been laying on the dash!!
Mark had also purchased a cellular antenna for his new motorhome and had it installed during manufacturing. The antenna should boost the cell reception in some of the remote areas that we tend to find ourselves in. When I got to Red Bay, they had the same antenna in the camp store, and I bought one for the Bus. During a slow time, Sammy installed it on the roof of the Bus. Here's the result (antenna on the roof and cable coming into the DVD cabinet):
I didn't take many photos of the warranty work, but I did get a shot of the Bus back up in the air to get a fuel tank fitting leak repaired. It only took about 10 minutes, but it is impressive to me to see the 16 tons of Bus up in the air:
By Thursday morning, all of the work had been completed, except the above tightening of the fuel leak, which was scheduled for early Friday morning. So, I drove over to Sherman to check out how Mark and Sue Didelot were doing on picking up their brand new Phaeton motorhome. Mark and Sue had previously had a 5th wheel trailer, and managed to sell it the week before coming to Sherman. Since they are fulltiming, they had to unload everything in the trailer into a U-Haul truck and drive it to pick up the motorhome. When I got there, they weren't hard to find:
I had a good time visiting with Mark and Sue and watching their excitement looking over their new motorhome. I also had a nice visit with Karen, the saleslady that sold both Mark and us our rigs and and Benny, the Service Manager at Sherman RV. To see more of Mark and Sue's new rig, see their blog at:Thursday night we met a cousin of Marks at a local catfish restaurant (all you can eat!!!), and had a nice night out. I then returned to Red Bay.
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