Paint job, leaving Yuma…

I visited Los Algodones several times during the week. And I’d dropped the basement door off at the body shop for repainting, (see last article here: Hanging around Yuma…). When Saturday rolled around, I knew the door was finished and I was excited to see it. So to me it was time to pick up the door. It was not very bright of me to head over the border after having been warned a couple times about traffic on weekends but I was excited to see the basement door all freshly painted. I should have waited until the following Monday. But…on with the story.

As I mentioned last time, while I was there dropping off the basement door, I asked the mechanic to reattach my right front quarter panel and bumper to the frame. I’d pulled them away from their mounts on the car’s frame by parking over a low curb over in Yuma. When I backed up to leave, the bottom edge of the bumper caught the curb and tore my body panels away from their attachments in a couple places. The plastic bumper section mainly. The mounting plasticware was broken so the quarter panel was loose too. Not enough for any pieces to fall off but it was loose enough that I wanted it reattached. Check the picture. Took him around an hour to fix, and cost me $30.

While I was there, wandered around the shop taking pictures of the classic cars in there for paint jobs. There’s another large shop across the street that had 3 RVs in it so they do RV painting and body work too. I’m not sure how people get their RVs over the border though. Maybe they drove down to the other nearby crossing, it’s a 60 mile round trip to/from Yuma but guess that’s what they do? The crossing here in Los Algodones would not be adequate for a big RV like mine. Going either direction. Just not designed for RVs, or trucks for that matter.

And here’s a few pictures of the classic cars getting a paint job here at the shop.

My family use to own a Fairlane when I was a kid. Nice car except it only had 2 doors. We kids hated having to push the seat out of the way to exit the car. Mom didn’t care for it much either as we’d usually knock her around accidentally in our enthusiasm to get out.

And there was this VW at the shop with a previous paint job that the owner wasn’t too happy about how it turned out. They sounded like (from what little I could overhear) they wanted it repainted a different color. And had no problem paying for it again. There were two guys and two women criticizing the color and how they (the women) wouldn’t be able to drive around in it looking like that. Note the eyelashes over the headlights. I thought it looked great myself. A mobile grape. I could have the entire story wrong though as I couldn’t really hear it well. Maybe they just bought it that color and wanted it redone to their liking.

Anyway, picked up my repainted door, got the body work done, and headed downtown Los Algodones for another visit. Walked around for an hour, had a nice pina colada. And at around 2 pm I was ready to return to Yuma so got in the car and drove to where the line had started on the week day I’d last visited. Couldn’t join the line of cars there as it extended for another several blocks. It turned out that the traffic is as I was warned, terrible on the weekends. And on the Saturday I was there it took over 2 hours slowly inching along the road leading to the crossing in a one lane traffic jamb to get back into the US. I’ll not make that mistake again.

After I got back home, I did my best to protect the freshly painted door with cardboard and cushioning material and put it behind the couch. I’d carried it in my RV behind the couch for 2-3 weeks before I did the installation and Kwan the Kat hated it there because it interfered with her access to her favorite corner behind the couch when she is hiding. Which she does whenever the engine is running. And here’s how the repainted door looked when I finally got ’round2it. I’m sorry now that I didn’t get any before pictures of the salvage basement door before painting as the colors were rather bold, but, well, can’t always get everything done right I guess. Looked pretty darn good after painting.

Looks pretty nice when compared to the damaged one it replaced. Pretty close match to the RV paint color too. I’m going to need to get the RV washed and waxed to match the new door.

And here’s how the basement door looked prior to replacing it with the freshly painted salvage door. It was not damaged badly enough to prevent it from opening or closing tightly so that was good. The latches still worked and I was able to harvest the lock assembly and handle from the bent surround to put in the new door. That way I could use the same basement lock key on the new door..

The door is a salvage item and cost me $825 of which $125 was shipping ready to install with the appropriate hinges and the gas strut, including that black grillwork there in the middle that was damaged on mine, another $102 for the paint, and finally, $200 for the paint job. So $1127 for the entire job. I’d gotten $4830 insurance payment but now I know that if I had every door fixed in the US that that might have been short a couple thousand. I know that for a fact because I had a US shop quote just painting the door and they wanted $1000. The other basement doors weren’t in as bad of shape though. Of course I did all the work removing and reinstalling the door so saved some labor costs. I would have come down to Yuma anyway even if I’d not gotten the door painted so the expenses for that are not part of the overall cost.

Here’s a link to my blog article with many pictures of the accident damage: Body Work…

Anyway, with that out of the way, and my teeth cleaning done, I let the RV park owner know that I’m a computer consultant, and she asked me to work on her system. She’s a thief so when I billed her $220 for the equipment and my skill getting it working right (it was a mess when I got there), she only paid $124 – $135 and that was nothing out of pocket on her part, she just let me skip paying for the electric for the month that I was there. She chiseled me out of around $100. I still made a profit of course, but it’s the principle of the thing. I finished the day before my 30 days was up too so that complicated things. Well, $125 wasn’t worth going to court over so I headed north as it was getting pretty darn hot there in Yuma. And I had the neighbor complaining about the noise my A/C was making before I figured out I could quiet it a bit by running on 30 amp shore power instead of 50 amp so it was time to think about getting somewhere cool so I could work on it.

Anyway, had no purpose to the trip other then go north where it was cooler and looking at the map I decided it would be fun to pass through Parker Arizona on my way to Pahrump. Haven’t stayed there in Parker for a few years but had fond memories of the area. It’s only 2 hours to Parker and when I arrived, I decided, hell, I’ll just stay here for a week. Seemed like it would be fun. Needed to find a RV park though.

Parked the RV in the McD’s large parking lot and drove around the area across the river from Parker where I’d stayed before years ago. Turned out that one of the places I’d stayed turned into a one of those parks that instituted tons of new rules (new owners) but didn’t improve the place at all. Looks exactly the same, even down to the one or two cousin eddie type RVs permanently parked but no, my over 10 yo RV couldn’t stay there. Not new enough. Wifi sucked too. The other one I visited and had stayed at before hadn’t improved their Wifi at all over the years. Still in poor condition. Basically unusable for hours per day. Passed on staying there.

I was about to give up and had gotten back to my RV, attached the toad, and started driving when I decided to take a right turn after crossing the bridge into California. I knew where was another RV park up the road…a county park. Right on the river. I thought I’d enjoy a few days there. My online sources had shown it to have 50 amp, Wifi, all the regular stuff. That was all a mistake, who’s mistake I don’t have a clue…it’s actually a dry camp I found out later. But decided to drive there in my RV since it sounded so good. It’s only 6 miles from Parker so not a long trip but on the road saw a big RV park approximately where the county park should be and turned in, thinking it was the one I was looking for. The gate kiosk tells me that no, they’re a membership park and only members could stay there, but the park I’m looking for is up the road a half mile. So I pull into the park to turn around and notice my ‘over temp’ light came on. Drove over to where I could park and rev’ed the engine to help cool it but the gauge kept climbing. Doh! And it was around 80 F that day. Eventually, decided I had to shut down the engine. Did that, waited 30 odd minutes until the temp and dropped back down to 1/4 on the gauge and started up and slowly traveled over the 1/4 mile or so to the county park. Gauge climbed but never exceeded 3/4. Got parked in one of the the outer spaces because I didn’t want to get trapped where it would be hard for a tow truck to reach me. Lots of room for a tow truck to maneuver where I parked.

After checking it out, found that there’s no services at all here. Just your basic dry camping setup. They do have a pit toilet, trash dumpsters, and some nice views of the river. I was surprised at how many people where there though. All but two of the river side spaces were filled.

One thing that was nice about it was the low cost. Only $5/night unless you have a senior park pass. Then it’s only $2.50/night. Not bad, and I have the pass. But like I said, no services.

The picture below shows part of that membership park I was at a few minutes before…Emerald Cove RV Resort. Shows how close the two parks are.

In the picture above, my RV is way over there in the overflow parking at the campground. Where I took the picture is the older part of the park that was built right next to the river. This park is named Crossroads Campground. It’s a BLM campground.

What happened is that after parking I began the repair job that was obviously needed by opening the access hatch to the engine from inside the RV in the bedroom. How that is accomplished for any non RV’ers reading this article is by taking the mattress off the bed stand, removing the 4 screws holding the bed board, and setting them both off to the side. This particular RV is a rear engine diesel. Then the metal hatch over the engine is removed which allows some engine access. Further engine access is obtained by crawling under the RV. Not something I relished since the ground was covered by sharp edged gravel. And there’s a hatch on the back of the RV that when opened and a plastic air dam from over the radiator removed allows a small amount of access to the top of the engine. This is a rear radiator RV so the radiator is in the way and engine access is difficult, though not impossible.

First thing I noticed is that the serpentine belt is missing. That explained why the engine overheated. So I set up my phone to act as a Wifi access point, started up the generator and fired up my tower computer while I researched online. After some considerable research where I got some advice from the various RV forums I frequent, and found some part numbers of things I’d need for the repair, I thought I might have a chance to get the parts locally in Parker since they have several auto parts stores. Also found a shop that can work on RVs and who had a few fairly good reviews. The only other RV shop didn’t have as stellar a reputation. Jumped in my car and drove over to Parker to investigate Vinnie’s shop and liked what I saw and the owner that I talked to. A youngish guy of about 40. So I made an appointment. But I couldn’t get in for a week. Hmm. A bit of a problem but I didn’t have anything else to do being all retired so…

The next two days I ran the generator a couple hours a day and researched on line for things I thought I’d need for the repair. Went into a self imposed low battery usage mode. Also found that the reason the serpentine belt broke was because the A/C compressor idler pulley was frozen. How that happened is probably because I’d accidentally switched it on while traveling when I knew the freon had leaked months earlier. I was switching the dash control to vent and turned the knob too far to A/C. Only ran for a 1/2 second or so before I switched it back to vent but that was enough to damage something, probably. All speculation on my part. While it was in the shop, decided that the serpentine belt tensioner should be replaced along with the water pump belt. These are both ‘maintenance’ items that should be replaced around 90K miles. I checked all the other rotating items and they were all smooth turning. Nothing had been damaged by the broken belt. Which I found later hanging from the frame.

And that’s where I’ll pick it up next time. With trying to work on the engine.

Thanks for reading.