Yeah, it’s been a long time. I’m having a bit of a problem getting my get-up-and-go going so basically, I’m just staying home and not doing much of anything other than visiting the iRV2.com RV forum and the Winnebago forum, and Facebook, and Nextdoor and Tribel. Vast waste of time. I did make it to the Edgar Allen Poe live show at the Gesa Theater with cocktails served during all four breaks and that was fun. But even with my hearing aids, sadly I couldn’t hear much of what the actors were saying. But I’m familiar with Poe’s works so I was able to follow along.
Some other things going on, 2 years ago here at this RV park there was a small tree next to my LR slide out with stout branches. I wanted the shade and tried to position the RV just right as I backed into the site but then when in position, I stupidly failed to notice that the S end of the LR slide would catch on one of those branches and when I extended it picked up my slide, bent the support extension, and that bent support extension put such strain on the toppers front top seam it tore the slide topper fabric. It’s a ShadePro topper so it’s thick fabric but even it couldn’t handle that extra strain. I’ve been trying to find awning repair while I travel and finally found a sewing shop way out in the boonies that was able to sew in a patch for me. Just $25. Then had a couple guys install it.
And than last week…the warranty replacement heat pump showed up. FedEx truck arrived, dropped it off in the yard, didn’t look too bad in direct sunlight, I signed, than later when the shadow made it easier to see, found a huge dent under the cardboard and plastic wrap.
DRAT!
So now I’m waiting for AirXcel to approve another new heat pump. I may or may not have to claim the damage with FedEx or hopefully, AirXcel will deal with them.
And we’re running out of time. Cold, wet weather is fast approaching. This is Sept. 2nd and in 3 weeks it’s going to get miserable having to work outside getting the heat pump’s factory deficiencies repaired and the unit tested, than installed into it’s basement compartment.
So that’s what’s been going on for the last 2 months. Everything else is hunky dory. Visit with my son and daughter regularly. In fact 2 weeks ago on Friday, there’s a Downtown Old Town festival that happens during the summer. I visited a couple of them. The street where the festival is (live music, food, games, kiosks selling stuff) is also the street where my daughter works at Walla Walla Cheese Company. Their cheeses are extraordinary so I go there quite often to get their Habanero cheddar and now their Walla Walla Sweet onion cheeses. Yum!
So Friday before last during the street festival, I had wandered into the cheese place and daughter asked if I could look at their 7 year old commercial inkjet label printer. It’s a Primera LX2000. It prints beautiful professional quality labels to stick on the packaging of their product. What happened is that one of the sticky backed product labels had peeled up from the carrier and wound itself around the feed roller. A couple people had tried to pry it off but it was way deep into the works and they couldn’t get it out.
New the printers are $3700 + shipping for 35 lbs or so and they’d ordered a new one but it wouldn’t arrive before Tuesday. The alternative for the 100’s of labels they needed by the following Monday would have cost them hundreds of $$ if they’d had them done by a local printer…which they’ve had to do in the past for the same problem which my daughter had been able to carefully clearing herself without taking the machine apart. This time it wasn’t easy to fish the wrapped label out and she’d given up. So my wandering in at just the right time, a skilled technician, was appreciated.
Anyway, had them bring it to me Friday afternoon, Saturday morning was still scratching my head about how to get the damn thing apart to get that label unwound. Despairing of an easy fix, and knowing I needed a service manual, researched their website online, which is devoid of any Service Manuals, and it turns out they have a Chat feature with a notification that there was a live tech available right then! On a Saturday morning too…cool. Opened a chat session and soon had the manual emailed to me. That helped a little but not enough so than started watching the Primera produced video on Youtube they’d also sent a link for. And that did the trick. Such a well done video. Late Saturday afternoon I called the cheese company to come pick it up as it was all fixed.
I’d had to remove the feed assembly, than the roller bar assembly (not an easy task even with instructions, lots of screws and fiddling), unwind the offending label and remove two other small labels stuck in the works, clean things with solvent (it’s an inkjet printer), than close it all up. Daughter started printing the hundreds of labels and it worked like a champ.
Daughter, staff, and owner were all very pleased. I submitted an invoice for the work and they were so happy they paid in cash with $20 extra as a tip and 2 bricks of my favorite cheese, oh, and a free icecream cone. Double yum yum.
That was pretty exciting because I’ve not had to work under pressure like that for a long while. My daughter had already said she couldn’t find the service manual “anywhere on the internet” but I noticed the active Chat feature and that was the key.
Only other thing that’s happened is my damn car’s vent position controller seems to have died again. I just replaced it 2 years ago. The part went for $56 and it was made in China. Lots of knock off copies that don’t last made there, some of them laughable. I did use a reputable supplier but they rarely check stuff like that until they get hundreds of warranty returns. This is likely out of warranty by a long ways but I’ll check that. So I just get cold AC air from the floor vents, nothing from the chest high vents. Not cool enough.
So that’s what’s going on here. Health is maintaining status quo. Oh, and I finally dropped DirecTV. Nothing to watch. I got a year of $35/month service when I tried to quit last year and I wasn’t willing to let them bump it back up to $95/mo. For what!? Nearly everything worth watching for that level service had been dropped. Didn’t even have ESPN any more. Waste of money. So I installed a new powered outdoor antenna and watch my favorites OTA. Here in Milton Freewater I get 74 stations off the air. Most of them aren’t worth watching but I do get ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox from the translators nearby. Some of the affiliates I’m getting are a couple hundred miles away so it’s nice having the translators on the hill south of town. And for other shows, and etc. I can stream.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!
Jim@HiTek
We’ve got 106k miles on our ’04 Journey and so far I haven’t had to pull the heat pump out. One of these days… Planning on 2.5 months in Tucson again this winter, leaving Vancouver WA the day after Christmas and hoping for decent weather.
My 2002 Coleman Mach was 17 years old when it finally started making noises loud enough that they couldn’t be ignored. I did the maintenance I showed in my blog post about it and got another solid 4 years out of it until the damage and stress of running in less than optimum condition caused the outdoor blower motor to fail. Tried to have it repaired, looked for generics, eventually found that since it uses 2 odd speeds during operation that it wasn’t economical to just replace it, especially since the compressors were also stressed when their relays went bad. Plus at the time, the motor was $560. So I bought a new heat pump…which failed less than a year later. Still working on it. Have the 1st warranty unit with a bad #2 compressor and now a 2nd warranty replacement with major shipping damage. Waiting on the 3rd warranty replacement to arrive. Grrr.
I reckon it’s critical to inspect deliveries thoroughly, but especially when signing for them. But FedEx is particularly careless with their entrusted fare. We watched their semis race one another in 2006 on a Wyoming freeway, and then we passed their rolled over wreck in the median miles down the road. Being more aware of them since, we can say they have little aversion to speeding and crazy driving. When I order something and discover the shipper will be FedEx, I cringe, as there is a 50/50 chance something will be amiss with the delivery.
I agree wholeheartedly. If I’d paid more attention to the small tear in the cardboard covering, I would have noticed the major damage underneath. It had rebounded after the damage. And I agree with your assessment of FedEx…50/50 is about right with them. Often seems there’s something wrong with their deliveries.
We’ve never had cable or satellite, but in recent years have subscribed to a streaming service since it was included with Amazon Prime. Our grandkids share their streaming services too. But we’ve done antenna since I was a kid in the early ’50’s on the Clackamas farm. Our development we built in didn’t allow outdoor antennas, and I agree it would look trashy on new houses, so I put the farm’s old big one in our attic. It was so-so. Then came digital. I researched new antennas, and then OPB lent me one to try. It was an improvement, but I also had mapped out geologically the area between us and the Portland Hills towers. That map helped me line up the antenna right at them, fortunately right along the “valley” between Mt. Scott and Mt. Talbert, pure luck. A newer antenna, thanks to OPB techs, and a properly placed booster means we get 40ish digital channels, although if high wind blows the firs just west of us their swaying can cause pixelation; that’s relatively rare. Some Salem channels are weak and some days unwatchable. Though I wired the house when it was built for a rotator, I never got around to hooking one up – it’s still in its box in the attic next to the antenna. It might help bring in the Salem stations, but they’re not worth the effort I guess.
I would like to stream local stations but whenever I investigate the various services that offer Local Stations there’s always a catch, like only allowing 1 or 2 home address changes per year. And since I’m a full time RV’er snow bird guy, it’s annoying so I just don’t bother signing up. Really sad that they have such trouble changing a home address by deleting the old address off a computer screen and entering a new one. All of 30 seconds most likely. Gah!
I’m getting 74 stations here, depending on weather. But most of those just aren’t worth watching.