RVRC LIVE! February 2020

Hey, we're live just like that. Okay, welcome to our live event. My name's Dave Solberg, the managing editor of the RV Repair Club, and welcome. Just got back from a series of shows. The last one I did was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I met a lot of wonderful people out there.

A couple of Gold members, a lot of people that were part of the RV Repair Club, and we had seminars and we had record attendance at the show. First day was kind of ironic. We got out there and they had a little dusting of snow and so on Friday they had a two hour delay, and I just thought it was kinda funny with a small amount of snow out there how everybody panicked. From Iowa here, we usually get something like that in July so it's not a big deal. But anyway, we had record attendance on Saturday and Sunday and had a lot of fun.

A lot of people bought motor homes, so our RVs. Anyway, we've got some questions that have come in. We just did a Gold event here from six to six-30 on water pumps. And we have a water pump out of 2002, Winnebago BRAVE that we're having some issues with that would cycle about every five minutes. So somewhere it was losing pressure on the high side or the pressure side up past the pump, and we didn't know if it was the pump diaphragm itself or some other things.

It's been , it's cold out here, . That's a Norwegian term, . That we decided that instead of putting water in the unit and risk freezing everything up, we pulled the pump out and came in and bench-tested it and it held pressure perfect. So we know somewhere downstream, we have a leak. It could be the outside faucet, shower, could be the toilet.

Some places that you don't normally see water that would leak out someplace, shower, maybe. So we're gonna have to, when the weather gets good, we're gonna have to go in and do a little bit of a chasing the gremlin, we call it. So I see, we do have a few questions here. The first one is from Terry, it says "Hi Dave." Hi Terry. "I have a 2005 Damon Intruder Class A motor home with full body paint.

What would I use to wash it and wax it with?" Washing it you can use, Dawn Dish Soap was one of the best things that I've seen out in the market. It's very environmentally friendly, does a great job on tree sap, bird droppings, and any kind of oil or sticky stuff on there, and easy to work with. As far as waxing or conditioning, I would recommend Meguiar's, Kemlite, and Crane, who is the number one supplier of the fiberglass component on the outside of it, is that's what they recommend. And when you put a full body paint on, Meguiar's is one of the best ones that's out there, so I would recommend that. Another thing you could do is just periodically, this is a product, ProtectAll, and it's their all-surface cleaner, all-surface care, and it polishes, waxes, treats and protects.

It's not a true wax as such, but what I like about it, it does have a UV protection in it. They call it UV blocker protection and it's for paint, fiberglass, clear coat, and so forth. It probably won't give you the shine that you're looking for in a wax that will give you more of the automotive shine of it, but it does protect from UV degradation and fading. That's the big thing the Meguiar's will do as well. So I would recommend either of those.

And they do make this in a bigger one so you don't have to squirt the whole motor home down. Robert... And Vicky Bohannan. Are steering stabilizers worth the investment, and do they really work as advertised? There's a whole variety of steering stabilizers and I guess we need to kinda boil it down into is it a steering stabilizer for a motor home or is it, some people call steering stabilizer for anti-sway and weight distribution of a trailer.

The biggest thing that I recommend, I'm kinda leaning towards this question being for a motor home, and the first thing that you need to do is to have the chassis and the suspension looked at. There's a couple of different products out in the market. I know Roadmaster has some great stuff that's out there, Safety Plus, I've worked with them as well. They are very, very good products, but the very first thing both those companies do is say let's get the unit inside to weigh it, or not inside, but take it somewhere and get it weighed first of all so we know we're not over gross vehicle weight rating, we're not over axle weight rating 'cause that's gonna grossly affect how that unit handles but the weight that you have overall and with the unit itself. They're gonna take a look at the tires to make sure you got the proper tires, proper inflation in those tires.

The next thing you're gonna look at, 'cause if you have tires that are under-inflated or tires that cannot hold the weight or are over the gross axle weight rating, the only thing that is supporting that RV is the sidewalls of those tires from doing this as you're going down the road and you don't have to move the camera, Angie, this is an effect. She grabbed the camera like oh, he's going somewhere. But anyway, so the tires are very, very important. Then you wanna check leaf springs, shock absorbers. All that stuff needs to be up to factory specs before you throw the steering stabilizer on because all you're doing is masking a problem and it won't fix it.

So I would recommend taking a look at those components first, then maybe Safety Plus or Roadmaster all have some really good stabilizers. 'Cause some of that stuff, you're taking a billboard down the road, we call it. So then you start hitting wind and it is nice to have an enhancement for that. Okay, I have one here that says, where is the video? I'm not sure what that means .

Okay, Keith then asked for temporary storage of a class A, about three months. Is it better to store on the leveling jacks or on the tires? I would say on the leveling jacks. They're designed to be able to withstand that weight of that unit for quite some time. I've seen people that put them in six, eight months at a time.

The leveling jack companies all say that you can do that as well. The only thing I would be careful about is that before you then retract them, just make sure you inspect them to see if you've got any grit or something on the piston or the leg itself and then just clean it off per the manufacturer's recommendation. HWH recommends WD40, some others don't, because WD40 will swell the seals of their type, so just check with your leveling jack company. Just make sure those are nice and clean. Some of them just say use a clean rag, just getting grit or anything that might've blown onto that leg, but you can store them with the jacks down.

Don't forget to click on the play button, sideways triangle on the screen above to start the video. So again, somebody was looking for a video and somebody told them how to find the video. I think maybe they're trying to get into the site to participate. Dave B says how do you check the independent master cylinder and brake functionality on a tag axle on a 1997 35 foot Southwind? That is a good question.

I'm not familiar with that Southwind. I know they used, if it's 1997, it's probably on a, if it's gas, it's on a Ford chassis or Workhorse. Workhorse got out of it in 2010 and then I think Workhorse bought Chevy somewhere about '95, '96 timeframe. So if it's a gas chassis, I don't believe, independent master cylinder and brake functionality. So I would imagine, I don't know where they put that independent master cylinder, but if it's, it should be just like any other master cylinder that's out there.

They should be able to have a brake reservoir for that. And the functionality, I guess, is typically gonna be either tested with the unit up off the ground and freewheeling. And sometimes what you can check with that is to go onto a gravel road or a parking lot that has a little bit of sand or something in it and apply the brakes, and you can see if that starts to slide. Now, one of the things that we started carrying with our cool tools product, and I think I have it in here, and this is a good piece to take with you, is... Brake fluid tester.

This is not gonna go well, I'm pretty sure. This is my bag of cool tools when I go to the show and I have a seminar that has all these tools in it and we talk about the fun things you can use to test and detect different stuff. Here it is right here, cool. All right, this is Nico makes this and, oop, I lost the cover to it. It is just a break liquid tester and almost all of your chassis manufacturers, your truck manufacturers recommend changing the brake fluid every five years and I think that's a little soon.

But what they're trying to accomplish is that when you have really high temperature or you're using the brakes a lot in high humidity, you can get condensation in those and when you get moisture in the brake fluid, then it's gonna break that fluid down and it's not going to have the viscosity that it needs. This is just a simple tester that you put into the brake fluid. You hit this and test it and it will give you acceptability of that and how much moisture is in it on a green down to a red scale. In fact, I think we've got a little bit of... I got a bucket of water down here, and as you can see, it's saying that there's too much water in that water.

So if that was brake fluid, you would definitely need to change that at this point. I just have a bucket of water that we used from our water pump seminar. So again, sorry, I don't know exactly where that master cylinder is at, but you should be able to check the level of it. And this I got on Amazon like 19,95 and it's just kinda nice to tell the condition of that brake fluid. Looking at install, woo, just moved this, installing a roof ladder on the back of my travel trailer.

Roof is walkable, is there a RV Repair Club video available to provide guidance on this? Is there a preference to using a roof ladder over an extension ladder or vice versa? We don't have a video on that. One of the challenges that we have when we're looking at video content is trying to be able to shoot something that has a wide reach for the largest audience out there. And when we start looking at putting something, an accessory on like that, it really depends on your specific model, what you have on the back of that unit for support, for a framework.

To put that ladder in, you can't just put anything in the back end of it. And so we've kind of been going more towards stuff that's a little more generic that I can put on anything, the antennas and so forth. Not that we won't do something like that, but what I would recommend is there are, I don't want to know what type of travel trailer you have. The important thing is is what can you mount that into the back that's gonna give you support? Where is the wiring that would be in the back for your backup cameras, tail lights?

There are a lot of places where they will route into a back wall and fish your wiring down inside the actual back wall to get down to taillights and reverse lights and so forth. And so you've gotta be careful about where that is at and what you're fastening it into so you don't short out one of those wires. And again, the weight of that. Now, there are some ladders that I've seen over the years that would mount up on the roof and then down to the bumper if you have a good solid bumper on the back of it. So nothing is on the back wall applying pressure when you're crawling up and down to it.

So I might take a look at some of those, but again, find out where your wiring is at, what kind of support you have in that back wall to hold the weight of that ladder. Guest 9059, I have a Winnebago Via and the stairs shimmy each time I extend the steps or withdraw them. What causes this and how can I fix it? Well, the first thing I would do is lubricate the joints of those stairs. And typically what causes that is those are exposed out in the open.

You can get rain, you can get salt sometimes if you do any kind of cold weather driving in some snow or the conditioning that they throw on them. Angie, I just had a dropout of my deal here and it just, my Windows 7 is logging off. So we're gonna have to get questions via there and I am plugged in which... Oh, it's doing a Windows update. It's gonna probably take .

This is an old computer that sits in my studio here and it gets taken. But anyway, we were talking about, now I lost my train of thought. What are we talking about? Was it condensation? No, it wasn't condensation.

I can't see it on here. Ask Sam if we can get that question read back to us here. She said she didn't hear the last question. Okay, well, she can look back at the questions that are on there and it's the one just after, it's a Winnebago Via. Right, and they were looking at...

That's where we needed to open the lines, tell me, what was your question again? It started off, we have a Winnebago Via and we were wondering if... Why can I not remember that? And I'm at 30% now. Okay.

I might put this in my bucket of water here. So, anyway, while they're looking up that question, one of the things that we were talking about in our water pump deal here is how to make the water pump a little quieter in your RV. A couple of things you can do is, first of all, instead of having the hard plastic lines that go to the pump, go with more of a flexible line that, now it just shut off completely, thank you; that will be a little softer and you won't get the problem. The stairs shimmy Ah! Thank you!

each time I get on the steps. I got, okay. Man, why couldn't I think of that? So you're driving down the road and you're getting rust, you're getting salt, you're getting all kinds of contaminants in those joints. So when that stair comes out, you've got some pivot points that are in there.

You got a motor that's underneath with an arm that is pushing it in and out, and there's gears in that as well. So the first thing I would do is lubricate those stairs, those pivot points. FLUID FILM is a really good product to use. It's a rust inhibitor as well as a lubrication deal, so it'll kinda stop that areas from rusting. The next thing that I would do is make sure that it's not bent.

If you hit something with it, it's gonna be pushing then and rubbing against the frame and the pivot points as well. And if you do all that and it's still doing it, then you have probably have to get in and take the motor cover off and just check those gears and make sure everything in there is running right. But usually it's either lubrication or it's just bent just enough to make it bind. And the next one. Brian asked, just bought a 2007 Newmar Dutch Star.

There's two questions. The first one; a repair shop said that the front wheel oil is dark burned. How important is it to get that changed? And number two, I got on the roof fiberglass to check the seals but don't know exactly how to tell if the self-leveling sealer is in good condition or not. If it is bad, should I do that by himself or go to a shop?

How hard is it to do? Well, the first one, the tire oil? The front wheel oil is dark burned. The front wheel oil. And this was a 2007 Newmar Dutch Star?

Yep. So the front wheel oil is... That doesn't have a front wheel oil, but it would have bearings in that and if the bearings are burnt then you need to take it into a chassis specialist and have those bearings repacked. Most of the bearings, and I don't know about Dutch Star Newmar and the chassis, that's probably, a lot of those chasses are freightliner chasses and most of those bearings are sealed bearings. And so I'm not sure who checked it or who looked at it, but like I said, it's grease that's in there.

It's not oil that are in those front wheels if we're talking the same thing. But I would say probably need to have a chassis specialist take a look at that, and if they are bearings that you can take out and clean and repack, you may be able to do that. If they've gone too far and the bearings are scorched, you have to put new bearings. If it's a sealed bearing system then you have to put the whole cluster in, but in that case, I don't think you would be able to see any grease or oil, whatever they're calling it. So that one's a little puzzling.

The second question then up on the roof is you're gonna have, you got fiberglass on the roof, but you're gonna have sealants all over around the different places. And basically you're looking visually to see if you see any cracks, if you see any pinholes, if you see any deterioration in that, 'cause we're looking for leaks, that's what we're looking for. That material up there is gonna move when you drive down the road, it's gonna expand and contract as you have hot mornings, and cold, or cold mornings and hot afternoons, and it's gonna pull at that sealant and you should be able to see what's happening in there. A telltale sign is if I start to see a leak on the inside, get up on the top, clean it off really good with Dawn dish soap and water and dry it up and then take a look at it and just see do I see any cracks, any really bad pull apart places, something that that could leak inside there. If I do, then probably what you wanna do is just take a heat gun and a plastic putty knife and just scrape off as much as you can there.

If it's not too bad, you can just add some more to it or use EternaBond tape on it. We see a lot of people using that with a lot of success and otherwise you're gonna have, if it's really bad, you just have to take all the old sealant off and put new sealant on. The thing you have to make sure you get is I think Winnebago uses what's called a 321 sealant. You need a sealant or silicone that is designed for fiberglass, not just any silicone that you go down to home repair facility and get. It has to be designed for fiberglass 'cause that's what you're putting in on up there.

And it's gotta be nice and clean and dry before you put it on. No more questions? Okay. Well, let's see what we, we had some questions at the show, we had some people with some older units. Just a couple, I guess maybe I can go through a few of the tools I have here.

I added a couple more this time that we didn't have in the past. One of them is the brake fluid tester. This is one we came across here just recently. It was kind of interesting. This is an air conditioner coil comb, fin comb.

And what it does is your air conditioner has an evaporator coil in the front and the condenser coil in the back. Those are the fins that go vertically as, as you are in the front. So your cold air return brings the air up, the fan's blowing it in, it goes across the first evaporator coils and the coolant that's running through these then flashes and pulls hot air out and moisture. And she said, we have a question but I'm gonna finish this. So those coils have to be nice and straight.

If they get flattened by any means, and especially on the backside, and I don't know that we can see our demo model back here, but on the back of the air conditioner you have the same coil fins that are back there and it's pulling air in to cool down that stuff. And so those can get flattened with hail coming down and hitting the back ends and flattening them out. You back into a site and you hit a branch up in the top, you can flatten those out. So this is just a comb, basically, that lets you go in and push into those coils and just straightened them out, rather than doing one single coil at a time with a butter knife. This will let you do a wide variety of them.

So you want those coils nice and open so air can flow through. Okay, what's our next question? Jerry asked, brand new 2020 Winnebago Micro Mini. Entry door will not stay closed, it randomly pops open, so for now we have to keep it locked while inside. Winnebago said they would send shim kit for dealer to try, then go from there.

Is this a common problem? I wouldn't say it's a common problem. In the micro mini, I believe is the trailer side. They used to have a micro mini on the Class C side of Winnebago, but I think they dropped the motorized one in with that trailer. And so what's happening is you're not getting enough of the bolt of the locking mechanism or the main handle, it's probably a TriMark handle.

So you've got, it just basically goes and clicks into that. So it, somehow, either the frame got not adjusted quite right. For whatever reason that bolt is not getting into the striker plate in the opening far enough. And so when you're going on down the road you're always gonna get some flex. I don't care who makes the RV.

You got a little bit of movement, uneven roads and stuff like that. So your floor chassis is gonna shift a little bit, the sidewall is gonna shift a little bit, and with that, you're gonna get some movement in that frame and the door itself. So when that striker is not in far enough and it starts to move, if it's got a little bit of it just a small little twist and it'll pop out. So what they're probably looking at doing is just taking and shimming the hinges on here to bring that door either over this way a little further or shims to go inside your actual trim place to bring your frame back in. So just somehow you got a little bit out of alignment in there and that's something that, it's not a common problem, but I have seen it and I've seen it in Winnebagos and I've seen it in just about any unit that's out there occasionally.

And it's just a matter of getting it to that exact perfect spot 'cause you can't have it too far and too tight, otherwise you get constant wear in there and then you're gonna have some issues with your weather stripping and sealing, so. Butch asked, I have an internally fogged haze up driver's side window on my '99 Discovery. What's involved in removing the window, and once the window is repaired, what type of sealant is used for the window reinstallation? Okay, so what you've got is a dual pane window and it has broken the seal and it's allowed moist air to get inside there, and the more it does that, the more it fogs, the more it will etch that window on the inside of it. And there are some companies that will go in and recondition that.

So what you need to do is there's a framework on the inside and you'll see a series of screws, and we do have a video taking a side window out of a trailer that's gonna be very similar to that. But what you do is you take the screws out, remove that framework, have somebody outside, make sure they're there holding that window in because it's just sandwiched into your sidewall and your A-frame of the front of it here. So you take that framework off the backside, you can tape it around the, the edges of it too if you don't have another person to help you, that that should keep it. Basically, we're trying to keep it from falling out. And so, then once you get those out of there you should be able to just push that out or pull it out from the outside.

You will have some butyl tape, probably some silicone. Who knows what they put on that at the factory? Typically, they simply put butyl tape which is kind of a putty tape. And so once you get that out, then you can try and take it somewhere and see if they can clean that. They'll pull the glass apart.

There is no air, excuse me, there is no gas in between the dual panes. It's just an air buffer in there. But so they'll take the window apart, clean that glass, etch it, get it clear again, it might be past the repair part and you may have to get a new window to put in there. But then to re-install it, what you need to do is clean the entire surface around there, make sure that there's no butyl tape, silicone, any kind of foreign object on it. You have your either metal framework or your fiberglass.

You put the window back in it, go inside, excuse me, back up before that; butyl tape all the way around the end, so you'll have a flange around. You probably have a point at the top and it comes down, almost like a triangular look at it and then you'll put the butyl tape all the way around the outside edge of that flange, and so it's just gonna squish that butyl tape in there. Then you go inside, put your framework back in, and zip those screws back, tighten the thing up. And then you wanna go back outside and just take a little bit of a razor knife and go, 'cause you'll have some butyl tape that is squished out of that. You shouldn't need any more than that.

Some people put a little bead of silicone as a cap seal around the top, but if you did it properly, you shouldn't need to do any more than that. Fairly easy to do. We did the window, I think probably took us about half an hour. Maybe a little less than that to take it out, clean everything up, put it back in. Okay.

Ryan, from the previous question about the burned oil. Yeah. So he said, he's adding to his question about his Newman Dutch Star Spartan chassis. They said the oil baths in reference to my previous question by Newmar Dutch Star is on a Spartan chassis. The mechanic referred oil baths on the front axle and said the oil look dark burned.

Okay. So then it's on the diesel chassis on a Spartan and I would imagine that the oil that they're talking about for that then probably has something to do with either the air suspension or the air brakes, or I'm not sure exactly what that is. I'm not dug into the front end of the chasses on those Spartans much. Winnebago always used the freightliner stuff, so that's something we can do a little bit checking on, if you wanna post that on my Facebook site or something. We've got the technicians that will get into it, but if it looks burnt, then it needs to be changed.

And I'm sure it has a change interval that was part of the maintenance in it, but most people with chasses don't look into that. So we will do a little bit of research on it and find out, but I would say you probably need to have that changed. Thanks for the clarification on that. One of the things about the RV industry is I'm learning something almost every day. I do these seminars and people ask questions about certain items.

It's like, okay, that's a very good question. I don't know that I have ever run into that and I've been doing this since 1983 when I first started at Winnebago and spent a lot of years out on the road. But there's a lot of things coming in the industry from all over the place, and like I say, I keep learning every day. So another tool then, if we don't have a question, this is something that I recommend. We use it in our electrical series and the cool tools.

This is called Kill A Watt and the nice thing about this thing is I can plug this in and then I can take any appliance I bring into my RV, any accessory, I plug it into this and I know exactly what kind of amp draw I have. If I'm running on a 30 amp service, my roof air conditioner can run anywhere from 10 to 14 amps at full capacity, my refrigerator's gonna run six to nine amps. Oops, the thing's trying to try to start here. Don't remind me again, that's what I want for that one. That's not gonna work.

So anyway, I wanna make sure that I have, I understand my load management. I have a 30 amp service, so if I've got 14 out of the roof air, I got six to nine out of the refrigerator, when the converter kicks in to charge the batteries 'cause I'm using the lights and stuff inside, that's gonna run about nine. So with that, I could be really close to 30 amps. So what happens if I bring a toaster in? What happens if I bring a coffee pot?

Any of the extra appliances or accessories that I bring in that I'm gonna plug into 120, I wanna know what that draws. Ceramic heaters are big. They're gonna draw a high amp draw in that, but I won't be using the air conditioner typically if I do need the heater. But anyway, just a nice piece to have so as you bring stuff in. I got this one at a home improvement store in the electrical section, about 19,95.

Nice unit to have. So you got another question came up? John asks is there any history or knowledge of how well a smart phase selector works when installed with a battery solar system? Smart phase what now? Smart phase selector.

Smart phase selector. That I am not aware of. I'm not sure what exactly that is, I'll have to do a little bit of research. I just pulled it up. It says smart phase selector, hold on, let me try again.

So obviously something my computer doesn't have. It's designed to control power flows between a 50A main panel and a single input inverter with AC pass through power assistant, a shore power connection, and a generator that allows both sides of the 50A main panel to receive power with the single inverter, whether connected to a 50A shore stores or not within the output limitations of the inverter. Okay, and who's the manufacturer of it? Does it say? It's just patent pending.

Patent pending. This one says AM Solar. Okay. But I just Googled it. AM Solar?

Okay, I guess one of the things that I would recommend is to get a hold of Go Power! or Zamp. Those are the two main companies that are out in in the market and I know they research into those things pretty heavily. We've gotten pretty deep into the solar panels and the controllers and the portables versus roof mount and some of that stuff but there's so many ancillary products out there and I don't, give me one second here. I do have...

I don't think anything is built into any one of these. Go Power! So we had some accessories that were sent to us... By Zamp and Go Power! And...

Okay, that is not it. This is just an inverter with no... Okay, it doesn't look like, and this is just a battery monitor. Compatible with Go Power!, it's Bluetooth. And it has nothing, says anything about that and this is just the controller.

No, okay, I just wanted to make sure. We got a bunch of items from our suppliers of Go Power! and Zamp which is the solar panels, but I'm not familiar with that. Again, if you wanna post that on our website, we'll do some research on it. And I would say the best thing would be to get a hold of the guys at Go Power!

or Zamp and see if they've researched it and gone a little bit further into it. So, sorry I couldn't be of more assistance with it, but I'm not familiar and I know about this much, right here. Scott asks, I am a new RV-er. Have a beautifully kept 36 foot 2008 Holiday Rambler Presidential. How do I know the water heater has water in it to start the electric AC heater unit?

That is a good question. Well, you've got a water heater bypass valve on that and the idea of that is so that you don't have to put six gallons of antifreeze into that when you're winterizing. And I guess the best thing I could say is that if you fill up the system, make sure that that valve is on. I guess you could disconnect the water line that goes to that water heater and just verify that water is coming out that the valve is good, operating the way it's supposed to when it is in the non-bypass mode towards the water heater. You should be able to hear water going into it from the outside.

You've got an outside flap that opens up and you can hear the water filling up into it, and the last resort is to take the plug out of the outside and just verify that you've got water coming out of the drain plug. Just loosen it up a little bit so it starts to go and then you'll know you have some water in it. But that is a very good point is that you do not wanna fire that water heater up, the electric water heater up on the electric side. If you do not have water in it, you'll burn up the heat element and the control module and you will need a new water heater. So it's a good thing that you realize to do that, but I think you should be able to verify that.

Okay. Butch asked, I own a 30 amp portable guard protector and a 30 amp Hughes autoformer. When connecting these two units to a power pedestal, which one gets connected to the pedestal first? Well, from my understanding, the power surge would go first and the Hughes, I'm not familiar with the Hughes. The power surge is probably a power guard, and it is a high surge protection and it is a low voltage shutoff, and it'll also tell you the amp draw and everything that is in it.

So I think you want that on the pedestal itself because you wanna make sure you have enough power coming in. Now, the Hughes one I'm not familiar with. I have had several people ask me about some of the the boosts that are out in the market. I don't know if that Hughes is one of those. I know Gary Bunzer was asked this question by one of the guys that was in our seminar this last weekend, and Gary's response was that if you don't have power, you can't create power.

So if you've got low voltage and you've got some of these boosters that are out there, they're a temporary fix versus just shutting the system down when you have low voltage like that. So I'm not familiar with the Hughes product as much, but I do know that that surge guard should go on first. I would do a little bit more research on that if it is a booster. Again, I tell people that when it comes to electricity, I can troubleshoot you this far, and Steve, my right-hand man is the electrical engineer and he can troubleshoot you further. So post it on our website, we'll do some research on that Hughes, but I'd think that surge guard should go first.

Tyrone asks, I have a 2004 Winnebago Rialta? Rialta. I'm having challenge- It's on a Volkswagen, we always have to do that. So he's having challenge with the solenoid keeping the batteries fully charged. Is this common?

What can I do to resolve this? There's probably more to this than that solenoid. The way the system works is that you have a distribution center. We had one up here earlier, but it's got a converter in it that charges your batteries when you're hooked to shoreline power. If you're referring to a solenoid, there is a battery isolation manager which is a BIM solenoid.

And what that is designed for is when you're driving down the road, your engine alternator in your Volkswagen of your Rialta is charging your engine battery, but then it also goes to that solenoid and charges your house battery while you're traveling down the road. It's not a good charger by any means. It's just your house battery is designed to be drained down to 10.5 and then charged back up with 13.6 till it hits 12.6, and it needs a multi-stage charger. That alternator charge is just kind of a, okay, we'll top these off when we get there. That battery isolation main, or the BIM solenoid, then also is a jumpstarter.

So if your engine battery dies for any reason, you've got a little button you push and you can jumpstart your engine battery with your house batteries through that solenoid. But it blocks from if you have something that goes wrong in your house battery system, it's not gonna zap your engine and ruin your computer and your alternator and all that other kind of stuff. So the battery isolation, that solenoid, really isn't going to keep your batteries charged. That's not the main purpose of it. So the main thing that's gonna charge your battery is your converter, and my guess is that your house batteries are probably sulfated to the point that they are not gonna hold a charge no matter what you're using.

So you plug that unit into house shoreline power, that converter is supposed to be charging those batteries, and I know with that Rialta it's a simple, basic converter that does not have a multi-stage charge. So it's gonna do 13.6 til your batteries get up to 12.6. That will not condition the batteries and then it will sulfate. When batteries are drained down, these are just storage, you've got lead plates in it and when the battery charge is drained down, sulfur coats the plates. And if you don't break up that sulfur when you do that initial charge, whether it's with a multi-stage charger that does 14 to 16 volts and boils that battery or a BatteryMINDer that will do high-impact waves or a de-sulfation type conditioner, then you just keep plugging it in and you just keep running it, you drive it down the road that, that engine alternator charges your batteries just like this, sulfur will get thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker, and it's a big problem in the industry.

Batteries will last two to three years when they should last five to seven years, but we're not conditioning them properly and they're sulfating. And so I would think that instead of looking at that solenoid, look at your battery condition and what your converter's doing and find a way to get a multi-state charger, whether it's Progressive Dynamics with their Charge Wizard, if it's a solar panel that has a multi-stage control panel with it, or BatteryMINDer, which is a product we've pitched many, many times that does high impact waves. You can get those through Northern Tools, so those are some options. Brian asked my 2007 Dutch Star has four solar panels on the roof with a heliotrope HPV-30 DR controller from 2007, he thinks. The solar monitor displays randomly fluctuating numbers.

Any idea how to check the system to see if it is functioning properly? I guess the biggest thing is, so, I'm not familiar with that setup. Again, we've got a full night of new questions and I feel like I'm an idiot here. But there's so many different things in there that about the only thing you really can do is to get up and take a multi-meter and find out what specs should be coming off that. You should have an owner's manual that came with it, hopefully a service manual.

What was the brand again, of the? It was a... 2007 Dutch Star. You want that or you want the roof thing? The roof thing.

Solar panels on the roof with a heliotrope HPV-30 DR controller. Okay, and that is fluctuating? Okay. The solar monitor displays randomly fluctuating numbers. Okay.

I wouldn't rely on that panel. I would actually put a multi-meter onto your battery and just see does that verify the fluctuating with that. If it is, then there could be a couple of different things. It could be a wiring issue, it could be, maybe you wanna try to run a direct wire from the solar panels down somewhere and see if it changes that. It could also be that you're getting various different clouds and sun.

I think that anytime you use a solar panel and it's charging stuff, and you get a cloudy day where the sun's in and out, in and out, in and out, or you're kinda in the shade, out of the shade, underneath the tree, so forth; put it out in the open sunlight, verify, put a multi-meter on it, and you should be able to go out and just verify that, yes, this is doing the same thing. Then you probably got a problem with your solar panel or your controller, and then at that point I would contact whoever the manufacturer of the solar panel is, whether it's Go Power! or Zamp. It's very possible too, if it's an inexpensive system, I've seen a lot of people go up to Harbor Freight and various places and they see these solar panels that are really, really cheap. And the crystals that are used in them are very low grade crystals.

They can get damaged very easily, they are not real good at angles. Go Power! and Zamp both have technology where when the sun's off to eight, nine, 10, o'clock, they can still get charging capabilities with the angle of that, where the other ones can't. So verify, I think with a multi-meter and then let's see what the company says about it. She says, well, the good thing is my computer came back up with about four minutes left now, a little less than that.

Let me see if I can get this opened up and we'll go back to a question on one of our cool tools here. RV Repair Club .com. And all right, so, let's grab... A couple of these here. This is a new one we added as well.

This one happens to be a Android phone camera. So I hooked this up to my phone. And I don't have the app on my this phone here now, but I think I can get the... The light to come on and just show you what it does here. So you just plug it into your phone.

And as you can see, we have a little light that goes in here. So I can actually take this and snake it in my duct work of my air conditioning if I think I've got something blocking that, or maybe the the insulation broke out of it. I can turn this down, see, or off so I can do the intensity of it. I can snake it through furnace vents to see if I've got any kinks in my furnace fence. You know, I can get it into some places.

Sometimes you try to get in and see where maybe you have a water leak somewhere and you can't get in the basement or under certain things, be able to snake that through. I got this at Amazon and I think it was a 29,95 and it really does a nice job. And like I said, they just have to get the app for this version of it and you'll be able to pull that up and just see it right on your phone and you actually record it. So if you've got a problem with something that you wanna document and send off to a manufacturer, dealer, or whoever, a pretty handy piece to have. Okay.

And let me see if I can get in now. We're gonna do a seminar on computers . How to throw it away. All right, so we have it back and we're gonna go down. Hey, there I am.

Butch, 30 amp pro protector, got a 30 amp Hughes autoformer. Okay, we got that one. All right, we'll go into another one then. This is a tool that I made for winterizing. So instead of filling up the entire RV with, this thing drives me crazy, with antifreeze, I can just blow all the water off on the inside of it.

So I just took a hose like this, cut off this end. This goes into the city water fill, this is just an air chuck. And so with that, what I'm going to do is hook it up to an air compressor, dial my compressor down about 40 PSI, I don't want it at a 100 or a 120, and then start it up and it will pressurize my system. So all I have to do is go in and I've already dumped my tanks, opened up the water heater, and drained the water heater and then shut the bypass off and shut that off. And so I just go in and find the farthest faucet, open it up till it drains all the air out or water out and I get air in there.

I go do the next faucet, I do the shower, I do the toilet, the sprayer for the toilet. Keep in mind, you're gonna have maybe an ice maker, an exterior shower, all that stuff. And then the only other thing I do is I turn on the water pump and just get the water that's out of the pump itself 'cause the air city wire's gonna bypass that pump so you're gonna have water still in your fresh water pump that I wanna get out of that as well. And then I put a little bit of RV antifreeze down any drains I have, 'cause you'll have a P-trap in that. Usually that gets, by the time you move the unit, if you're gonna do that and then move it, usually that gets jiggled out of the P-trap.

But just in case, a little bit of antifreeze down each one of those. Let me see here. So I got the questions come back up, do we have any more? Tyrone says is there a place I can replay this session? That is a good question.

Ask Sam if there is a place 'cause I think we, don't we document it and keep it on? Yeah, if you go back. It's on YouTube. If you go back to the, yeah, all right. So you go onto the page that has the videos, you go into the menu, and you go to RV Repair, RVRC Live, there's a tab for that.

It'll bring up the page where it has them all documented. And you can see here there's January to December, November, and October. So they're all there live at an hour, one hour, one minute, 55 and so forth. So you can watch it right now. So it is on the website, go to the video section of it.

What? Go on YouTube. And you can go on YouTube. Yes. Oh.

YouTube RV Repair. YouTube RV Repair, so there's a couple different options. There you go. And that's how you do it. This is YouTube live.

Okay. Okay, then this is kind of a fun one. I had a good friend of mine that's an electrician, and a few years ago I saw him driving down the road and he had all his electrical cords and stuff hanging on the rack in the back of his truck. And when I caught up to him, I found out he just goes down to the tire store and he gets an inner tube that has blown and they do truck tires and he just cuts this nice little section of inner tube into this small deal here. And then he takes whatever he's got, like that, and he puts it up and goes through here and just does a quick little boom, and now he has a handy little hanger.

And I thought, you know what? I got one of these compartments that has electrical cords, extension cords in it, it's got co-ax cable, it's got hose, all this stuff sitting on top of each other. So I went down and got a couple of these and made my own little deal and I put cup hooks in that compartment. So now they hang on the wall or along the wall of the edge of it and I have more storage in the center. Now, you can go down to home Depot and Lowe's, home improvement stores and buy a fancy little one like this, and then it kinda helps you carry it, but this one's free.

And this one was $5,95 cents. This one, this is kind of interesting because this is a water purity tester and I got a little bit better explanation of it this weekend. I had a sanitation engineer that was in one of my seminars and we were talking about water purity and what this does. And it doesn't do specific chemicals, minerals, like arsenic or bacteria or E.coli, or various different things. It won't tell you that.

It just gives you a reading of what is acceptable levels of, and what do they call it here? The EPA's maximum contamination level of... Particles, basically, per million, in it. Yep, PPM, particles per million. And what the guy told me that this does is the theory is that this is just gonna be an electrical current.

It's gonna tell you when I put it in the water and this one happens to be, batteries are dead, otherwise I could test it in here. But when you put it in water, the more minerals and the more bacteria and certain things and particles that you have in there, the more it will conduct electricity through these two probes. If you have pure water, it will show nothing in there, but the more you have in there of those components then it will, and also, it's kind of generic but it will tell you that it's too many particles per million to be safe drinking water. And then you would have to test it with something like AquaMate. There is a kit that you can get at the home improvement stores that have little pieces of paper that tell you the pH, arsenic, bacteria.

You can also tell whether you have soft water and the level of it, as well as copper and zinc and other materials. Any other questions? All right, well we're pretty close, I mean. Just think if I have any more stuff I could show, Truma. And this might be a new one that we just ran into.

I'm gonna see if I can find my Mopeka. Here it is. So a couple of different ways to tell the level of your LP in your tank or your cylinder is Truma makes this, it is just called LevelCheck. And as you go up and down the tank, it will turn green wherever you have your LP in it. And we did a video that's posted online here where we tried a variety of different products out.

We tried the weight hanger deal. It didn't show quite as accurate as I thought it would. We tried a little inline pressure gauge that was eh, it was okay. Tried a stud finder. Somebody once said a stud finder would be able to tell you where that was at, that didn't work.

And we also used a temperature gun like this one, and the only time a temperature gun would work is if you're running the system. If it's just sitting out in ambient temperature and you're not running the system, the whole tank and liquid, everything's gonna be the same. If you are running it and you will get some, you will get a little difference in temperature of the cool LP versus the tank itself, so this one was not as accurate. This one is dead on, but it's a little expensive. Runs about $40.

This I ran into at Ace hardware this last spring. During their Memorial Day weekend, they have a big grill event with a whole bunch of specials going on. This is called Mopeka and it just is magnets that pop on the bottom of a DOT cylinder, like you would have on your trailer or your grill or fifth wheel. I don't think I would put it on a motor home tank because motor home tanks are open underneath and I just think this sitting out exposed to road debris and stuff like that might not last very long. But it's just Mopeka and you'd have an app that you set it on here, put it on the bottom of it.

It uses ultrasound in here and then the phone on your app and it will tell you the level of your LP. So pretty handy little thing, 29,95. I did see have it on sale at Home Depot, Home Depot, Ace Hardware on Memorial Day weekend for 19,95. Pretty cool thing to have and it works really well. We use it on our barbecue and the motor home or travel trailer and works great, so.

With that, I think, we're out of questions. We have anything else that comes up here, I don't, I got out of my deal. Let me just go back up and make sure we have no more questions. On our chats and our live and there's a picture of me again looking very serious at an inverter. Okay, they get automatically uploaded to the RV Repair Club YouTube is what Sam said, and Tyrone said thanks, and Jane said ladder.

Maybe that means later . All it says is ladder. Okay! And Butch says, "Thank you, great show." Thanks, Butch, appreciate it. So everybody, thank you for joining us, we appreciate it.

We'll be live again next month and I'm in the process of a move this weekend so I'll be in a new house. But anyway, I can't wait for the summer to hit and go camping and everybody, hopefully the weather's good where you're at and you're able to get back out pretty soon. The Groundhog didn't see a shadow, so I think we're good. And, well, hopefully we'll have an early spring. So again, thank you for joining us and have a great evening.

I'm gonna put these away. We have to have going out music, don't we?