Trailer Life. RV, 5th Wheel, Motorcoach Resources. » True Stories

How To Build Your Own 5th Wheel

admin — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:57:55 +0000

How To Build A 5th Wheel

Great video on how a 5th wheel was personally built. Watch this step by step video on building your own 5th Wheel

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Do-It-Yourself RV Care – RV Preventive Maintenance

admin — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:04:00 +0000

Do-It-Yourself RV Care – RV Preventive Maintenance

Here is a great online video by gary Bunzer of some easy do it yourself RV care. Follow these steps and your RV will be ready to roll!

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MB and Kitty Go RVing

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:24:00 +0000

Our dear, dear friends MB and Kitty of Tuscon AZ, are on their break and takingout the 5th wheel for some summer rving fun. They sent us this email about the rv trip thus far:

Hello family and friends. MB and I are on another adventure..trying to escape the June heat of Tucson. Anyway, the plans were that we would be RVing that whole month: first week in Sedona, AZ, the second and third weeks at Gunnison, CO, and then back to Sedona for the last week.

We arrived in Page Springs RV resort ( 10 miles from Sedona) right on time, and parked right next to the rushing Oak Creek. That next day, we decided on hiking to a “vortex” called Vultee Arch. It was 5 miles of high clearance, bumps and grinds at 5 MPH. Once we got there it was a great 3 mile hike, but we knew we had to return over that road… Both our back were out at the end of that journey!

Back at the RV, as we were settling in, somewhere along the line I got bit to death. I never saw any mosquitoes, so they must have been “no-see-‘ums. MB and I did a few more hikes, me scratching. We went “herping” which is trying to find lizards and snakes. I was able to identify a few species that I hadn’t seen before. Overall, it was a good stay.

Onward to Colorado. We went to the 4 Corners (Utah, AZ, CO and New Mex.) and had a great archaeological experience at the Anasazi Heritage Museum. There are at least 4,000 archaeological sites there that archaeologists know of. We went to a Lowry Pueblo, which was situated on top of a hill, and had several rooms.

The next morning we headed for Gunnison (highway 550), but stayed at Ouray, CO that night. The drive from hell. We were warned via AAA that it would be bad. 90% of it was typical mountain roads. The last 4 miles WE THANKED GOD WE WERE ON THE INSIDE LANE!!!!! There is no way we will take the outside lane, going south. We weren’t sure which smell was more familiar: hot brakes or hot transmission fluid. Ouray is at 8,300 feet in the middle of a ravine. It’s actually a caldera, has a beautiful 300’ waterfall that we walked to the base of and a 285’ deep ravine. I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic. MB calmed me down and assured me we wouldn’t do that road EVER AGAIN!

That morning we got down the rest of the way off that mountain and drove to Blue Mesa Reservoir, where our RV resort reservations were. A few summits later, up and down, smells and all, we get there, and it’s today. The wind is gusting at 40mph, the cat almost got out. Bridget (dog) did go for a run without us, but came home (thank God, again) but we are tied down, now, and trying to relax. Probably only be here for 8 days, and then head back to Sedona. This time with a supply of bug repellant.

We’ll keep you posted. Love to you all, Kitty and MB

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Transform a Bus Into an RV Palace. Bus Coverted To Luxury Motorcoach

admin — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:43:00 +0000

Transform a Bus Into an RV Palace

For some modern vagabonds, the best mobile home isn’t the one you buy from the factory—it’s the one you build from a secondhand public transportation

With the right mix of DIY skills and vision, a bus can be converted into a durable, fully appointed mobile home. Icemaker included, no tickets required.

Champ had never built a vehicle before, but having worked on everything from lawnmowers to locomotives, he felt he was ready for a challenge. He envisioned a mobile dream home, and he drew its footprint with masking tape on the floor of his shop. Then he laid out rods of steel square tubing and began to weld, leaving ample space for panoramic windows. To arch the roof bows, he built his own steel bender. The resulting skeleton was 43 ft. long, 12 ft. high and 812 ft. wide (the legal limit), and Champ mounted the front and rear suspension of a ‘98 Freightliner semi on it. To that he added a Detroit Diesel 6V92 with a Jake Brake and aftercooler, as well as a five-speed Allison automatic transmission.

The only items that Champ salvaged from his rusted-out bus were the spring hangers and the identification plate. So as far as the DMV is concerned, Champ’s creation is a 1951 GMC. Yearly cost of registration: $55.

Near the Nobody II, Byron Belmont of Eugene, Ore., had parked a genuine GMC—a 1962 passenger bus custom painted with panels of grays and blues. When Belmont—a one-time helicopter mechanic, railroad brakeman and potato farmer—bought the 41-seat Trailways coach 20 years ago, it had been running between Texas and Oklahoma. Determined to make the bus taller, Belmont whacked the structural ribs with a Sawzall, hoisted the roof and then re-joined the ribs with 8-in. bars. Of course, this required buying a welder. When I asked if he knew much about welding at the outset, he said, “I do now.”

To combat summer heat, Belmont created an 8-in. attic between the new roof and the ceiling and installed a draft fan to pull air out of the cabin, keeping a constant circulation of cooler air overhead. He then started on the bus’s interior, first plumbing a bathroom and kitchen, next wiring all the components, using marine gauges for monitoring and switches. He installed wood floors in the kitchen and marble in the bathroom, and custom-fit all the closets and cabinets to the peculiar curves of the rounded ceiling. He spared no expense, using only oak and black cherry for the wood trim. The kitchen is nicer than those in many people’s homes, with a four-burner propane stove, fridge, microwave, dishwasher, built-in blender and icemaker. “It’s an investment of love more than money,” Belmont told me. “Everything’s personal to it. And each bus has its own personality.”

We were sipping Black Velvet under a shade canopy when a purple rig pulled into the berth beside us. Byron and his wife Joanne jumped out of their chairs to greet its owner, Joni Goodman. A pretty blond woman with a deep suntan and dangling silver earrings, she had the warm twinkling eyes of someone who’d spent a lot of winters in Baja California.

Goodman’s bus has become her lifestyle. In 1989 she and her husband bought the 1973 GM Buffalo, filled the empty hull with raw materials and headed up to Alaska. A year later, they’d converted the Greyhound’s interior with solid teak paneling, a roomy kitchen and a custom bathroom.

When Goodman’s husband died, she learned to drive the bus herself, naming it the Strayhound. It wasn’t easy being a widow in a world of couples, and Goodman remembers just one other single woman on the tour—that is, the migratory herd of RV and bus owners that roams Arizona and California in the winter and the Pacific Northwest in the summer.

“We’d drink wine and cry on each other’s shoulder and curse mechanics,” Goodman said. She regretted not having learned more about how buses worked when she was younger, so she started a crash course, reading the owner’s manuals for diesel engines and other repair books. “I had to know at least enough to fool the mechanics into thinking I knew what they were saying.”

For most of a decade she drifted back and forth between Alaska and Mexico. Then, in 1998, she piloted the Strayhound to an RV jamboree in Oregon. In pulled a rig hauling a double-decker trailer with a jeep and a Hobie Cat. The boat’s name: Straycat. The driver’s name was Rick Fox, a woodworker with gray locks flowing to his shoulders, a real gold nugget lashed to his throat and gemstones in both ears. Within nine months she and Fox were married.

The two have been traveling together for nine years, with occasional layovers in Coos Bay, Ore. Goodman has driven the Alaska Highway 42 times. At first it took Fox a while to take ownership of the vehicle—”You don’t just jump in and take over a woman’s bus,” Goodman says—but since then he’s proved an ideal partner. Fox installed a Greasel conversion kit: The Strayhound now runs on straight vegetable oil from the disposal bins of diners. They’ve also installed solar panels on the roof, which can send as much as 24 amps into a bank of six marine batteries, enabling them to run their electronics without having to fire up the generator.

Read the full story: http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/reader_rides/4266778.html

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RV World of 1937. Classic RV Life Short Film

admin — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:49:00 +0000

RV Retro Commercial 1936

This RV life from 1937 is really fun to watch. We sure have improved!

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RV True Story. RV Trailer Traveling Tales

admin — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:00:00 +0000

A cautionary tale for the new RVer

My husband Bill and I have been full-time RVers for quite a long time now and we love the lifestyle. We do not, at this time, want to go back to the more traditional way of life which we enjoyed for over 33 years. We lived rather typically, in a nice home, which took almost every spare penny we had in life to improve, maintain, repair or pay taxes on. Our life was filled with the constant job of raising children, working to earn a living, and having maybe one day a week to relax and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Well, those years are behind us now and we are truly loving the life of the full-time RVer. Everyday is a new adventure. We love the fact that we are free to move in a few hours if we don’t like neighborhood, we really love being able to see this beautiful country of ours from the inside out, and meeting new people is one of the most wonderful joys of our life.

We have, what we think, is the best of both worlds. We can travel and still have our home and our belongings with us. If we don’t feel like moving around, we can just park it for a while.

There are a few pitfalls which, if you are entertaining the thought of becoming full-time RVers, you must be aware of.

When you leave a house for vacation or a trip, all you normally have to do is take care of securing the house so that you avoid being robbed or burned down while you are gone.

In a motorhome, fifth wheel or trailer, you must prepare your home for travel. Breakables are to be safely stored. Cupboards, TV’s, computers and furniture, etc. must be well secured prior to your picking up your house and placing it on a fast moving freeway or bumpy country road. You also need to remember to put down that TV antennae so that you don’t chop it off at the next overhead bridge. And if you forget to empty the water out of your toilet prior to leaving, you may spend the next few days trying to dry out your bathroom carpeting. The RV park where you have been staying would also appreciate it if you don’t drive off with their electrical boxes in tow. We use a checklist for all of the items we need to take care of, but even then there is a small amount of stress related to the moving process.

Also, remember how you used to be able to be a part of the fast moving traffic on the freeway? Well, be prepared. You may now be one of the slowest vehicles on this fast moving, potholed, always under construction, racetrack of a highway, filled with people whose brains are at the bottom of their shoes.

Another advantage of living the life of the full-time RVer is that if the weather is bad you don’t have to travel. You can just sit in your little home on wheels and wait until the weather clears up. No reservations or deadlines to worry about.

However, if you have never been in 50 mile an hour winds in your RV, you haven’t lived. The first time we had this experience I was sitting at our dining table in our slideout and the wind whipped up to gale force speeds. One burst of wind came up, lifting the slideout up a couple of inches, and throwing an H20 train set we have at the top of the slide clear across the room (landing in a 100 pieces all over the floor). I was OUT OF THERE looking for the nearest building. We were staying at a park that tended to be very windy.

We did not want to leave the park for a while, and soon learned to live with the sounds of the wind howling through our fiberglass sides and awnings. The wind doesn’t bother me as much now, although I do get a bit jumpy when it kicks up.

If you enjoy cooking you can still accomplish all of the things you want to while living in an RV. Just choose the appliances you want to carry with you with space in mind. Everything should be in miniature form including some of your furniture. You would not want to place a 12 foot sofa in the living room of your 30 foot trailer. And, your refrigerator is too small to keep a large stock of food on hand. You cannot fit a watermelon into a 8 or 10 cubic foot refrigerator no matter how hard you try!

If you enjoy gardening then you will have to understand that your garden may consist of nothing more than a few potted plants or herbs. If this is your garden on wheels, don’t forget to place them on a towel in your bathtub while traveling or you will soon be feeling the earth under your feet while inside of your RV. Do remember, however, that most of the RV parks you will be staying in have a lot more greenery than your old back yard. And, no more lawns to mow!

Life on the road is very peaceful most of the time. Sometimes a little too peaceful. Especially if you have children and grandchildren that live far away. I would say that the worst thing, for me, about traveling the USA, is that sometimes we travel for several months without seeing our family. I miss the noises, the touches, the hugs and kisses that are showered upon us when visiting our grandchildren.

And, when you are not traveling and sightseeing, you must keep yourself busy, or life will become one book after another or one TV program after another. Get out, meet your neighbors, volunteer your time for something worthwhile, or write a book like I did. Bill and I have created a whole new career with the publication of “Your Home On Wheels”.

One of the advantages of living in an RV, is that everything, if you do it right, is right at your fingertips, including your spouse. Bill and I love being close and knowing what our partner is up to at any given moment. However, you must also prepare yourself for the difficulties of living together with someone in such small quarters as an RV. If you are not considerate of each other’s space, you will find that you will be frustrated and sad for the loss of your own space. No matter how much you enjoy being with your partner, you must spend some time away from each other if you live in the small confines of an RV.

A few of the other pitfalls to be aware of are the inconsistencies of your service related needs. Phone and television are not always available to you. You may have to visit a different mechanic or beauty shop every month and not have a chance to build a relationship with your service people. Health issues also must be addressed because you can no longer visit your regular physician when a problem arises.

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