I don’t know about you, but this year just hasn’t been our year. Our first year of RVing went as well as we could have expected, with a lot of learning along the way. But this year things seem to keep going wrong. It started with rebuilding our transmission in Colorado and this latest round of issues has left us drained.
In May, when we had made it back north, we discovered that the rearmost tires on the fifth wheel were wearing unevenly on the inside. We took it to a tire shop who said it was either an alignment issue or a bearing issue but that we needed to take it to their commercial location to get it fixed. We did so, had the rear axle aligned and two tires replaced, and continued on our way to our final summer destination.
Lesson learned: Trailer alignments are needed every 18-24 months, depending on how much you travel.
And after throwing more money at our truck to fix an idle issue and the 4 wheel drive (that had somehow stopped working when we lost our transmission) last month, we thought we’d be good for the summer. How wrong we were!
One Thursday afternoon we headed into town for some grocery shopping and to drive through the car lots looking for a new truck. When we arrived home we discovered that we had no air conditioning or power to our outlets. We traced the electrical from the pedestal we were plugged into back to the transfer switch we had installed at the beginning of the year. Lo and behold, our transfer switch had failed. And by failed I mean burned-to-a-crisp wiring that could have burned our home down and taken everything we owned with it. Thank God it didn’t!
Since we absolutely need AC and power to our outlets and the only way to have both was to replace our transfer switch, I started calling around to see who could fix it and when. The local mobile RV tech didn’t answer my call and had no answering machine, so I called the RV dealer next. They were booked out to the middle of August (at least four weeks away) but happily gave me the number of another mobile tech, Cory’s Mobile RV Service in Bismarck, and he was able to pencil us in for the following Tuesday (our new transfer switch was scheduled to arrive on Monday).
As expected, our new switch arrived on Monday so we packed up Tuesday morning and made the 2.5 hour drive to Cory’s home. We navigated endless miles of roadwork but arrived on time and Cory got right to work. While he was making quick work of replacing our transfer switch, however, we noticed that our trailer had developed a flat tire sometime during our drive. Great. We had just replaced two of those tires when we had that alignment done. Sigh.
On top of that, we had to replace our power cord. Cory found us a new one, picked it up and replaced that for us as well, and also helped us change our flat tire (we are not incapable of changing a flat tire, we just didn’t have all the necessary equipment to do so). We can’t thank him enough for being so patient with us. He was also more than fair for what he charged us for all that work. If you are in need of a mobile RV tech while spending some time in central North Dakota, Cory’s your guy.
Lesson learned: RV electrical is nothing to fool around with. Also, RV electrical is not the same as sticks-and-bricks electrical. Also, never hook up to an electrical pedestal or outlet without a surge protector.
Once we were on our way again we headed to Northwest Tire in Northeast Bismarck to replace the two tires we hadn’t replaced when we did the other two. While they were doing that I stopped down to Capital RV to pick up a new surge protector and chat with our favorite RV sales guy, Tyler (you can read all about our experience with him here).
Our final stop before leaving town was the Cenex station on the corner of Bismarck Expressway and E Rosser Ave. This is the only place in town we know of that has a free RV dump and water fill, and we were also able to fill one of our propane tanks and pick up supper at the Subway there. The staff at this station have always been friendly with us and we love stopping here when we’re in Bismarck with our RV.
We’ve learned by now that living in an RV full-time means something always needs to be fixed. We have learned to fix a lot of things ourselves, but electrical is something we don’t play around with (unless it only involves directly connecting to the batteries). We are thankful that our transfer switch did not cause a fire and we are grateful for the people who helped us get everything back in working order.
We love living and traveling in our RV, despite the challenges that it can bring. Have you run into any of these same issues? What has been the most challenging thing that you have faced recently? We’d love to hear from you! Drop us a comment below, follow us on Facebook and Pinterest, and don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of the page. Have a great week!