Maintenance man

Day 92

I'm a jack of all trades and master of none. Let me run you through a quick gamma of what I've done for work between the ages of 19-31 (shit I'm getting old)

• Production worker in a meat processing plant
• Full time construction worker for production facility renovation
• Machine operator at a sandwich plant
• 2nd shift supervisor at sandwich plant
• 1st shift lead supervisor at sandwich plant
• 3rd shift supervisor at candy plant
• 1st shift supervisor at pharmaceutical plant

I've fixed and flipped 3 houses with Katie and I've had more cars in my life than I care to count. Why am I telling you all of this useless info? To let you know why we are capable of buying a 16 year old RV that is both a house and semi and drive across the country on a hope and a prayer. Life has taught me some valuable stuff about machines. Take care of them. Fix them before they break. It was a nice break to be able to do what I love. Yesterday was a fun day for me. I no longer have a garage to call my sanctuary. I no longer have power tools, air tools, or my toolbox. What I do have is one tool bag, an air hose, and an extension cord. 

Shirley's air filter is supposed to be red. Look up... not red. It's packed full of sand and gravel dust becasue I beat the snot out of this thing. The cold air intake on the jeep is the only non-stock part on the old girl. The whole reason I put it there was so I could clean it and re-use it on our journey.

I spent the next two hours going over our battle weary jeep making sure it checked out ok. It got a full chassis and suspension grease job in the process. The ball joints are a little sloppy... but good enough. It's also been having a problem with 0 oil pressure at start up after it's hot. No oil means metal on metal. That's how stuff goes boom in an engine. Turns out the oil pressure sending unit just needed to be pulled off and cleaned out. All is well. Yay.
​Next on the list is the RV horn. I went to push it yesterday and got nothing. Huh? I pulled out an electric meter and went to work. The fuses checked out good and I could hear the solenoid ticking for the power supply. I popped open the front cowl and checked the leads. Nice clean 12 volt power was there. I ohmed out the air solenoid and it had a high resistance number. Guess I'll pull that off. ​You don't have to be a mechanical engineer to see that a swollen and cracked plastic thing isn't good. We'll have to get one ordered and re-installed. In the meantime I finally wired in the power mirror controls (the one that broke 2 months ago in Montana) and put my tools away. Enough of fix it McGyver for the day. We need to take poochy out for a stroll.

 We capped off the night with a movie. Prior to our departure I went a little nuts at best buy on black Friday and bought a bunch of stuff we didn't need. One of those things was a projector that hooks up to damn near any USB cable. We strolled down the rows of vans and started inviting the neighbors over for a movie. (Did I mention tons of people sleep in cars and vans when they travel?) I'm kicking myself now for not taking a picture of it. It's 55° and there is a slight breeze. Us and our new found van friends were dressed up in jackets, hats, scarves, and blankets. Everybody showed up with their beverage of choice and we leaned back to watch the 1987 hit " The Untouchables" on the side of the RV. Life could be worse.