Traveling Team Fischer

We finally made it back to Washington and could really get a good look at the extent of the damage to the camper.  Turns out, it wasn’t just the frame.  That was just the tip of the iceberg.  There were clear signs of water damage that went back for who knows how many years.  The cracked frame was rotted.  The wood under the siding was toast and there seemed to be a mystery leak in the bathroom.  Oh, and the heating duct wasn’t even attached to the furnace.

Luckily, we have a very large and very skilled family who were able to both provide us with their able bodies (and clever minds), but also a place to park while we launched into repairs.

While the guys started to tackle the frame situation, I addressed the furnace and bathroom.

Finally, we will have heat!

New seals and new shower drain in the bathroom.

An iron support was welded to reinforce the new frame, an aluminum brace was fabricated and installed, and the siding was reinforced.  It took our wonderful family village to get our home functioning again.

While we were in the process of repairing everything in sight, we figured we should flush and sanitize the tanks, too.  This process quickly showed us where the leak was – the drain for the bathroom sink was cracked.   This seemed to be the original source of the water damage, and it felt great to fix it once and for all.

After all the camper repairs, we decided to take the truck in for a quick little checkup.  Everything looked pretty good, and we went with the recommendation to replace the old shocks.  We were very pleased with the resulting smoother ride.  The team at Dr. John’s in Bellingham always takes great care of us.

Finally, we thought it would be a good idea to replace the brakes.  Since we’ve worked on them for other vehicles in the past, we decided to do this work on our own.  We found an amazing deal online, but had a terrible experience regarding timely and accurate delivery of our purchase.  If you want the ugly details, let me know, and we’ll post an update.

What did we learn from all of this?

Well, when you are going to buy a used RV/Camper, get a flashlight and look in the cabinets.  Look under sinks.  Look in the outside storage hatches.  Ask the seller to run water in the faucets and look under the sinks again to make sure there is no leak.  Press your hand against siding to see if it is solid or soft.  Most importantly,  take your time.