5 Things I Do To The RV Every Year!

how's it going i'm jared gillis welcome to another all about rvs today i wanted to share with you five things that i do to the rv every year and why you should now getting out there and using your rv is a ton of fun but a few of these things that are really simple and easy to do you should definitely have on your radar because it can save you from a lot of problems so let's dive into the list this list will mainly be the things that i would miss throughout the year like checking the tires i check those before every trip i check the roof five or six times a year but this list will be the things that i wouldn't normally get to and i don't want to miss first one we have is cleaning our electrical connections our main power cord and our adapters for connecting into shorter power this is important and i like to use this deoxit because there's a lot of power a lot of amperage flowing through these and if they have oxidation or they're dirty or they need to be clean shined up they're not making good contact you can melt these and we don't want to have that happen so let's be honest how often do you think about your power cord and are my contacts clean so once a year i take a look at it i clean it with the deoxit i like it because this removes oxidation and improves connection and helps protect the surface and you can use it also to kind of flush out the inside of our adapters when it's out there i'm using it and it's been raining those contaminants and moisture might get in there and this can help flush it out and this is going to evaporate and help protect it so you could use vinegar too it's a good way to clean the contacts on your electrical connections uh but this i just spray on there i rub it around clean it off spray it off and then it'll evaporate so that way i can use it on these and like i said on the inside of these adapters also quick reminder i'll put a link down in the description to everything that we talk about including that deoxit down in the description below so that way it's just really easy to find and i'd love to hear what you guys do once a year to your rv to help you remember not to forget some of these maintenance things or things that you might overlook just because you're using the rv and you don't always think about these little checklist items that are a really good idea to do now the next one on our list is using the deoxide again so this is going to help us clean our breakaway switch on our fifth wheel travel trailers and fifth wheels will have breakaway switches so if you disconnect from your tow vehicle while you're going down the road you have an emergency device to help you stop that travel trailer or fifth wheel this breakaway switch is actually really simple you have power coming in and this little pin in here actually stops the power from being able to transfer to the wire going out so once this pin comes out there's just two little contacts in there that connect in there allowing the power from the battery in here to engage the brakes so you do have this sticker here never pull the safety pin to activate this is not something that you want to use an emergency brake or something like that and another thing to keep in mind is you don't want to have this switch activated when you're connected up to your tow vehicle because you're going to be sending power back to your tow vehicle so not something you want to do but i prefer to do the maintenance on this because we had on an old rv where the contacts in here were corroded this accidentally got pulled this thing started smoking i tried to put the pin back in the whole thing was just a hot mess and it ended up melting and melting the pin so i couldn't even turn it off i had to clip the wires back here so i'd rather have the system working properly when i need it in an emergency so that said the way that i test this and clean it is number one i disconnect the batteries and then i pull this so that way that there's no power going through here and to the brakes i am able to use that deoxit i spray the deoxide in there i put the pin in and out a few times clean the pin let it dry out and then i can put the pin back in and then i can reconnect the the battery and if i want to test if the system is working properly i can do a couple of things number one i put a clamp meter on the wires and when i pull the pin just for a few seconds 10 seconds or so i can see the amperage going through there with 12 13 amps that lets me know that all four of the magnets that we have for our trailer brake system are functioning if i wanted to use a compass and i put a compass next to the wheel because that magnet is going to engage when i pull this pin that compass is not going to face north anymore it's going to turn towards that magnet so it's a couple different ways you can test it this is not something that you want to pull for any amount of time so usually when i'm testing it i'm doing it for like 10 seconds and then i'm putting the pin back in so you definitely don't want to engage this allow those magnets to stay energized the entire time that is definitely not recommended but those are the few things that i do to make sure that this is going to work in emergency that i do once a year and the breakaway system will work if we ever came to that emergency situation now next on our list is one that might seem a little extreme but our system works really well for us and as we replace our hose every year so what we do is we buy a new hose every year our hose that we had the previous year we mark it and then we use that for doing the the black tank flush or washing the vehicles or anything other than the drinking water hose we keep that primarily just for the rv because any hose that you get out there they might be drinking water safe but it doesn't mean that when you look in there this one was used less than a year you can see there's just a lot of growth and things in there that i would prefer not to have this is the portion of the hose that was sitting in the sun for a few months when we were using it and it had growth in there very very fast so all of them are going to have this problem to some degree so we like the zero g hose that's the main hose that we use coming in we also use the flexzilla hoses they're drinking water safe also we use those for the filter before it comes into the rv but that's what causes us to want to replace our hose every year another thing that i like to check every year is i like to check our brakes i wish there was an easier way to do it but we just repack our bearings every time that we check our brakes once a year and i like to do it myself because last time i took it somewhere years ago they ended up getting grease on the magnets on the inside and the brakes don't work that well when you get grease in the areas where you're supposed to have friction so i want grease on the bearings and no grease on the rest of the brake system so but i want to check those brake shoes to see how thick that lining is still to make sure that the the brakes are working properly look at the mechanics inside make sure there's no springs that are broken i like to make sure that we have brakes when we need them on the road this is the one thing that takes much longer because repacking those those bearings is going to take a decent amount of time i like to get new grease all the way through those but this is definitely something that i want functioning properly on the rv now the last thing on our list are the safety devices on the inside of the rv and this one actually surprised me because i found something that was wrong in the rv this year and so i'm testing the smoke alarms the carbon monoxide alarms the propane alarm and the fire extinguishers so this one actually surprised me because this one you don't have to replace any batteries it's good for 60 months over five years but i came over to test it and my your inspection and press the button nothing happened i thought well that's weird the button's broken but then i realized that the light wasn't lit so we haven't had power to this guy for quite a while so being able to check it out see why this wire came disconnected and to fix it get it back up and operational now i know this is serious but who really does this it says on here to examine the fire extinguisher once a month or more often i'm lucky if i get it done once a year but there is a little bit of misinformation out there about these fire extinguishers about flipping them upside down to test them i found some information that you're not actually supposed to flip these upside down anymore you're not trying to fluff the powder that's in there you want to make sure that there's no dents everything's working good on here that there's nothing clogging the nozzle and that you have pressure on the gauge so it's one of the reasons i like to replace these with these that have the gauge it gives you something to check to know if there's still pressure in there or if it's time to replace it the one that came with our rv doesn't have that indication so you're just kind of shooting blind hoping that this thing is still under pressure so having a couple of these checking them check the pressure check the tank will hopefully help you if you ever have an emergency situation hopefully you never need these but you want them available when you have an emergency so those are the five things that i do to the rv every year things that are really easy to forget and just let slip under the rug but these are great things to be able to tackle really don't take much time to be able to clean the contacts on your cord or check the safety devices inside of the rv and it really can go a long way when these things that go somewhat unnoticed really need to be functioning properly again i would love to hear what you guys have done in the comments for something that you do every year but i think that's gonna do it for today so if you guys like this video give it a thumbs up if you want to see more videos about rving hit that subscribe button if we don't see on the road hopefully we will see you next video [Music] you

Channel: All About RV's

Views: 323,253

Keywords: RV, RVing, RV life, RVers, Jared Gillis, Less house more living, How To RV, DIY RV, Learn to RV, Motorhome, Class A, 5th wheel, RV Electrical, RV Repair, RV America, All About RVs, Learn To RV, RV Knowledge, RV Life, AllAboutRVs, Allaboutrv’s, RV Tips, RVing Tips, RV Maintanace, RV Hose, RV Fresh water, RV Hose Problem, Problem with RV Hose

Id: 6rws1IIVB5I

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 29 2022