- We're gonna tell you
everything that has broken on, or in our RV in the past two years. - And the stuff that we've broken. - Right. - Which happened a bit. - Just a little. (upbeat music) - If you guys have been watching us for any length of time, you know that we love our
Grand Design Momentum. That doesn't mean that
stuff hasn't broken on it. - True. We try to capture that stuff in real time and put it in our location videos or talk about it here and there, but there are some things
that just kind of happens between moves, and this and that. - Usually cameras aren't
rolling when that stuff happens. Sometimes they are. But we're gonna talk about everything that we could remember, that has broken, or that
we have broken ourselves. - Everything.
- Everything. And we're gonna tell you how we fixed it. - Right. These are in no particular order, they're just how we thought
of them and put them down. We do have a lot of video
we're gonna show you some of these things, and some of them we're
just gonna talk about. So, first off, like Tara said, we love our Grand Design. The thing is, with RV's, and this is for RVing in general, whether you're talking about Class A, Class B, 5th Wheel, Toy hauler, whatever. All RV's are going to have stuff break. - Right. - If you're going into RVing thinking, "Oh I bought a brand new RV
and its gonna be perfect." (imitates buzzer ringing) Wrong. - Well, you know, the saying goes, "Every time you take
your RV down the road, "it goes through an earthquake." - That's very true. - And its kind of true. The first year of RVing, we
traveled every 7-10 days. This past year we've traveled
every couple weeks or so. - Yeah, we've got probably about
22,000 miles on this RV now and probably 80 or 90 stops. - Yeah, it's more than that. (laughing) - But anyhow, yeah. Stuff inside and outside shakes as you're going down the road, and we've been on some crappy roads. (upbeat music) - You know we like to
try to keep everything on the level with you guys, and this is no different. We're gonna lay everything out here. Like Tara said, these
things are in an earthquake every week or two. Stuff's gonna break, it's gonna happen. The key differentiator is, for us, what we found out, is Grand Design really
stands behind their product. One of the reasons we picked Grand Design, was the fact that we would
never have to go to a dealer-- - Right, yeah. - Because we're never
anywhere near our home dealer. We travel full time, so
we wanted to make sure that we would be able to get
mobile techs on the road, which we have done, and
we're gonna talk about, or just have them send us
parts to do it ourselves. They've held to that,
and it's been awesome. Item number one. - Oh (drumming fingers on table) - (laughs) Our pin box. So, if you're not familiar
with what a pin box is, it's the thing on the front of the RV that goes into the hitch. It's got the pin on it. Well, Lippert had a run of
their Rota-Flex pin boxes. Rota-Flex is the one
that just has the rubber between the little thing, and some of them were slipping, and they were replacing them. So, we kept an eye on
ours, and sure enough, ours slipped just a little bit. So we emailed Lippert
directly, sent them a picture, and they said, "No problem, "we're gonna replace
your pin box for free." - But, we wanted to upgrade it. - Yeah, we thought, "Well, you know, as long as
they're replacing it for free, "can we pay the difference
and get their biggest macdaddy pin box, the Flex-Air?" We asked them, and they said, "Sure." So, we said, "Sure." The only mistake I made
in that whole transaction was, they probably would've also sent a mobile tech out to put it on. I thought, "How hard can it
be, it's like six bolts." The thing weighs 200lbs. Its freaking heavy. - And his poor friend
Charlie came to visit us when we were in Charleston, and he had no idea what he
was getting himself into. So, thank you Charlie for helping. That was pretty tough. - That thing was heavy. - Don't do that yourself. - Yeah, get somebody to do it. The bottom line is we
now have the Flex-Air. People ask us a lot about that pin box, and if it reduces chucking,
and banging on the truck. Quite honestly, I don't really know. It's definitely a smooth ride, but we never really had any chucking even with the Rota-Flex. So, it's a good pin box, the other one was pretty good, too. It's definitely an upgrade. - We're happy with it, we're happy how Lippert
handled the situation. Again, our only mistake
was not getting somebody to install it. - Yeah. - Item number two is our furnace. - Right. Of course, furnaces only
break in the winter, because that's when you're using them. But, I mean, they probably
break other times too. - Or the spring, or the fall,
when you're somewhere cold. - (chuckles) Right. So we were in North Carolina, and our furnace was
doing what's apparently a pretty common thing. It would turn on and run
for maybe two minutes, and then shut off. We called Grand Design, and then we called a mobile tech and said, "Our furnace is not
working, please come help." What I like to do whenever a mobile tech
is out working on the RV, is I like to watch them
and ask lots of questions. - [Tara] Yes. - Randy was really cool. He basically showed me
that on the furnace, there's a circuit with a sail switch, which is basically a
little switch that blows. When the fan is blowing it, it closes it. Then there's a thermal switch, when it gets too hot it opens. So, if anything in that circuit is open, your system turns on,
runs for a little bit, it determines that I doesn't like the fact that the circuit is open, and it shuts back off. They're really cheap parts,
so I got a couple of extras. Randy basically took it
apart, put it back together, and it started working, so he left me with a
couple of extra parts. Sure enough, several
months later down the road, it happened again. This time I replaced the thermal switch versus the sail switch,
and I was up and running. - [Tara] A little note about
mobile techs: they're not free. - Right. Just because I said Grand
Design will send a mobile tech, doesn't mean they're
gonna pay the service fee. They're gonna pay you
the normal repair fee, labor and parts, but you're typically
responsible for the service fee, which can be anywhere
between 50 and a 100 bucks. I think we've had 50, 75 and 100. - Yeah. - So it varies.
- It varies. - But is it worth a hundred bucks to have somebody come to your RV, instead of hitching up your
house and going into the shop? - Yeah, when you need
your furnace to work? - Yeah.
- Yes. - Very worth it. - Yes. - So, furnace fixed, it's
been good ever since. Number Three. - Actually it was the first
thing that ever broke on our RV, and it was a tail light. - We were driving between two locations, and our display on our
Ford basically said, "Tail light malfunction." and it was doing the quick flash whenever I'd use a turn signal. - Yeah, I think we'd only been
in our RV for a few months, so we're like, "Oh my gosh,
what do we do, what do we do? "Oh no." - So, we pulled over,
tried to diagnose it, tried to wiggle cables and
find the obvious stuff. None of that worked, so we just
got to where we were going, trying not to tick people
off with no turn signal, and called a mobile tech. - [Tara] Yes, and they did a great job. They came out, I think it
took them two days to do it, because they had to
figure out what was wrong, diagnose the problem, and then go back and get enough supplies for it. - It turned out that, they
said there was a short in the turn signal line,
somewhere between the nose and the tail light. - Anywhere in 44 feet. - [Chad] Somewhere in there. So they just replaced
the whole line, ran it. It worked great. - He's good with electrical wiring, but-- - I didn't want to mess with that. - No. - That's one you definitely
want to call a mobile tech for. You might wonder, "Okay, how do we find the mobile tech?" You Google, you look at some reviews, and you say they look okay, you call them. Most of the time you
can call them directly, and work it out between
you and the mobile tech, and then submit your
paperwork to Grand Design. Clear it with them first, obviously. - Right. - Other times we've been able to have the mobile tech work
directly with Grand Design, and we didn't pay them
anything except for the fee, which was what this was. - I want to say something
about Grand Design's customer service. You've called them several
times with questions about an issue that we've had, and they've helped you over the phone, tried to figure out what was wrong. - Oh yeah. We've had them on the phone saying, "Let me walk out and take a look at one, "and we'll see what we got." They're really great at customer service. - [Tara] Yeah. - Their process is: they want
you to try your dealer first, which I understand. So, if you're near your
dealer, give them a shot. If they suck, then go
the mobile tech route. If you're traveling full time and you're in the middle of nowhere, call Grand Design directly. Maybe they have a good
line on mobile tech. They even have a mobile
fleet out there doing stuff. - Something that has
happened to us several times over the past couple
years, is body damage. - I run into stuff.
(laughs) - You know, it's not his fault. Its our fault, because
there are two sets of eyes watching out for stuff.
- That's true, your fault. - Now I said our fault. (laughing) It's our fault. - Our very first one was, we
think we had our RV a week. You know we love our full body paint, and we paid quite a bit of
money for this full body paint, and two or three weeks out of the gate, I run a triangle-- - [Tara] One of those diamond signs. - [Chad] I run a sign
down the side of our RV. - [Tara] It was two weeks in,
our second camp ground, ever, and it was a tight turnaround. Especially for a newbie. - I just turned a little too tight. Luckily, because of the trailer swing, it didn't slide all the way down. - Yeah, but that noise. - It started to skid, and then
as the trailer moved away, it came off. That was scary. We wore that scar.
- [Tara] That hurt. - We wore that scar and owned it. - That hurt. - [Chad] Second time we did
body damage was in Fort De Soto, and man, let me tell you-- - [Tara] Fort De Soto is a county park in St. Petersburg, Florida. - Really nice county park. - It's a very nice county park
- A lot of trees. - But the sites are tight
with the trees, and nature, and the big oak trees that
bend and twist, and curve out. Large branches. - [Chad] When I saw this site,
when we actually got there, I said I give myself maybe 40% chance of getting it in this site. It was really tight. - He did a great job,
and we worked as a team. We got it in there. It was still a nail-biter. - [Chad] We got it in fine. The trouble happened when we were leaving. We're driving out of this site, and you have to, of course, when you're pulling a large 5th wheel, take it out as wide as you can. So, I'm doing that, I'm
watching the bushes on the side, Tara's watching the right side. - I'm watching something on
the right hand lower corner. It was either a truck,
or a sign, or something. Something was right there, and we couldn't move it out of the way. So, I was watching that, because we were about
that far away from it. - And we're going super,
super slow, and then crunch. - Oh that noise is so bad. (chuckles) (bang) - [Tara] Oh no. - It turned out we hit a tree up high, up on the front of the
5th wheel, on the cap, and this one wasn't one
that we could let go, because I broke the fiberglass, there were pieces of tree stuck in it. (laughs) We were literally going
less than a mile an hour. - [Tara] Yeah. - [Chad] The thing is, when
you've got a 30,000lb rig, which is what our truck and our RV is, you don't have to be going very fast to cause a lot of damage. - The scratches and the
dent we got in Fort De Soto, we got fixed right away. That was when we moved sites,
and we moved over to Bradenton and we found this great guy. - So I just, again, Googled
"mobile body repair". - We were expecting it to be expensive. - I was thinking like $1,200.
- I know. - That was the number I had in my head. The guy we contacted asked
if we what color paint, or had the paint codes. When we got our RV, they
gave us paint codes with it, so I gave them those. He says, "Great, no problem." He comes out, he does a Bondo, sanding... The way the RV is painted
with all the stripes, he repaints that whole stripe,
down to the next point, so that way, you can't tell. He did it with a spray, an
airbrush, and it was great. - And guess what? - It was like 300 bucks.
- I know! So we felt like (exhales)
okay that wasn't too bad. I mean, it was 300 bucks
that we didn't want to spend, but in our minds,
could've been a lot worse. - Absolutely. - So, I feel like we got lucky there. Did we have one more scratch? - [Chad] You don't remember what it was? - [Tara] It was Montana. We had the trees in
Montana at that iris host. - Oh yeah. - So we got more than we thought. - So there's four body damages (chuckles). Five, (laughs) five body damage things. - Yeah. (upbeat music) - Another thing that was damaged, and I think this actually happened between the scratch on the
side and the front cab, was we used to have a much taller tool box. We were warned that you might want to get rid of that toolbox, and sure enough, we were backing
into a Boondockers Welcome and got into a funky
angle, backing down a hill, and the tool box rubbed the underneath of the overhang part of the RV. - Right. - That's still there. You can really barely notice it. - That's why we often really stress the importance of getting
a low profile tool box for the back of your truck. The last scratch happened
not that long ago. - When I knocked over
your brother's mailbox. - But that was a we thing. (laughs) - That was another we situation. My brother has a very large driveway, but its on a pretty busy road. - And it's a very skinny
driveway, so there's not much room to cut a corner. - Yeah, and I wasn't
doing my job and watching, because we had just gotten there, and I was hugging my mom, and
she was playing with Daisy. I was, "Oh, he's done this
bunch of times, he's good." I was kind of watching, but not really. And then I see the mailbox fall over. - The way that one happened was, you've got the street like this, and I've got the RV here, and I wanted to cut
the back in, like this. Is that making any sense? - Yeah.
(laughs) - I tried to turn it sharp, and of course, the sharper you turn, the more tail swing you're gonna have, and the tail swing came out, and just knocked his mailbox right off, and put a scratch about that long. - It was an easy fix for his mailbox, and once we got back to
Bradenton, we called the same guy. (laughs) He fixed the first scratch
that we ever had on the side, and the scratch that we
got from the mailbox. - So, right now, our RV is perfect. - Oh. (laughs) - We have no scratches
visible anywhere on our RV. - I hope you didn't jinx it. (Chad knocks on wood) - Next on the list, slide ski. What is a slide ski, you ask? I didn't know either. As the slide is coming
out along the bottom, you've got these things
called slide ski's. All they are, is runners of plastic, so that the plastic from
the bottom of the slide can run across the plastic
things for the top of the slide. Basically, just ski's across. It was cracked along the side, and it needed to be fixed,
because water could get in there. - How did we notice that, do you remember? - I just saw it, setting up the RV. - We weren't having an issue
with it, and you just saw it? - Yeah. It wasn't manifesting itself in any kind of leak or anything, but we could see that it was cracked, and it was getting worse. With that one again, something
I'm not familiar with, it was time to call-- - Mobile tech. - Coordinated the mobile tech,
just like the other times, and again, they came out and-- - [Tara] But this time they didn't do as good of a job, remember? - Yeah, so here's what happened. They came out and replaced the slide ski. Grand Design sent me the slide skis, and I coordinated with mobile tech to come out and install them. I didn't know how they did it. I watched, and basically, all they did, was they took a little
bottle jack and a 4x4, and a 2x4, and put that
underneath the slide, and jacked the slide up,
so they could get under it. It's just held on with some-- - [Tara] Glue or something. - Yeah, it's actually held
on by two sided 3M tape. So, they used that and
put it back on there, and (whistles) they were out. About two weeks later,
it started to come off. The whole thing that they put on there was just not sticking, and the whole slide ski came off, it was sticking inside the RV. - [Tara] He did a crappy job. - I called Grand Design and
they sent me another slide ski, and this one I did myself. It's been good ever since. - Yes, you know, if
you want it done right, you've got to do it yourself. - That's a true story. - Unless its wiring from nose to tail. (laughs) - So, I did that myself. I did just like they did, I put the board over there, jacked it up, got underneath there,
pulled the old one out. Cleaned all the glue off really good, which I don't think
they did the first time. Then I put it back on with extra adhesive, and we've been good. - Yeah. Good job babe. - High five.
- High five. (upbeat music) - All our travels out West,
we have a lot of wind. And with wind, it can cause
some damage once in a while, which is the case for or next item. - This item is our slide topper. People have asked us about those, if we like them, don't like them, should they get them? We like them, because it keeps the stuff
off the top of your slide. No rain or anything ever gets on the top. But, one issue with the slide topper, is if the wind hits it
just right from the side, it can cause flapping. People have said you can put a half inflated beach ball under there to stop it from getting there. Ours just flapped, and eventually started
to tear a little bit. Called Grand Design, and I know
that's something I can fix. They sent us one. Right now it's sitting under the RV, because I haven't put it on yet. - Hopefully, when we get out
to your friend Donald's house, and he has some time and some
space, you can do it then. - It's not easy top carry
around, it's like 12 feet long. - (laughs) I know. - But, again, Grand Design's
Johnny, on the spot, sent us the part, so we're good to go. - Awesome. One of the first mistakes we've ever made, and this one is our fault, is our pantry door. - I'll just show you right here. If you'll notice, this
door opens this way, and the slide is right here. What happened is, this came open during the earthquake
of travel day 2017, 18, something or the other, and it was out like this, and of course, the slide is in. So, when the slide comes out-- - And this was before we ever knew to look and make sure that the slides were clear before we put them out. - [Chad] We learnt that lesson. - [Tara] We learnt it really fast. - [Chad] Right. You're just gonna get some food? Am I in your way? Go ahead, get your food. So, the slide grabbed the door, and promptly decided
to rip it off the wall, and tear a bunch of stuff up. We heard a bunch of crunching noises. - That's another bad--
- That's a horrible noise. - Each time you hear
crunching noises with your RV, it's a bad day. That's our fault, and as you can see, it's still broken. We fixed the slide part of it. - I fixed the slide part of it. Luckily the door wasn't messed up in such a way that I couldn't
just pop the frame back in. - Yeah. - It's still got some cosmetic damage, but it's still functional,
so its really not a big deal. - And that's on one of our To-Do lists, but it's kind of made its
way down to the bottom. - I'm waiting about a year
and a half, on average, for my tasks. (laughing) - We're used to it by now,
it gives it character. - (whispers) Yeah, character. - While we're in the kitchen, something else that just
drove me crazy at first, was the cabinet doors here, they're glass, while on he opposite side of this glass is this spray on, frost design. I'm not really sure what it's made of, but when we would travel, we would get scratches on he inside from something falling out, or falling towards the door. It would happen both in our pantry, and in our cabinet doors up here, and it made me crazy. It didn't really bother him that much, but you could see the
scratches in the glass, and it just drove me nuts,
and that's all I could see. I thought, "Well, why don't
we go to the Dollar Store, "and buy a cheap piece of
50c white poster board, "and stick that on the back
of each piece of glass?" It works wonderfully now. - [Chad] Elmer's glue stick, bam, done. - Yes, and I know that
some of you will say, "Oh, you should get the tension
rods.", and this and that. We have those, but stuff
can still get banged around, and pushed against the glass, and it didn't take that
much to scratch it. That was our quick and easy fix. Cost a dollar, and good to go. We've had the same poster
board up now, ever since. - Yep, doing good. Another issue we ran into early on, was our awning lights not working. Our awnings have LED light strips along all three of the awning lights, and they just didn't work,
right out of the gate. So again a little more Googling, and found out its probably just a fuse. The question is where's the fuse? - And that's when you called, I remember you called Grand Design and they helped you figure out what fuse. - Yeah, because the fuse for
the rear awning on the side is actually behind the panel. There, you've got to pull four screws out, and find the wire that's an inline fuse. The fuse for the two main awnings, they're on the same circuit, and that was down in the basement. They helped me find that. Swapped out fuse, good to go. - All right. - Next on the list (laughs) Garage tie downs. If you watched our Momentum
factory tour video, you know that, I forget what they're rated for, they're 5,000lbs each ring or something. - The D-rings? - I don't know what they are,
we'll put it on the screen. They're rated for that weight, but they're not really
rated for the D-ring to be pulled sideways a lot, which we have from our
straps to the motorcycle, they get pulled sideways. Then the D-ring starts to look
a little more like a P-ring. (laughs) - It is bent. One of them actually bent
to the point where it broke, and the strap came completely off. Lucille was still fine, and her wheel docked
with three other straps, but the back of the
bike slid a little bit. - Oh yeah. - I remember opening the
door and looking like, "Oh my God." - "What's this?"
- "What happened?" so, if you do have some bending D-rings, replace them before they break. - Good point.
- Easy replacement. Couple screws, no problem. - How'd it go?
(imitates screwdriver) (laughing) - The next item on our
list is the fuel pump. - If you saw our recent "Boondocking at Lone Rock Beach" video, that was when we discovered
our fuel pump was not working. Because we wanted to use that
30 gallons that's in that tank to fill the 30 gallon
tank for the generator. - Yeah, we did. - It was broken. - This poor guy had to, oh man. - I would have had to do this anyway, because we needed more
fuel than the 60 gallons we had on board. - But it wasn't that, it was
how you had to put it in. - I had to hold the gas can with my knee. If you've seen a gas can recently, they've got all this EPA crap on there that makes it completely
unusable as a gas can. - Yeah. - [Chad] It's not gonna spill, but you're gonna spill a ton of it while trying to push the
levers and hold the things. - [Tara] Yeah. - [Chad] It was a pain. (upbeat music) - But we got that fixed by Grand Design at the national rally. - [Tara] Yes, one thing about
the Grand Design National Rally, and its only true
for the national rally, so don't expect it at the smaller rallies. - [Chad] Some of them do,
some don't, so check on it. - [Tara] Yeah. You can get some stuff
fixed while you're there. - [Chad] Part of the sign up process is: List three things you want fixed. Doesn't matter if you're out of warranty, you just get it fixed. We're not sure if they're
gonna continue that forever, but as of now, that's what's
going on at the Owners Rally in Indiana. - So, that was a rally fix. We just said, "Hey, pumps not working." Turns out, what it was,
is it just got gummed up. All they had to do was knock
it with a hammer a little bit and get it going. Beat it with a hammer. Next on the list wasn't
something that broke, bu we wanted to fix it before it broke. It's the 50 Amp slow globe
fuse, or thermal fuse for the hydraulic system. They've been known to go bad over time and make your hydraulics system slow down, or stop functioning, and
you have to replace that or bypass it. I actually heard about this, and I kept an extra fuse with us. But then, Grand Design started
recommending replacing it with an 80 Amp fuse. I went ahead and preemptively
swapped out our 50 Amp fuse with an 80 Amp resettable fuse. Honestly, once we got that replaced, our jacks and everything
are much more responsive, so I think it was probably going bad. - We do have a hydraulics video out there, if you are interested. Right up here, you can click. - [Chad] And I have a blog post outlining exactly how
to replace that fuse, so you can take care of it yourself. - We'll link that in
the description below. Along those same lines, we've had a lot of issues with our jacks making a popping noise. - That was also in our hydraulic video. Basically, I think what
happens, is temperature changes or something, and the jacks pop. Its loud, and it shakes the whole RV. It feels like the RV is
gonna (imitates crunching). - It scared me to death the first few times that it happened. Actually, until we figured
out what was wrong with it, it scared me. When one pops, it's a very loud noise, and your whole RV shakes for a second. You don't know what's going on. If you didn't know about it ahead of time, you're not gonna know what it is. - It's not like the jacks are
just falling to the ground. They pop and maybe move a millimeter, but when you move
20,000lbs one millimeter-- - You feel it. - [Chad] (laughs) you feel it. The fix for that is to put
some anti-stitching fluid in. Again, we'll put links to the
video we did on that below. It's an easy fix. Pulls my hydraulic fluid out, you put some anti-stitching fluid in, you cycle the jacks a few times, and you've got that stuff in there. - Quite honestly, we are
due to do that again. - We've done it twice already, and we're starting to
get some more popping, so I think we're due to do it again, or maybe even just replace
all the hydraulic fluid with something a little more... better. (laughs) - But that's it. - Another fix at the rally, was our LED lights on the front cap. - Ours is 2018 model, so they aren't the kind
that change colors, they're just blue, but
they're down on our front cap. They were starting to
have some pieces of it, little sections go out, and
you don't want to turn it on because you're ashamed
that you have broken LEDs. (laughing) - Like, "Oh those are cool...
oh no, there's a big gap." They swapped them out, we're good to go. - Okay. One day our microwave
slash convection oven just stopped working. We don't know why. - One thing we read about that online, is there is a couple of
fuses that can be replaced inside the microwave. So, I pulled it out, opened up the top. Sure enough, bam, fuse. - Thought that solved the problem. - Replaced it, put it back
together, lasted a day or two. - Yeah, it worked for a day, and the next day, stopped working again. - Apparently there are some
other fuses we could've tried, but we talked to Grand Design, and they just sent us a new microwave, swapped it out, good to go. Next up. It seems like we have a lot, but this really isn't that
bad, they're all minor. - They're all pretty little. - Our bed started to fall apart. (laughs) - Well, it felt like it,
because what happened is, the bed of course, has a lift
so you can get up under there for storage.
- [Tara] For your storage. - It's hinged, and it's
got hydraulic actuators that help lift it. - We replaced the mattress
that came with the RV. The mattress that came
with the RV was a thin, lighter weight mattress--
- (whispers) It was crap. (laughs)
- Which you could feel. We replaced it with a eight
inch memory foam mattress from Mattress Insider, that we love. But that mattress is a lot heavier, and I think that's why stuff
started getting shifted around and the hinges got loose. - It's tough to say if it was
the weight, or if it was-- - The hinges don't look
that sturdy really. - They're okay, I think, maybe
it wasn't quite in the... We don't know. All we know is one day
the hinges came loose, and those hydraulic actuators pushed the front of our bed out,
and so we sank in it. Thinking that was a pretty easy
fix of holding it in place, putting the hinges back on, but in different places of course, and I think I even added
a couple of hinges to it to beef it up. - Yeah, you did. - Again, that's an easy fix. - Yip. I if I didn't mention it, if you're gonna full time in an RV, it helps to be handy. (laughs) - It really does. I mean, if you're gonna travel full time, at least be good with a
screwdriver and some basic tools, and learn how to fix things a little bit, because you don't want to have to call-- - Because stuff always needs fix. - You don't want to call a
mobile tech out to fix a hinge. - Yeah, true. Cool. - Yeah. - One thing was little Miss Daisy's fault. Hold on. - (laughs) You're gonna get her? - Yeah. - This little angel, she really is. She doesn't bark, she doesn't shed. She'll only bark if you knock on our door. She has separation anxiety. - [Tara] She does. - [Chad] And she would
scratch on our front door, and she tore through the screen. - [Tara] This little 3.5lb
fluff ball ripped our screen. - It took her a while.
- In two different spots. - Again, this was an easy self-fix. If you've ever replaced
screen on something before, you know you get the little tool and run the rubber down there. I replaced the screen, and an easy fix was to
get a piece of plexi-glass from Home Depot. It turns out, the door has
a little slot right in it, and I cut out a piece of
plexi-glass, put it in there, and we have been good ever since. Boom. Another thing that we found very early on in our RVing career, was our
little fireplace squeaked. (squeaking)
(laughing) - [Chad] There's a little
thing in here that turns to make the flames look like the flames. - [Tara] It sounded like something just needed to be greased,
or something in there. - [Chad] I pulled it out, took it apart, sprayed it with some WD-40, and its good. - [Tara] It was kind of neat to see the inside of the fireplace. - [Chad] It's a very simple fix. - [Tara] Yeah. - Another pretty common
problem with RV's are, the caps for the awnings just come off. Outside on each of the awnings, they've got little caps on the elbows, and the caps on the ends. Sometimes they just blow off when you're driving down the road. Called Grand Design,
they sent us new ones. We put them on. - [Tara] They're probably
somewhere in Monument Valley. - Maybe someone's picking
them up going, "What's this?" Easy fix.
- Easy fix. - We're almost done with our list. Next to last thing that is
broken is the Max Air fan covers. - Our fans are pretty cool, in that you can push one button, it turns on and opens up. Push another button, it closes. It's automatic. Well, the one in the
main bathroom, of course, gets the most use, because
it's the most used. It turned out, what happened was, the little gearbox in there
that helps the lid lift, broke a little bit and would
go (imitates creaking). - Sounded like it got stuck. (laughs) - It was a horrible sound. - It was (laughs). - Again, called Grand
Design, said this is broken and they sent us a whole new fan. You can't sell just the
little tiny gearbox. I kept all the extra parts just in case. - Genius. - Extra motor, extra
thingy, we got it all. I also replaced our blade
because it was dirty. (laughs) - I figured, this is dirty. I can just put the new one on, done. - Why don't we put a new one
on, instead of cleaning it? - That's true. - The last thing is
probably the biggest thing. - Yeah. - It's definitely the biggest thing. - It's definitely a last but
not least, sort of thing. - Yeah. - We've seen this problem online, and of course it happened
when I was by myself. The leaf spring broke. - [Tara] This guy was traveling
for three days straight, by himself. - [Chad] With Daisy. - [Tara] With just Daisy. That's of course when it
happened, was on day two. - Yeah, this is where doing a walk around when you stop for gas,
stop to go to the bathroom, every time you stop in your
RV, walk around and inspect it. Look for anything that's obvious. Look at your hangers,
look at your leaf spring, your shackles, look at all that stuff. I'm walking out of the gas station, because I got a snack, and I notice that the 3rd
axle on the left hand side is a little bit closer to the
2nd axle than it normally is. Of course, I'm like "Oh no, please no." Because it's like noon on a Friday. - And you were somewhere
between Minnesota and Wisconsin. - I was right on the border actually. - Yeah. - So here's what went down. First of all, this was kind
of a known thing for a while, particularly on the
double axle toy haulers. We've talked about this before. Those double axle toy haulers, when you fill them to their max capacity, you've got a few hundred pounds
of leeway on the rear axles. On the triple axles, we've got 21,000lbs just
on the rear axles available in a 20,000lb RV. With about 20 to 25% on the pin, we've got plenty of room in our rear axle. So, it wasn't an overloading problem, it was just one of those things man. Sometimes stuff breaks. It's just chance. So, it broke. I looked under there, I
saw that it was broken. We've heard all kinds of nightmares about people being
stranded for a couple days while they get the parts. So, I was immediately prepared for that. We got really lucky, and we came across an
awesome awesome, awesome, RV dealer, Coulee. So I called them, and they said, "Hey, it's lunch time on Friday. "If you want any chance of
this thing getting fixed today, "you need to be on your way." I said, "Bye," and hit the road. - Well that was scary too. You had to continue driving on it. - Right. The axles, I've still got two good ones. This one has a little
bit of a cant to it now. I just put the hazards on and
went about 40 miles an hour, which is the minimum
speed on the Interstate, and I limped my way to Coulee RV. I got there, I think,
about 1:30 or two o'clock. Coulee RV got me in. As soon as I pulled in,
they were waiting for me. They pulled the RV up, got the wheel off, took it apart, got the leaf spring off, took the leaf spring to a metal
shop to have one fabricated, got it back, put it on, replaced the worn out
tire on the other side, because it was riding like this, and it was basically trashed. I was in and out of there in three hours. - [Tara] That was unbelievable. A bad situation couldn't
have gone any better. - [Chad] Absolutely. - [Tara] The whole time
I kept saying to him, "I'm so sorry I'm not there, I wish I could be there to help you." and he was, "I'm glad you're not here
because you'd be freaking out "and you would stress me out even more." He's probably right. - Yeah, it was best. Now we know, if we ever
have an incident like that, I'll just send you with a bag, walking to the next destination. - Hey, that doesn't sound right. - That situation turned
out really, really well. A big shout out to Coulee RV,
because they were awesome. - Yep, that's our list of
what has broken so far. Hopefully we don't have to add on-- - You had to say "so far". - I know. (laughs) Well hopefully we don't add
on any more to that list. - At least no self-induced stuff. I don't want to run into
anything else, ever. - Like you said, hopefully you're handy if you're thinking about
getting into RVing, because if you can get the
parts sent to you directly, that saves a lot of hassle. - Or if its something you can
just kind of rig up yourself, like the plexi-glass, or the hinges. There's all kind of little projects. My project list is a mile long. - Never ending. - So, if you're getting
into RVing full time to just relax and do nothing, pick again. (laughs) Because you're gonna be busy. For us it's a labor of love. I like working on this. When we first started
thinking about RVing, I wanted to learn
everything I could about it, that's why I brought all my tools, in a toolbox that scratched our RV, with us, because I wanted
to be able to learn, I wanted to be able to
work on this myself. I've learnt quite a bit, but this just goes to show you that even though we're
doing this full time, we think we're pretty good at it now, stuff just happens, man. Stuff's gonna break. - We chose Grand Design, not only because it was
the right RV for us, but because we heard great things about the customer service. In the past two years,
they have proven that. The decision that we made
really hasn't been that bad as far as stuff breaking. - No, I don't think so. - (knocking on wood) I feel like I got to knock on wood here. (knocking on wood) - Be sure to stay tuned, I
think we have some out takes. Check us out on Instagram and Facebook. - And our website, changinglanesrv.com - If you have any questions about any of the things we talked about, or things in general, feel free to comment below. We try to get to every single question, it may take us a day or two. - It might. - Send us an email from our website. - changinglanesrv.com - We'll see you next time. - Bye guys. - So do it again, lets
do a little more up. - Okay (Chad clearing throat) (both laughing) - I tried to channel my inner energy. It's gone, it's not there. (mumbles) Oh, you're filming right now. (Chad laughs) - Don't forget, the
camera's over on this side. I keep looking at myself,
which makes me off. - Well, I'm looking at
myself because I just got up. - Hey people. (laughing) - There's Daisy over
there taking a pee-pee. - We got a dump going on over here. - Not the RV kind. - Daisy doesn't adhere to
the dump schedule of the RV. - I think it would take Daisy decades to fill up a black tank. - So, what time was it? Who you gonna call? - Grand Design?
- Mobile tech. - Oh.
(laughs) - Christina's calling. - Go ahead. - Hello. - [Christina] Hey Tara, it's Christina. - Hi. - Hello. - [Christina] Hey, how are you? - Good, I'm talking to you on my watch, because we're standing
in front of a camera. You're on video right now (laughing) - [Christina] I'm sorry. - Don't be sorry. - You like it when I
talk about hydraulics. (laughing) - If you're wondering why we
were rushing through these all of a sudden, its
because we just got a call to go to dinner. (imitates squeaking) - Most of the time. - Do you hear those dogs,
it's like a dog fight. Daisy's in a dog fight. Daisy's gonna kick some butt. (laughs) - They were awesome. - And thanks Emily, for your help too. (laughs) Here's a shout out. - If you have any questions about any of the repairs
we talked about or shown, please feel free to ask us. - You need to burp? - I do. (laughs) I was holding it in. - I know, but I could tell. - Okay I'll start that over. You want in Daisy? You want in, why won't we let you in?
