Newell Renewal - Day 7

7:29 am - Friday - April 24th - Wittmann, AZ - 70° F, 31% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the north by northwest......clear, blue, hot, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 97° F.  On this day in 2019 we arrived at Ramona Oaks RV Resort to begin our 9 month stay......

Glenn and Laureen arrived a week ago Thursday with a laundry list of things to fix.  I'm sure they felt overwhelmed with the enormity of what had to be done before they could roll their wheels again....I know I did.  Well over those 7 intervening days we have essentially gang tackled that long laundry list and things are coming together rather remarkably.  

I began my day wrapping up the roof top portion of the solar installation by gluing down the 'combiner' box, and then attaching the red and black large cable leads to their respective terminal screws......

......once that was accomplished it was time to replace the water tight lid, and tighten down the 10 allen head screws.....

.....next up on my list was to get their block heater operational.  Whenever they would turn on the block heater switch the breaker controlling that circuit would pop, so we knew there had to be dead short somewhere.  With Laureen's help we determined that one of the two lead wires was bad so we eliminated that, and used the good wire.  I wired up a new cord to attach to the block heater wires and then plugged it in.....

......we then turned on the breaker switch, and then the block heater switch......it worked!  Within 45 minutes the engine water temperature had risen to 110° F....perfect.....

....while I was working on that Glenn and Laureen installed new drain valves on their air tanks which will enable them to drain them without going under the coach to open the petcock valve (in the picture below).....

.....now they can just pull the cables attached to the new drain valves to drain out any water accumulation......

.....around the time they had finished that task Glenn got a call from Turbo and Electric of Phoenix where he had taken the dead alternator a week before advising the rebuilt Leece-Neville alternator was ready for pickup.....

....so he got cleaned up and drove over around 2:30 pm.......he asked me to go with him, but I knew that rush hour traffic in Phoenix is not for the faint of heart, and that drive at that time of day would be a 4 hour round trip, and I could get a lot done in that time.....

There she is on the service counter....all brand spankin' new!

......Glenn was back a tad before 6:30 pm with the alternator.  Now all we need to find are the oil seal and the flange gasket to reinstall her.  I found them online at a diesel parts store in Baton Rouge, LA, but we are going to try and find a local source......

This little piece is crucial to the reinstallation of the alternator, and was missing for a few hours, but Glenn found it in Tom's truck where he had left it!

......while Glenn was gone Laureen and I worked on turning the door window right side up once again.  One of the prior owners had the last initial of their surname etched in the window.  It was a 'W'.....the last owner's name was Morgan, so they turned the window upside down so the 'W' would become an 'M'.....that was cool, but the unforeseen problem  was that upside down the window leaked....a lot!  In the picture below you can see me installing the new butyl tape which will seal the frame of the window from any future water intrusion.....

 .....and that was the end of the 7th day of our 'Newell Renewal' project.  Our short term Jello goal is to be finished with the remaining projects by May 3rd....that gives us about 10 days....hopefully it will not take that long.....lol.

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