Orientation.....

 8:34 am - Sunday - February 6th - Newell House, AZ - 42° F, 26% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the east....clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 72° F....ahhh....back into the 70's again.  On this date in 2012 we awoke in Indio, CA knowing we would be leaving California in a few hours as we began our full time nomadic journey....here we come Arizona.....↴

....we would not enter California again until November of 2013.

I forgot to mention the other day that before I aired up the coach for the first time with the new airbags I drained my air tanks....the first time in 3 years.  Yeah, I know, I should do that more often, but my experience has been that my system just does not generate much water, and I only got a table spoon of water out of all the tanks after 3 years....

Air tanks

.......additionally, I drained my 'slobber tank' for the first time in 3 years, and was I ever surprised at how much waste oil was in there...probably 1/2 gallon....

The waste oil has the consistency of molasses

Slobber tank - holds about 1/2 gallon

.....Detroit Diesel two stroke engines throw off oil through their 'air boxes'.  On earlier two strokes that oil was discharged via large slobber tubes located on each side of the engine below the air boxes, and my 6v92 still has those slobber tubes, but they are only engaged when the slobber tank is full, and in this case, since the tank was full I was finding oil under the engine after each stop.  Now that the tank is empty once again that issue should go away.....

Slobber tube (one of two located on each side of the engine)

.....now, on to the rest of our Saturday.  I had four large projects to complete during our sojourn in Newell House, and having now completed the first two (shocks and airbags) it was time to begin the third of those projects, which was to reorient the two solar panels at the rear of the coach roof from front 'north/south' to 'east/west' as I explained in yesterday's missive.  After spending 4 days under the Newell, it was time to spend some time on the roof. I began by tilting both panels up so I could assess how much slack in the two cables was available before I moved them.  If I had to add cable, which really means running a whole new cable as you don't want splices in a cable that long, I wanted to know before I began to remove anything.  That question was answered pretty quickly, and I began to remove the panels, then the four 'feet' to which each panel is attached......

.....first I had to move the 4 mounting brackets from the ends of each panel......

 

The old position of the mounting brackets (inside red circle)

.....to the side of each panel. To do this I had to drill four new holes in the frame of each panel, and remount each bracket....

The new position of each mountain bracket (inside red circle)

......once that was completed I removed the four 'feet' from their old positions on the roof for each panel, and then cleaned all the old lap sealant, and two sided tape from each one.   I was able to purchase new 3M two sided tape directly from A.M. Solar in Springfield, OR for $12, so once the old residue was removed I mounted the new tape to each 'foot'.....

......next up was to reattach the 'feet' to each panel, and then set them in their new orientation, and once they were where I wanted them, to trace around each 'foot', clean that spot with Acetone, then affix the feet in their new, permanent positions.....

.....I am extremely happy with the finished product.  On Sunday I will apply the Dicor lap sealant to each of the feet, and I will be done.  All that will remain to do (Monday) is to give my ALCOA wheels their much deserved annual 'spa day', and it will be time to move back outside.

Some of you may recall that when we were here two years ago at the beginning of COVID-19 we were having a difficult time finding fresh eggs.  We were put in contact with a local Wittmann resident, Robert Wimmer, who sells 'pasture fed' eggs for about $5/dozen.  Over the time we were here we bought 4, or 5 dozen of these unwashed eggs.  I made contact with Robert a few days ago, and was able to pickup another 2 dozen eggs on Saturday afternoon...

.....half of them were of the larger variety, while the other dozen were a little smaller, so he only charged us $3/dozen....score!  We also bought a bag of navel oranges for $5.

For our evening entertainment we began watching the new Amazon Prime series, 'Jack Reacher'....we have seen both of the 'Jack Reacher' movies starring Tom Cruse, so we were interested in checking out this new series, and we were not disappointed.  We watched 4 of the 8 episodes in Season 1 Saturday nights.

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