Newell Renewal - Day 1

7:14 am - Real Saturday - April 18th - Wittmann, AZ - 56° F, 43% humidity, wind 3 mph out of the northeast......high clouds today with a forecast high of 76° F.  On this day in 2018 we were in Winslow, AZ 'Standin' on the Corner'.......

.....we were on our one month journey to Southwest Harbor, ME to spend the summer.....seems so long ago today.

About mid morning on fifth Saturday we moved the 1999 Newell out of Newell House......

....and moved Glenn and Laureen's 1984 Newell Classic into its former site to begin working on its many issues.....

.....there are surveillance cameras everywhere inside.....

.....first up was the task of removing the 36 year old Leece-Eville gear driven alternator in order to deliver it to Turbo and Electric of Phoenix for rebuild.  This was a task to which I was not looking forward.  The space in their engine bay is smaller than mine by a foot as their coach is only 35' feet long, and getting to the 3 bolts which affix the alternator to the engine block is difficult.  All that being said, it was not as difficult as I suspected it would be.....who knew?  It took about an hour to remove the three bolts, and then lift the 20 pound alternator from its perch......

.....whilst it was I who is shown in the victory pictures, Glenn took his turns at turning the wrench.....we both wore a lot of grease at the end......

.....it was literally a whirlwind of activity all day long.  While Tom and Glenn drove over to Turbo and Electric of Phoenix I worked with Laureen on determining the cause of their Dometic Classic fridge demise.  As it turns out the control board must have been affected by the electric surge caused by the failing alternator.  We found a blown fuse, and when we replaced it the fuse immediately blew again, so it is obvious the board has been compromised.......

.....I was able to source a replacement board through Dinosaur Electronics.  The replacement board is their Micro P-711 which can be had on eBay for $99 shipped.  Since Tom and Glenn were driving all the way to Phoenix Tom decided it was time to replace the flat tire on his Case loader, so Glenn and I helped him remove the 900 lb. rim, and tire for transport in Tom's trailer......

.....after dropping off the tire to be repaired, they headed to the alternator place where it was determined pretty quickly that the Leece-Neville must be rebuilt, so they left it and headed home.  It took us about 30 minutes to reinstall the large loader tire, but we got 'er done.....

.....Laureen spent the better part of Friday removing the many bolts and screws which hold the dashboard in place.  Why you might ask?  Well, it will be easier to access all the wiring from above, than from the cramped confines below.  We need to find the faulty wiring which no longer provides 12 volt DC power to the headlights and turn signals.......

.....she's hoping to finish that task sometime Saturday.  Once the dashboard is out of the way we should be able to find the problem and fix it.  Tom took time to inspect their 8 air bags, and determined that many of them are leaking, so we will remove one today, I believe, and verify the correct part number then order 8 new airbags to install.....

.....as I mentioned earlier, Tom has a lot of surveillance around the Newell compound....our coach last night.

TLE made her famous Cillantro Salmon for dinner.....Glenn and Laureen joined us for dinner, and then around 8:15 pm for some Jacuzzi time.  A perfect way to end a very productive day.  We have a long ways to go on the 1984 Newell Classic, but we made a lot of progress, and Glenn and Laureen are feeling much better than they did when they arrived Thursday evening.

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A riveting day......

7:20 am - Friday - April 17th - Wittmann, AZ - 56° F, 38% humidity, wind 7 mph out of the east by northeast.......clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 82° F.  On this day in 2016 we were in Yuma, AZ to attend to dental appointments the next day in Los Algodones.....

......we walked from our hotel over to Prison Hill Brewing for some brews and dinner.  One of our favorite micro breweries ever!

We began our Thursday attending the virtual graveside funeral of my mother, Virginia Dale, at 9:30 am via 'Zoom'.....

.....my sister Hilary, her husband Bob, and daughters Stephanie and Caroline represented us.  It turned out to be a beautiful, sunny, but very cold day in Spokane (33° F at 9:30 am).  There were 5 bouquets of flowers representing Virginia's 5 children and their families.....

......it was a relatively short, but touching ceremony as we bid adieu to our mother for the final time......

.....a video was made of the ceremony, which my sister will edit, and forward to each of us at a later date.  Most of my children were able to be in attendance via 'Zoom'.

We had heard from Glenn and Laureen earlier in the morning, and they had advised they would cover the final 430 miles from Las Cruces, NM to Wittmann in one day, so we spent the rest of the day thinking about, and planning for their arrival around 6 pm.

In the interim I began to wipe down the exterior of the Newell again.  You will recall I cleaned the exterior while we were in Borrego Springs boondocking in February.  Since then it has rained a couple of times, and it needed attention once again.  While I wiping off a couple of months of grime I noticed numerous rivets were missing on each side of the coach, so I took a break from cleaning  to retrieve my rivet gun, and rivets to replace the missing ones.....

.....in several cases there were multiple rivets missing in succession.....

.....in all I replaced 9 missing rivets.  This is more than usual, but it has been over a year since I did a complete rivet inspection.....

 
......I received a call from Laureen around 5:20 pm advising they were 35 miles out, and should be in Wittmann by 7 pm.....wait, what?  It's only 35 miles...that should take no more than 40 minutes.  Then it occurred to me that she was on daylight savings time, and thought it was 6:20 pm.....I reminded her that Arizona does not participate in DST....we laughed a little, and then promised to meet them out on Center Street in Tom's Razor to guide them into Newell House....

 
.....they arrived on Center Street just before we arrived, and while they were waiting for us they smelled and saw smoke coming from under the driver side dashboard......by the time we arrived they had applied a liberal dose of a fire extinguisher and prevented flames from appearing.....what a way to arrive!  

Once we were sure there was no ongoing issue we led them over to Tom's property and got them parked.....I noticed the entire front of their '82 Newell was plastered thick with a bug apocalypse....lol.

It turns out when they had the alternator issue on Wednesday that their Dometic fridge stopped working along with the headlights and turn signals, so we've got our work cut out for us before we even get to the solar installation.  It should be an interesting 10 days, or so, right?

We ended the day with a nice outdoor fire before adjourning.  Glenn and Laurren were invited by Tom and Darlene to stay in their guest bedroom until we get their Newell habitable again.  

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Doh!

6:55 am - Thursday - April 16th - Wittmann, AZ - 48° F, 44% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the north by northeast.....clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 83° F.  On this day in 2017 we were taking a bike ride in San Jose, CA.....

....we were able to snag a spot at the San Jose Elks Lodge for 3 days while visiting with our good friend Don Neff.

TLE and I began Wednesday opening up the solar panel boxes from A.M. Solar to be sure each of the four 170 watt panels was undamaged.  Based on the condition of the boxes we did not think we would find any damage, but we had to check.......

....and we were right......each panel was completely pristine.  Once we had confirmed the panels were fine we boxed them back up to protect them until we begin the solar installation.

On that front Glenn and Laureen left Ft. Stockton, TX and made it all the way to Las Cruces, NM by late afternoon, but not without problems.  Late morning I got a call from Glenn advising the gauge which indicates how many volts are being put into the batteries by the alternator was indicating 17-18 volts....that is way, way too high.  It should be 13-14 volts max.  Tom and I advised them to turn off the switch which connects the batteries to the alternator and continue.  That did not work.  A few minutes later they called again to say they had lost their turn signals, and headlights.....doh!  After more consultation we came to the conclusion that they needed to disconnect the alternator completely by removing one of the cables from the alternator.....↴

.....once they did that the overcharge ended, and they were able to continue their drive to Las Cruces where they overnighted in an RV park.  It is my suspicion that the 90 amp breaker button (left one in picture below) on the rear electric panel popped, and that is why they lost power to turn signals and headlights, as well as the fridge.  We'll see.....hope it is that simple.....

.....we are also hoping the alternator issue is that the voltage regulator has bitten the dust, which is a pretty easy fix.  When Glenn and Laureen arrive we will back their coach into the Newell House and remove the alternator to have it checked at a local shop.  We hope they will arrive here late Thursday, or early Friday.

TLE and I had an appointment at Walmart to pickup up another grocery order at 4 pm....accepting that pickup time was a big, big mistake!  I'll get into that in a few sentences.  We left home around 2:30 pm to drive to the Trader Joe's in Surprise to buy a few things......

.....there was a pretty long line to get into the store as they were letting one person in for every person who left.  It took about 25 minutes to get inside, and once inside we had the things we wanted pretty quickly....

.....our route over to Walmart took us down Bell Road and right past the local In 'N Out Burger place, so we got in the drive through line and ordered two 'protein' style cheese burgers.....

....of course, their dining room is closed, and that includes all of the outdoor tables, so we ate our burgers in the VW before continuing our drive to Walmart.  On the way there TLE got the email from Walmart advising our grocery order was ready for pickup, but several items she ordered were not available.....ginger ale, anchovies, and cranberry juice.  We decided to stop off at the local Fry's Supermarket to see if we could get those items there....they had the ginger ale, and cranberry juice, but no anchovies.....wait, what?  Are people hoarding anchovies? Apparently so, because we stopped at another Fry's, and then a WINCO, and finally a Safeway where we finally found anchovies....crazy, right?

At last we arrived at Walmart and found a long line of cars waiting to pickup up their orders......

 All the reserved sites are full, and we are behind 7 cars 

waiting for a reserved site to open

.....finally we were able to pull into reserved site #7.  It took another 30 minutes to get our order.....we did not leave Walmart until after 5 pm, and were not home until 5:50 pm.  Moral of our story......choose an early pickup time!

We watched the current episode of Survivor with Tom and Darlene, then Tom and I took a dip in the Jacuzzi.....a very nice way to end the day.....I slept like the dead.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Cross it off!

7:13 am - Wednesday - April 15th - Wittmann, AZ - 51° F, 31% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the north by northwest......clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 80° F.  On this day in 2012 we were in Savannah, GA walking along the Savannah River......

....TLE's hair was much longer than it is now.

I crossed a  few more items off the 'TO DO' list after a few listless, mostly directionless days....hmmm....maybe it was more like 10 days.  I am sure many of you are like me since we closed down the USA......you have the news on in the background most of the day, and are kind of mesmerized by it all.  Okay, maybe not, but I have been until the last couple of days as I have been attempting to ween myself off the news and focus on other things.  

A year ago when we arrived here in Wittmann at Newell House I spent a day fixing the throttle linkage on our Kohler 7.5 kw propane generator.....I wrote about that here.  As you will recall, the linkage was 'frozen', and needed a little lubrication to work properly again.  I discovered after I pushed the generator tray back in and buttoned everything up that I was only getting power on one of the two 50 amp legs meaning I was only getting power to half the outlets in the coach from the generator.  It was quite difficult to pull the generator out to work on it, and I did not want to do that again, so I just kind of put that issue on the back burner for another day.  Well, a lot of 'another' days have come and gone since then.....about 14 months of them to be exact.  

Just the other day I was thinking about what the issue might be since fixing that issue was on my 'TO DO' list.  It suddenly occurred to me that there are two switches on the back of the generator.....kind of like breaker switches......and I wondered if one of them had 'blown', or if I had inadvertently turned one of them off when I was working on it last year.  Well, Tuesday was finally 'another' day, and time to check out my theory.  I only had to open the top hinged panel to look to the rear of the generator, and what did I see......

.....yup, there are two switches there, and one of them (the one in the foreground of the red circle) was flipped to the right, not to the left, which is the 'ON' position.  That was easy!  I flipped the switch back to the left using a long PVC pipe I have in the trailer, and what do you know?  I had power on both 50 amp legs once again.....doh!

The next item on my 'TO DO' list was to call Sirius/XM Radio and negotiate a lower monthly subscription price.  I have three XM radio receivers....one in the Newell, one in the VW and one in the trailer.  I had kind of lost track of how much I was paying, but discovered a month ago that I was being debited $49+ per month for those radios, or about $15/month each.  I tried to call, but their lines were busy, so I utilized their 'LIVE CHAT' option.  Within 10 minutes Danielle responded to my message, and we began our negotiations.  Her first offer was to lower my monthly by $10/month.  I countered that it was not enough, and that I wanted to pay $15/month.  There was a long pause, and then the winning offer was tendered.....$60/year per radio, or $180 total for the next 12 months.  The catch was I had to pay the year in advance.....easy choice for me.  Within minutes I had email confirmation that I had paid the required $180, and was renewed until 4/14/2021.  This is an annual savings for me of almost $420, and I had to give up NOTHING.  It just goes to show you all you have to do is ask.....amazing!

Just as I was finishing up my 'LIVE CHAT' I saw the UPS truck arrive, and went outside to see if he had the solar panels, etc. Glenn and Laureen had shipped here from A.M. Solar in Springfield, OR.....yes he did.....

....there were six boxes in all....the big boxes are, obviously, the solar panels, and the smaller boxes contain everything else needed for the installation.  And on that note I am happy to report that as of 1 pm Central time Tuesday Glenn and Laureen were on the road in their 1984 Newell heading for Wittmann, AZ.  They covered 345 miles Tuesday, and spent their first night in a Walmart parking lot in Ft. Stockton, TX......

First night 'Wallydocking'

So, after crossing two more things off my 'TO DO' list I was on a roll, and decided to finally replace the very dim light over the stove with one of the new ones I have had for over a year for just this purpose.  Within 30 minutes the old was replaced with the new.....

....and now we have more than enough light in that space......

......so I am now down to 2 things left on my once lengthy 'TO DO' list......get my Elks Lodge renewal membership card, and call Kool Filtration to find out what filters I need to service our reverse osmosis water system.  Usually we have Ruben come out and service it when we are in Fontana, but we are not there this year, so I need to do it myself.  I'm finishing up the 'TO DO' list just in time for the arrival of Glenn and Laureen and their '84 Newell.  We will have two big projects to complete on their 1984 when they arrive......1) install solar, and 2)  find a big leak in their air system.

TLE and I spent what was left of daylight Tuesday on the 'lido deck' reading, and listening to 'Classic Vinyl' on our suddenly much more affordable Sirius/XM Radio.  TLE and I continue to be asymptomatic for the Wuhan Virus.....all is well in our Wittmann social distancing compound.

Thanks for stopping by!

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My mother, Virginia Dale......

7:10 am - Tuesday - April 14th - Wittmann, AZ - 50° F, 43% humidity, wind 7 mph out of the north by northeast......partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 77° F.  On this day in 2016 we arrived at the Fontana/Rialto Elks Lodge #2013 for our first stay....we were not yet members, but because we had applied for membership we were allowed to stay.....

.....since that first stay in April of 2016 we have returned 3 times for extended stays.

Within an hour of TLE and I waking up Monday morning we received a text from my brother-in-law, Bob Hammett, that my mother had 'gone home' at 8:52 am.....

My mother, Virginia Dale, at age 18

She was very athletic in her youth

On their wedding day in February of 1949....Virginia and Arthur

She took up the guitar in the late 50's

One of my favorite pictures

 She had a wonderful voice, and performed 

often before large crowds singing solos.....

....and in stage plays

One of the last pictures of us together taken in 2014

......it is never easy to lose a parent.  My father died in January of 1978 of colon cancer, and it still feels like yesterday to me.  As I watched my mother's life slowly slipping away it brought back all those memories of my last hours with my father.  Going through that experience with my father changed how I felt about death......I was no longer afraid of death.  Do I want to die?  Of course not, but I will not be afraid when my time comes because of the example of my father and mother as they prepared to 'go home'.  I know I will see them again. 

I remember when my father died....I didn't really understand how many lives he had touched until the graveside funeral....we had notified a few people of the funeral arrangements not thinking there would be a large crowd.  When I arrived at the internment site I was shocked to find some 400 people there, and more arriving all the time.  I know from the messages I have received in the last 24 hours that my mother had a similar impact in her life.  Art and Virginia led amazing lives, and touched many lives.  They raised 5 children, and now have 11 grand children, 14 great grand children, and 2 great, great grand children.....quite a legacy.

Around 12:30 pm Virginia's 5 children came together in another 'Zoom' call, talking and sharing for almost 2 hours.  Due to the current pandemic 4 of the siblings will not be able to be in attendance at her funeral.  Virginia will be interred in Spokane, WA with my sister, Hilary, her husband, Bob, and two daughters, Stephanie and Caroline in attendance this Thursday, April 16th.  The service will be video taped, and we are hopeful we will be able to virtually attend via 'Zoom'....I hope that works out.  A friend sent me the following artist's rendition of what my mother's moments after she left her earthly body may have looked like....

Painting by John Holcombe

....as she met Jesus for the first time.  I know how much she was looking forward to that moment.

Monday was a very emotional day for me and my siblings, as well as our significant others.  Sometime around 2 pm Tom invited me to help him install his new street sign pole.  I have a lot of experience digging post holes from my 9 months working at RORVR, so I took upon myself that task.  The pole is 10' long, so we made the ole 24+ inches deep.  Tom used this 2 part foam to set the pole, and it worked quite well.  In the following pictures you can see the foam slowly expanding until is was above grade.....

.....once it cures Tom will cut off the excess down to ground level.  It came out well, and it served to get my mind off of the morning's events.....

.....we had dinner with Tom and Darlene once again, and then shared a fire with them.  The sunset was beautiful once again.....

....and so came to an end the day my mother went home to be with my father.  My mother is at peace, and so am I.

Thanks for stopping by!

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which over the course of a year adds up to enough to by a tank of diesel for which we thank you very much!