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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Into the belly of the beast.....Day 5 - Celebrate!

 8:20 am - Real Saturday - February 5th - Newell House, AZ - 39° F, 22% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the northeast.....sunny, clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 66 F.  On this date in 2013 we were in Mt. Dora, FL having lunch at the Frog and Monkey Restaurant and Pub......↴

One simple picture sums up my Friday.....this was how our 'level' situation looked at 10:30 am Friday morning, and how it looks at 8:30 am Saturday morning......no change.  It is this image for which I had hoped......

......because there is no way I wanted to be under the Newell again for a long, long time.  In short, I can now celebrate the fact that I have successfully changed out my 8 airbags, reconnected the air lines, and nothing appears to be, knock on wood, leaking.  I was pretty sure that would be the verdict, and I've had that feeling before and been quite wrong.

Celebrate - Three Dog Night

The rest of my day was spent in repose, napping, watching YouTube videos, and taking two 1 mile walks with TLE around Newell House.  There was also a 40 minute Jacuzzi interlude mid afternoon thrown in for good measure.

When we boondocked for 2 months in the Anza Borrego Desert I decided I wanted to rearrange the two solar panels sitting at the very back of the Newell roof from their current orientation which is 'north and south' (or front to back) to 'east and west' (side to side).  This is how we installed my brother-in-law's solar panels two years ago......

.....and how I should have had A.M. Solar install them 7 years ago.....ahhh, hindsight is always 20/20.  With the current configuration I can tilt only one of these two panels at a time.  If I tilt both of them the one in front (facing the sun) will block the sun from the rear one.  The way they are now I tilt the back panel, and leave the front panel flat.  By reorienting them to 'east and west' I would be able to tilt them both, and they will both get the sun, thus increasing the number of amps flowing into my batteries, thereby reducing the charge time each day, and improving my charging capabilities on overcast days.  I will spend Saturday investigating that possibility, and if things work out I will actually reorient them on Saturday.  On Sunday I plan to spend part of the day giving my ALCOA wheels their annual spa day, and get them looking like mirrors once again.

I feel much better this morning (Saturday), and am grateful for the day of relative rest.  We're hoping to be back outside by Monday, so it's time to get to work!

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Into the belly of the beast - Day 4

 8:58 am - Friday - February 4th - Newell House, AZ - 42° F, 20% humidity, wind 7  mph out of the northeast.....sunny, clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 63° F.  On this day in 2017 we were at the 'Desert Bar' near Parker, AZ with Steve and Candy Landry.......↴

Thursday was a bad day for me.  I woke up feeling totally drained of energy after 3 days of toil in the belly of the beast.  All I had to do was reconnect the airlines to the 8 airbags, right?  On a normal day when I had not already spent 3 days expending large amounts of energy this really would have been an easy day. This task is not a strenuous one, especially on the four front airbags where there is plenty of room to actually sit up while screwing in the various brass fittings, and connecting each bag with 3/8" lengths of new air lines.  All that being said, I was out of gas before I began the day.  

In preparation for the reconnection of the airlines I bought all new brass fittings, except for the 40 year old brass T's, which were in very good shape.  The first thing I needed to do was install the new brass elbows, and nipples into each of the T's.....to be sure I got it right I took a picture several days of one of the T's to aid me in assembling the new ones.....

.....in all it took me about 45 minutes to assemble them before I crawled under the coach for the first time Thursday..... 

The red tool in the picture is a hose cutter

.....I took time a couple of days ago to polish up the 40 year old T's.  Once I cut the new air lines to length it was time to begin the installation, and thus began the hard part of day 4 in the belly of the beast. I only took 3 tools under the coach with me, and I ended up not needing the open end wrench on the right in the picture below....I only used the crescent wrench and the ratcheting wrench....

.....I had the new fittings installed, and the air lines connected on the front four bags in less than an hour.....

.....in the picture above the blue air line on the right is the supply line from the coach.  The new black line connects the airbags on each side of the shock.  As I crawled out from under the front of the coach I was dead beat, and knew the hard part was now to come.  There is no way to sit up in the rear of the coach to install the brass fittings, and air lines, so I had to do everything lying on my side, or back extending my arm (left, or right) to it maximum length to thread in the fittings, and connect the air lines....most of what I did was done 'blind' as I could not see what I was doing most the time.  Finally, after another 2 hours I was tightening the final air line fitting.....I was way past exhausted by this point, and felt slightly sick to my stomach.  I've only been that tired a few times in my life, and it is not a pleasant feeling.

After three days of finding each step easier than I thought it would be the 4th day proved to be my undoing, as reconnecting those air lines was far more difficult than I expected, and took more energy than I had left in the tank.  What did I expect?  I expected it to take less than 2 hours, and it took me about 3.5 hours.

Now that the airlines were reconnected I plugged into Tom's air system to air up the coach once again, and to see if there were any obvious leaks.  All 8 airbags inflated as they should, and there were no obvious air leaks.  By 'obvious' I mean there was no sound of hissing air to be heard.  Next I went under the coach with one of those air leak 'sniffers' (an electronic device that magnifies sound with the air of a headset)....

 

....no leaks of the quieter variety were detected!  On Friday I'll raise the coach off the jack stands, move them to the side, and then see if the coach settles, or stays in the same position over time.  If it settles I'll have go under the coach again with a spray bottle of soapy solution to spray on each fitting to find the leak.  Other than that I am doing nothing except resting and recuperating Friday, and taking a couple of Jacuzzis.  There will be no celebrating until we know the airbags will hold air.   If they do then the celebrations will begin!

Of course, there was another long, hot shower and an equally long time spent in the Jacuzzi before I began to feel better.  As I write this morning I feel fine, but tired, and ready for a day of relaxation.

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Into the belly of the beast - Day 3.......

 8:24 am - Thursday - February 3rd - Newell House, AZ - 34° F, 19% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the north.....clear, blue, sunny skies today with a forecast high of 57° F.....BRRR!  On this date in 2012 our solar installation had been completed, and we were one our way south.....↴

As has been the case since I first entered the belly of the beast on Monday I began Wednesday concerned with being able to compress each airbag sufficiently as to be able to squeeze each one in between the upper and lower plates where the old airbags resided.  I spent about 30 minutes trying to devise simple compression tool.  First I employed a ratcheting cargo strap, but it was too bulky, and would be difficult to remove once the bag was in place, then I tried a long zip tie, with a quick release tab, and it worked.  Once I had a system I thought would work I crawled under the front of the coach to the right front wheel and had TLE push the first airbag under the coach.  What I thought would be a problem, was not a problem.  In fact, the actual problem was they went into position quite easily without the zip tie, but it was difficult to get the two threaded studs on top up through the holes as the bags were actually too compressed.....DOH!  These Firestone airbags are very heavy duty, and it is way easier to compress them, than to expand them manually.  After wrestling with the first of 8 airbags using a pry bar to push of top of the airbag up high enough to get the threaded posts to go through the holes in the mountain plate (the first picture below is of one of the airbag compartments where the light is sitting) I was finally able to get all three nuts started on each post, and had them tightened down in about 5 minutes.  There are two holes in the top mounting plate, and one hole in the bottom mounting plate, and the airbag must fit in between those two plates......

.....in the next picture you can see that there are two airbag compartments, one of each side of the shock (the old shocks were still in place).....

....at any rate, after struggling to install the first couple of airbags I took some time to think through my problem.  I needed to be able to partially inflate each bag while the bag was in place, thread on the three nuts, and then be able to release the pressure.  I suddenly occurred to me that I have a shutoff valve that I plug into my quick connect air fitting in the engine bay.  I thought if I attached that to one of Tom's many air hoses I could then insert the male end into the top of the hollow threaded post (one of two posts on top of the airbag....this hollow post is where the air fittings are attached, and how air gets into the bag - see picture below).....

....so when I had pushed in the next airbag I simply stuck the male end through the hole in the top plate, and into the hole in the threaded, hollow post on the airbag.....

.....and what do you know?  It worked!  Once the bag was inflated, and all three posts were through their respective holes I threaded on the three nuts, and then turned off the air.  The amount of time this idea saved me was amazing.  I was done installing all 8 airbags by 1:30 pm....about 3 hours after I started.  I could have finished everything Wednesday by proceeding directly to the next step....reconnect all the air fitting, but I decided I was too tired, and wanted to do that when I was fresh, so I deferred that task until Thursday.  It shouldn't take more than 2 hours Thursday to attach and reconnect all the air fittings, then it will be time to reintroduce air to the suspension system to check for leaks.....

At the front of the coach installing airbags.....

....and at the rear of the coach doing the same thing

.....after a suitable recovery period, and then a long hot shower I headed out to the Jacuzzi to soak for about 40 minutes......

My best 'Kilroy was here' impression

.....once again we ate dinner with Tom, Darlene, and Wade (long time friend from Alberta, Canada).  Tom made Quesadillas for us, which were very good.  As TLE and I walked back to the coach around 6:30 pm I snapped this picture of the beautiful sunset afterglow with a crescent moon......

......once again the things I was concerned about proved to be no issue, and the installation of the new airbags went much more quickly than the removal of the old ones.  Nevertheless, after 3 days in the belly of the beast I am really worn down physically, and I have sore muscles in places I didn't know there were muscles.  

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Into the belly of the beast - Day 2

 8:15 am - Wednesday - February 2nd - Newell House, AZ - 48° F, 27% humidity, wind 8 mph out of the northwest.....clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 60° F.  On this date in 2013 we were enjoying a spectacular sunset at Cedar Key, FL.....the water was so calm that evening that it perfectly reflected the sunset......↴

I've watched a lot of YouTube videos over the past year showing guys trying to remove shocks on old bus conversions that have been in place for decades, and it isn't pretty.  You see some videos in which it takes them literally hours to remove one shock.  As near as I can tell, the shocks on our Newell are the originals, so they are at least 40 years old....I see nothing in the documentation I received with our Newell which indicates the shocks being replaced, ever, so I began Tuesday with a little healthy fear, and some trepidation.  By the way, I checked the date codes on the old Firestone airbags and they were made in the 16th week of 1981....yup, they are the originals!  My goal for Tuesday was to remove the old shocks, and install the new Koni adjustable shocks, but I get ahead of myself.....as usual.

I was very sore when I awoke Tuesday morning around 7:30 am, and could not imagine going back into the belly of the beast again.  Around 9:20 am TLE suggested I go take a Jacuzzi to mitigate some of the soreness, so I did.  What a tonic!  As I sat immersed in that 104° F water I could literally feel the soreness oozing out of my muscles, and within 20 minutes I was ready to go!

In preparation for removing the shocks I sprayed liberal doses of Kano Aerokroil penetrating oil, whose motto is "The oil that creeps", over two days, and does it ever!  Before I crawled under the Newell for the first time Tuesday I assembled the tools I felt I would need to get all four shocks removed......

Amazing penetrating oil!

......at the top of the picture below is a large breaker bar for the tough to remove 1 1/2" nuts, three Craftsman pry bars, a shorter breaker bar, a closed end 1 1/2" wrench, articulating socket wrench with long handle, a 3/4" drive socket wrench, and a large crescent wrench.....all of which I would use removing the 4 shocks....

....I began with the right front shock using the shorter breaker bar in the picture above, and much to my surprise the nut moved quite easily!  I immediately retrieved the 3/4" drive Craftsman socket wrench to finish removing that nut.  Would the next nut be as easy.....answer, yes it was!  Next up was to physically remove the shock from the two threaded mounting posts....the bottom moved quite easily, however, the top would not budge.  Instead of wasting a lot of energy on removing that front shock I sprayed the bushings on the top of the shock with Aerokroil, and moved on to the front left shock, giving the Aerokroil time to work its magic on the right front shock.

This is where I ran into the first, but only stubborn nut....the top nut.  I had to utilize the large, long handled breaker bar to get that nut moving, and within seconds it began to spin counter clockwise.  I was able to use the 3/4" drive Craftsman socket wrench to finish removing it, and then moved onto the lower nut......it was as easy as the first two. Once I had both the nuts off the left front shock I sprayed the bushings (upper and lower) with Aerokroil, and returned to the right front shock.  In just 10 minutes the Aerokroil had penetrated the subborn bushing, and the shock came off quickly.

I returned to the left front shock after about 10 minutes, and experienced the same amazing results.....I was able to just pull the shock off both mounting bolts with just my hands.....

The right front shock

Two down, two to go

......it was only 11:15 am by this time and I already had two of the 4 shocks removed.  I'm thinking, maybe I can get all four off by lunch time, so I moved to the rear of the coach to begin removing the nuts on those two shocks.  I was able to get all four nuts removed from those shocks, but I couldn't get them (the shocks) to budge, so I soaked all four bushings on the shocks, and took a lunch break.  After lunch I spent time in the trailer using my bench grinder wire wheel to clean up the eight 1 1/2" nuts, and washers, then began to prep two of the Koni's for installation on the front.  I applied some lube to the 8 bushings so they would slide onto the mounting posts easily, then went under the coach to install them.....

.....it only took about 10 minutes per shock, and I was half way home. From there I moved to the back of the coach again to remove the remaining two shocks, and once again the magic Aerokroil had done its job....I had them both off in less than 5 minutes......

.....you can see in the picture above how tight the space is there.  I prepped both shocks, and took everything under the coach with me so I could get them both installed without having to crawl out for anything.  In spite of the tight conditions I was able to get them both installed in about an hour.  I called TLE over and began to push out the tools for the last time on the shock job.  TLE snapped a few pictures as I emerged from the belly of the beast.....

Thumbs up!

Am I ever happy!

I was also very tired, and very filthy!

.....in the end it was not nearly as difficult as I had imagined.......isn't that almost always the case?  After resting for a couple of minutes I gathered my last reserves, stood up, and removed my gloves, skull cap, jump suit, and shoes then headed for the wash sink to begin removing grease from my hands (mostly wrists) and face.  The skull cap kept my hair pretty clean.  After a suitable interval I headed into the man cave shower for a 30 minute hot shower.

In reflection, I was able to meet my goal of removing the old shocks, and installing the new Koni shocks in one day.  It took me a little over 4 hours, so I've got about 9.5 hours invested so far with at least another 4-5 hours to go. By changing my airbags, and shocks myself I've probably saved at least $1,000 in labor costs, if not more, and I am learning a lot more about my coach than I knew before.  I still have to mount the new airbags, and reconnect the airlines on Wednesday.  I'm slightly optimistic I can get them all done in one day, but we shall see what we shall see.  So far everything has gone way more smoothly than I expected.

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Into the belly of the beast - Day 1

 8:30 am - Tuesday - February 1st - Newell House, AZ - 49° F, 40% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the east by northeast......partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 66° F.  On this date in 2012 our solar installation on the Newell continued.....↴

We were up a tad earlier than normal Monday to be ready to move our Newell Classic inside Newell House for the first time since Newell House was built.  We have seen many other Newells inside Newell House, and even worked on my brother-in-law's 1984 Newell inside Newell House back in April of 2020....

1984 Newell Classic - April 2020

.....within minutes of turning off our Newell the work began.  First thing to do is to put her up on jack stands......here you see me placing the large jack stands.....

.....once the Newell was properly 'blocked' allowing me to release the air from the air system, and keep her from crashing down on my person when underneath the beast the real work began.  It took a while for me to determine how many tools I would need, which necessitated numerous visits to Tom's socket treasure trove.  In the end I needed three sockets.....3/4", 1 & 1/16" and 1 & 1/8", as well as the corresponding open/closed end wrenches, and a crescent wrench, or two.  There are three nuts affixing each airbag to the frame of the suspension, and each nut is a different size....go figure!?   By the time I had everything I needed I had crawled into and out from the belly of the beast a dozen times, and was ready for a nap, nevertheless, I crawled under the Newell to begin the removal of 8 air bags including 24 nuts, and 8 airlines running to those 8 bags......eventually I was able to shove the first airbag out to daylight for the first time in 40 years......

They really are the same size!

.....I began with the four front airbags as they would be the easiest....time 10 am....by 12 pm I had successfully removed the front airbags......

The first four

.....working under a 40 year old vehicle of any kind is pretty messy, so I wore a jump suit my friend Richard Entriken had gifted me 5, or 6 years ago.....

....and by the end of the day it was quite filthy.....

....after removing the first four airbags I took a break to have lunch, and take a short nap, but was back at it around 1 pm crawling under the rear of the coach to tackle the last four airbags.  As I suspected, these four were much more difficult to get at than the ones in the front where I was able to sit up to remove the 12 nuts on those bags, but the rear axle of the coach offered no such luxury.  I had to lay on my side, or back to remove those final 12 nuts, but by 3:40 pm I had removed the last airbag, and let out a slight whoop of joy as I crawled out from the belly of the beast to the well lit Newell House interior.  So, five hours and 40 minutes to remove the 8 airbags.  I only had two really difficult nuts to remove out of the 24, thankfully.  In spite of wearing the jump suit my head, neck, hair, and neck got quite filthy.....

.....the hair on the back of my head got quite crusty with old grease, and oil, which required a quite lengthy hot shower in Tom's mancave bathroom, which has two shower heads.  TLE had to come in to help make sure I got all the grease out of my hair, my neck, ears, and face.....what a mess!

At this point we are right on schedule.....I figured it would take a day to get the airbags off, and it did.  I figure it will take a day to remove the old shocks, and install the new ones, and then a third day to install the new airbags if all goes well, and the river don't rise.....

.....it should take a little less time to install the new airbags as I won't be dealing with nuts and bolts with 40 years of grime on them.  The new nuts should just spin onto the new threaded posts, and then it will just be a matter of torqueing them.

How am I feeling after one day in the belly of the beast?  Very sore....I feel like I played a game of full contact football yesterday......every muscle in my body is sore, but onward we press....two more days and life should be back to normal....lol.....I hope!  Special thanks to TLE who spent the entire day retrieving the nuts I removed, and the 8 filthy airbags, as well as getting me snacks, and drinks....her moral support is invaluable.  Also, thanks to Tom for his advice, and concern for my safety.

Thank for stopping by!

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