↓ Episode 106 – Motorhomes need Maintenance too, All too Often We Forget About the Engine and Chassis

Motor homes need maintenance too. All too often, we forget about the engine and the chassis. This is Eric Stark with the smart RV podcast, delivering the smarts. You need to enjoy the freedom of the RV lifestyle without the fear of breaking. So welcome to the show, everybody. This is episode number 106, and we're gonna mainly be talking about motor homes and the maintenance that, that they need, because sometimes we just forget about it, we ignore it.

But before we get into that, we're gonna talk about living the RV life. And in this case, it's gonna be how much time should you spend per month to maintain your RV? You know, if you're enjoying that RV, you've gotta maintain it, but you don't wanna spend so much time maintaining it that now you can't enjoy the RV and it shouldn't be that way.

A well maintained RV. Should you afford, should afford the opportunity to use it a lot more than the maintenance that it requires. So RV ownership, it comes with responsibilities and one of 'em is maintaining the R. You need to perform maintenance task, and it's gonna depend on, you know, how often it's gonna depend on how often you use your RV, the kind of roads you go down, whether they're dusty, dirty bumpy roads, or it's just all pavement.

So there's gonna be some variables there. So it's not just a straightforward formula. That's gonna work for everybody. But one thing to keep in mind would be just to dedicate at least one hour a month. So looking at your RV and maintaining it, if you do that, you're gonna catch a lot of stuff. Um, you're gonna be able to walk around it, get up on the roof, inspect things, and maybe you'll find that maybe, you know, the roof, you don't have to check every month.

Maybe you put that on a different timeframe, but I would get a log, a journal, something, keep it in the RV, like with so many other things that you should be writing it with your RV model numbers, serial numbers, but keep a maintenance. It doesn't have to be real detailed, but more or less just what's going on so you can look at it.

Okay. I looked, looked at the roof last month, or I looked at the roof three months ago cuz you know, time flies. And it seems like it was just yesterday, but it was really six months ago. But if you spend an hour a month doing that, you're probably gonna be able to keep your RV in really good shape. And now you might go out there and that one hour might turn into three because you find something wrong that now needs to be repaired.

At least you found it and you found it on your own terms. And not just before you're getting ready to go on a trip. So by doing this, you know, by looking at the RV, checking out certain things regularly, like the bat level, uh, excuse me, the fluid levels and the batteries, you know, the tires, there's some other things that that's just gonna be maintenance.

That's gonna help you stay ahead of it. So take the simple steps one hour a month and keep your RV in great shape. Extend its lifespan. Make it last. As long as you can. You got a big investment there. All right. So that's an hour. You're gonna dedicate each month. That's pretty easy. So what I'm gonna ask you to do is spend at least one hour this month, showing your RV some love.

Buy out that hour and get it started. Um, we're coming up to the end of August. So it'd be a great time to start. If you haven't already been doing this the hour, we're coming up to the next section of the show, staying on the road. Motor homes need maintenance too. Quite often, we forget about the engine and the chassis.

We're focused on the house portion of the RV. Now, when I was in Arizona, when my business was. The majority of our customers had motor homes. It was just because it's Arizona, they come down the wintertime, they all drive motor homes or the majority of them do. And so that's where my mind starts running is motor homes.

And so that's where I, my mindset was motor home driven. unintended. So, you know, that's what you see. That's what you're in. That's what people are, are asking for or parts for. They're trying to fix their motor. And there were trailers there don't get me wrong, but there, the trailers were just outnumbered.

It seemed like a lot more motor homes than some of the trailers that were there. They just left there year round. They became kind of park models if you will. So my mindset's been that way. So now here in Montana, it's a different mindset because there's more trailers in Montana. I mean, it's probably 90 to one here.

Um, Yeah, something like that. There's a lot more trailers. And a lot of that's not because people can't afford motor homes or anything like that. It's just Montana has smaller campgrounds. The roads are narrower, smaller, a lot more trees to hit. So the bigger, the RV, it's harder to get into the places where you want to go camping and it can be really difficult and there's RV parks here.

But even a lot of the RV parks seem to be small, although a big motor home would fit, but it just, isn't always the case. During these episodes, I try to stay balanced between the two, but sometimes I always just go to trailers. I default to trailers and you know, and I try to remember the motor homes and it's not that they don't count.

It's just used to trailers. Now, all of a sudden that's where my mind is, but if you take a trailer. Most of the maintenance principles with a trailer apply to a motor home. You know, they both are a house on wheels. You know, a trailer just doesn't have an engine. Doesn't have, you know, the same type of suspension.

Doesn't have a transmission and it's lacking a lot of the electrical, like, you know, the computer and the fuel injection and things like that. To run the engine, a trailer doesn't have that that's in the tow. So if you have a trailer and you're towing it with your truck, more than likely you're driving that truck every day.

So that truck is gonna be maintained regardless, cuz you're gonna maintain it cuz it's your transportation. It's how you get to work. It's how you get here, how you get there. And it's how you pull your RV where, when it comes to motor homes though, sometimes the focus is just on the house and you're not looking at the engine.

You're not looking at the chassis. It's um, basically neglected. And I see that quite often here in our shop, people bring in their RVs and it looks like the tires are bad, you know, just, you know, if you have to get underneath the hood for something, it looks like nothing's been done underneath there and, you know, a hundred years it's exaggeration.

But I think my point being made here, the attention is on the house and not always on the engine and chassis. Even when people buy a new RV or excuse me, a used RV sometimes, you know, we hear about it. They're telling us about it and you know, this killer deal they got on it. It has, um, really low miles.

It's, you know, it's gonna be bad if it hasn't been changed. And then there's that starting point, you know, getting it back to the ground, ground, uh, ground zero, where you're familiar with the maintenance is, and getting it to that point now where you just move forward and quite often, RVs. Even though they're low miles, they still need a lot of work.

Um, it might not look like it, but they do. And people who owned it prior to you probably neglected it the same or not the same, that would be insinuating that you neglect your RV, but they probably neglected it. It seems to be a common thread. Now, some RVs are, you know, uh, more expensive to maintain. So sometimes it makes it a little, uh, less exciting to stay up on the maintenance.

Or you just do the basic maintenance, but they really all need maintenance. So you have to think about the RV as you know, you're, it's your house on wheels and you don't want it to break down when you're going on a trip. And probably the tires are the one thing that are always replaced on a motor home or more often tires and oil changes.

And that's great. That gets you down the road to a degree. But it's not gonna get you everywhere. You need to go all the time because that's not the cure all. So instead of focusing on the house, you know, you're gonna have to put more time on the, the chassis engine and depending on what type it is, if it's a diesel pusher, you know, it's a Ford chassis with a V 10 a freight line.

It's gonna retire require more or less time, and it might even be stuff that is beyond your scope of ability. And you're gonna have to take it to a shop and have the repairs done by a professional, which on some of those chassis that can get really expensive. An oil change on a V 10 versus an oil change on a, um, Freightliner chassis gonna be a huge difference in price.

But if you don't feel like you can do that, then you're gonna have to take it to the shop, but then you're gonna have to trust their judgment. And checking it out and letting you know what problems are coming up or what things you need to do that monthly, yearly mile, you know, a hundred mile, a hundred thousand mile maintenance, 50,000 mile maintenance, whatever the maintenance schedule is, you're gonna have to stick to that and you're gonna have to have them do it.

So if it's a budgetary issue, then you're gonna have to do it on your own, but don't neglect it, you know, so often. Just minor repairs can turn into major repairs and major repairs can be really, really expensive when you're out on the highway, not expecting it. Let's say you're driving cross country and your transmission goes out and you're stuck out on the road and you have to get towed to some small town.

Don't even have a transmission shop. So maybe you're gonna have to get towed to another town, or maybe you're gonna have to order transmission, have it shipped to that town and the local shop. Put it. Maybe it's not their cup of tea. It's not what they do regularly, but they're gonna do it anyways. They're gonna do you a favor.

where's your warranty. You know, if your little shop in the middle of nowhere and your transmission fails, are you gonna go back to 'em? Probably not. You're gonna just go to the next place and maybe possibly even pay for the same job to be done again. And that sounds crazy, but it happens. It happens a lot, you know, here in our store, we hear the stories of stuff like that.

You know, people paying for the same job twice. In fact, we have a guy coming to our shop from the east coast somewhere and he's been sending me emails and this motor home is new to him. It's a used motor. But he has had transmission work done. He has had engine work done. He's been delayed for like two months now.

but he's working his way here. And it's the tune of thousands of dollars. And I remember one of his emails said that the work he just had done at such and such place, you know, he's down the road, another. You know, three days or four days and, and the same work or that, that job failed. And so he had to get it done again at another shop and they showed him all the things that the other shop did wrong.

You know, whether it's, they're telling the truth or not, who knows? So you wanna stay on top of the maintenance and do it at home, do it on your own terms. That's for sure. Cuz this guy out on the road is probably paying twice of what he should have paid for this work. So as it can be very expensive.

Sounds kind of daunting actually. it does. So that's Alexis she's here, um, ah, patiently waiting for the next stop section of the show but she, she works in the store, so she hears the stories, these stories mm-hmm so isn't that true? Alexis, how people just have these problems facing 'em one right after another sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Just lack of, you know, maintaining it. So these are good points. You're bringing. right. And, you know, it's, they're great stories later on, you know, , maybe they are depending, you know, so, you know, keeping the focus on the engine and chassis, isn't the answer either. You have to have a balanced view of both the house, the engine, the chassis, and the more you use the RV.

And this thing looks like new smells like new and it gets used and abused. I just take care of. But over the years, I've done transmission services on it. Uh, changing the coolant, you know, uh, well, I haven't done a tuneup yet. That's coming up at a hundred thousand miles, but the air filters, but, you know, there's certain things I just do because of age and like, you know, last summer because of miles, I was looking at miles.

I wasn't concerned about the serpentine belt and Lexus remembers this. going to someplace in Montana, the haha trail the belt, um, went bad. Mm-hmm and I'm thinking, wow, it only has 90,000 miles on it, but it's actually 20 something years old. So the age killed the belt. So thinking about that. Okay. So the radiator hoses, the coolant hoses or the heater hoses, they need to be replaced too because of age, you know, it's not miles it's age.

So those things. Fuel lines, vacuum lines, evaporator system lines. So those things give out. And so you, you can't forget about that and you might think, well, I don't use the RV. It, you know, we only use it twice a year. Well, you still have to do the maintenance mm-hmm oil should be changed once a year. The antifreeze, if you're not using it, I mean, depending what you put in there might last for five.

but there can still be corrosion. You wanna flush it out at the regular time intervals that the manufacturer recommends and check the radio. Make sure there's not corrosion building up on the inside. Make sure it's circulating. Good. So those little things, sometimes that are hidden, they can, you know, come and bite you when you're out on the highway.

Like I said earlier, tires are pretty obvious. You. You know, they're in front of you, you tires are a normal thing to check. I mean, everybody checks their tires. Most everybody does. They should. right. Otherwise it's flat tire, city but so it's, it's staying on top of it. And trailers are a little bit easier to work on too.

So sometimes a trailer is an easier maintenance project than a motor home and motor homes are more complex. Um, they have more wiring in them. The electronics are more. More complex. There's more of it. I mean, when I look at some of the motor homes we get in here, like recently we put an inverter in a, a new inverter in a, uh, a Freightliner.

I forget what model it was, but it was a Freightliner chassis and comparing that system to what we see. So often in trailers, whether so fifth wheel or a travel trailer, it is so much more complex, so they're, they have more complexities to them. So they're gonna require more time, like in the intro or the first section, the RV lifestyle, we talked about maintaining your RV, maybe an hour a month.

Now that might vary with a motor home, you might do an hour and a half. You might do two hours a month. You might stagger it. You know, one month is the chassis. One month is the house, but you wanna stay on top of that. And I'm kind of pushing this because so often what we see in here in the store, Remember, everything's based on my experiences in the store.

Well, the phone too is just the, the problems people have that are so avoidable, you know, there's some things you're just not gonna be able to avoid. You know, it's just gonna happen. If a fuel pump decides to fail, it's gonna fail. You can't really do anything about that, but there's so many other things that you can stay ahead of.

And when you do it at home or your favorite shop, It is so much more pleasant. You know, it's not as painful. Mm-hmm anything you do on the road costs more costs more. When that, uh, serpentine belt of mine went out, we were able to find a Napa store that had one, but it was, I think, 30 miles in the wrong direction.

I didn't have the tools with me. I had everything, but the tool I needed for that. So I had to buy a tool at, to Napa store. It wasn't on sale and this is a little town in the middle of nowhere. So it wasn't, um, the same price as buying it in a bigger town. So it was probably twice as much. Then you're in a parking lot laying on the ground.

You're dirty. It's not fun. It's hot out. And yet didn't take long and have some friends with me who helped. So we were able to get it done really quick. um, but still, it just, it, it, later on you kinda laugh at it, but in the moment it's like, we need to just get this done and what a chore, you know? Yeah. Add another a hundred bucks to the day, you know, mm-hmm but it had to get done.

So if I did that at home, it would've just been the cost of the belt and that was it, you know, probably $28 for the belt, you know, on my terms. So that's the point staying ahead of things. Um, and you're gonna miss, so. You know, I miss things. Everybody does, it happens, but just trying to stay ahead of it. So don't forget about the motor home.

Don't forget about the Chas you have at the engine. You know, love the house, love the chassis, you know, Um, take care of both. And so the call to action today is take care of at least one problem you have been ignoring. So I'm sure there's something on your RV that you've just been walking by it and say, you know what, I'll do that later.

You find something else to do instead, you know, you'll, you'll. Redo the rubber roof, rather than replace a baggage door catch or something, cuz you just don't wanna do it. So find that one thing that you've been ignoring and just take care of it, do it today, do it this week, but get it done. All right. So now this takes us to the next stop section of the show.

And today we are going to Hawking hill. Oh yeah. We're going to Hawking hill. Okay. So Alexis, what made you decide to pick Hawking Hills, Ohio? What stood out to you? Oh, it's just, it's full of so many things you wouldn't think, you know, I, Ohio would be super exciting, but it, it really is. There's beautiful, uh, nature.

Um, there's a really cool, um, The festivals that happen there and, um, good places to eat out. It's just a very interesting, unique kind of place and, uh, beautiful too. If you're gonna go there for, you know, hiking and biking, there's really neat things you can do. Um, there's actually a, you can do canopy tours, which is like ziplining, but through the trees, you can do that.

Um, there's also horseback riding there. And they have a glassblowing studio, which is also really, really fun. So there's quite a lot. Okay. Did all of those things stand out to you or just a couple of them or just the whole package? Like, oh, this place looks really cool. The whole thing did, there's actually a big foot festival too.

That kind of stood out to me. It's a big deal there. So if you know you're into that or you just like the, the, no so now, now we know big foot. All right. So Bigfoot's kind of popular around here. I know when I'm going down the highway, I see those stand up. Not a statue, like a cutout. Yeah. A metal frame of Sasquatch.

I think there's a place in, oh, where is it someplace? Uh, that sells all that stuff. Oh yeah, definitely. So it's kind of big, kind of big, like big foot, right? Mm-hmm okay. So you're a big foot fan, a secret big foot fan. Now we know all. So a big foot festival. So that sounds kind of cool. And you know, the canopy, when I read this, it said Hawking Hills canopy tours.

Mm-hmm now I was remember I asked, well, canopy what's that? Yeah. and that's the trees. Yeah, exactly. So the canopy of the trees. Okay. You guys get that. Are you smarter than me? Hopefully. So the zip lining sounds kind of interesting, not my cup of tea, but it does sound interesting. It'd be kind of fun to go watch that.

The horseback riding like that, it'd be really fun. Oh, wait, horse rides or horseback riding. It's actually horseback riding okay. All, yeah, I make sure it's not a little pony. You're going the circle. All right. Then glass blowing, getting kind of big there's some TV shows now and like Netflix and places like that, that are, uh, featuring that.

Yeah. So that's kinda interesting. Mm-hmm um, yeah, very cool. So. Places to eat. Now you mentioned pizza, I believe. Is it something special about the pizza? I think it's a chain that's pretty popular there, but pizza crossing is a big deal and I mean, who doesn't like pizza, so you can't go wrong. right. Okay.

So now here's my gourmet tip. Whenever you order a pizza, have 'em get it to where the edges, you just barely burnt. It'll always make the pizza better. especially pizza, uh, pizza places that have a tendency. Not cooking the crust and it has that doughy taste. Okay. If you put in the refrigerator overnight, it's kinda like moist and gooey mm-hmm so that burn the edge just a little bit.

That pizza will always be better. Okay. Interesting. and salt. Oh, loan puts salt on pizza just a little bit. Makes it a. So that's my interesting, my, um, gourmet skills here. burning pizza and putting salt on it. it almost sounds like the salt get rid of taste of the burn, right? Yeah. okay. So then there's, um, urban grill.

So has that got like a reputation of some kind urban grill? Um, just kind of a popular place. It got good review. So I'm, I'm thinking it's a good place to eat. all right. Okay. So there's places to eat as always. And then where's where can the RV or stay there? Yeah, there's a few different RV parks. Um, Hawking Hills RV park is a popular one.

It's pretty large between the town of Logan and Hawking Hills. There's a Koa and there's jelly stone park, which is super cute. The bears. Yeah. most RVers probably know what a Jellystone park is. Yeah. Cause there are, there's a few of them out there. Oh. And then what's this thing about treehouses being there.

Yeah. This is kind of amazing if you're, if you're just wanting to go without the RV or you wanna stay in a Treehouse for the night, you can do that. The company's called Berlin wood and they're real treehouses that people stay in. They're not like a ladder that you'd climb, but they have actual stairs up to 'em, but they're really, really cool.

Yeah. Yeah. That sounds interesting. And I've seen some of those TV shows where they reality shows where they're doing tree houses. That looks pretty interesting. That would be fun. So that in itself could just be worth a trip to actually go into one of those tree houses and just see how it's really built.

Mm-hmm if you're interested in how things are put together. All right, cool. So now that's the next stop. Now we're gonna move on to RV envy. Oh, wait a minute. Let's back up for a section for a sec. Second. I can't talk anymore. The next stop. All of these, um, places we talk about are always on our website.

We're adding more all the time. But every time we talk about someplace like Hawking Hills, Ohio, it's on our website@thesmartrvr.com under next stops. And these, these articles are also designed to wet your appetite. They're not, you know, 10 pages long. It's just enough information to get you. Hey, that sounds like good place to go.

So then you're gonna go on a map and look and check it out and see what else is to do there. So that's what the internet is for. That's the only thing it's for is just finding out where to go next in your RV. okay. Exactly. Maybe buying RV parts too. Maybe listen to this podcast as well. so maybe there's a few other reasons.

Okay. So go to the smart RV or.com and check out the next stop for not only. This information about Hawking Hills, but other places. So now RV envy, the last two episodes, I talked about the thin shade from Lipper component. And as you recall, the first one, I decided wasn't up to snuff. So I did it a second time reinforce a little bit.

So it made me think about entrance door, window frames, because you might not want to put in a thin shade for whatever reason. And there's a lot of reasons you just don't want to do it. You don't wanna mess with the door. You don't need the privacy of the, give your, uh, the glass in your door might be obscure.

So people can't really see in the sun can come in, but you still have that privacy. Those window frames. You know, there are approximately 16 by 25, I think in three quarters by 24 and three quarters are right in there. So it's very popular window frames on trailers, fifth wheels, travel trailers, you know, cargo trailers, anything with the window in the doors, these things are there.

So those frames do go bad. They don't last forever. And when they go bad, you know, it's generally the outside one will start warping, cracking, things like that, but replace them both. Don't just do one over the other, do them, both. It cleans up the entire appearance of the door, um, on the inside and out. And when you replace the frames, maybe the color that you have is not the color that you want.

Maybe you have brown frames and you really like to have black, maybe black would just look better. Well, then you can change the color. And just make sure that when you do these, you seal them correctly. I'm not gonna get in all the details of it. Um, the frames that we sell are made by Volera and they're under the well, they're under their brand name now, but the instructions show how to do it.

So it's pretty clear. Just follow the instructions, make sure it's sealed on the outside. So no water comes in. It'll bring a slow death to the door. If water's leaking in there, eventually that door will just start rotting apart and doors can be very expensive to, to replace. They're not the easiest thing to repair either.

And the glass, if you happen to break the glass, it is available separately. And you know, one of the signs besides the frames cracking is the glass will drop down. There's little tabs that hold the glass in place. So those will crack break, fall into the door and the glass will drop down. So those are all the telltale signs, but the frames, you know, they're relatively inexpensive.

So don't hesitate to replace those. If you need more information, I'm gonna have a link on the smart RV or.com to our website, Arizona RV part center.com to these window frames. So it'll show the sizes, the colors and give you prices. And so you'll know kind of what you're up against. So I want to thank everybody for listening to the show today.

This is Eric Stark and the smart RV or podcast. So it's been great hanging out with everybody. So if I don't see on the road, Let's connect it to smart RV or.com.