Episode: 3940
Title: HPR3940: Equipment Maintenance
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3940/hpr3940.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 17:41:06

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,940 for Friday the 8th of September 2023.
Today's show is entitled Equipment Maintenance.
It is part of the series Travel.
It is hosted by Ahukad and is about 13 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, we prepare the RV and the truck for our trip.
Hello, this is Ahukad for Hacker Public Radio, welcoming you to another exciting episode about our RV Travels.
And this is talking about our 2022-2023 trip to the southeast.
And last time we talked about all of the planning that went into it and getting the book prepared.
Well, the next thing you have to deal with is equipment maintenance.
And so we had to do that and we started with the tires.
RV tires can blow out and among the main reasons is age.
You see, tires are a lot more complicated than many people realize.
And one complication is that they contain chemicals that keep the rubber flexible and strong.
But these chemicals can break down and disappear over time.
So that a tire which looks good and has plenty of tread can be on the verge of a blowout.
And that can be a very bad day indeed.
It can do thousands of dollars worth of damage to your RV, leave you stranded on the side of the road.
And worst case, cause you to lose control, resulting in loss of the RV, the truck, or even your life.
So it's nothing to be casual about.
Now the tires on our RV were manufactured in 2015.
Now in the United States, this is stamped on the side of the tire by federal regulation.
So you can always check your tires and see when they were manufactured.
And it's usually the code is six digits, so maybe it's four digits.
But there's two parts.
The one is which week of the year and the other is which year it is.
So, you know, 36-15 would be the 36th week of 2015 and that sort of thing.
In any event, 2015, and we're looking at the end of 2022,
meant that these were at least seven, probably over seven years old.
And that's old, that you don't want to take chances that new tires were called for.
So I decided to go with discount tire because they're nationwide and have an excellent warranty.
So I bought five tires.
All right, I needed to replace the spare as well since it is,
and it turns out the spare was even older than the tires that were on the RV.
The previous owner was not paying attention, I would say.
In any event, I made an appointment to install all of the tires.
Then when we went to hook up the RV to the truck, it would not start.
So I had to call roadside assistance.
That's an essential piece of insurance that you don't want to go without.
If you're going to be doing any RVing, I would say I would not want to go without it just as a driver.
It turned out we'd probably done it to ourselves.
We had disconnected the negative battery cable since the truck was just sitting in there
and we didn't want the battery to run down.
The vehicles these days are drawing on the battery all the time,
sometimes referred to as parasitic load, to run various devices,
and it can easily drain a battery over a few months.
Then when I reconnected the negative, I didn't tighten, and that's sufficiently.
The driver from roadside assistance was very helpful though,
diagnosed the problem immediately and got it started.
But he said it looked like the batteries were in bad shape.
So when we got it running, I immediately drove it to the freight liner dealer
and asked them to check it.
There I discovered that we had not quite done it right.
We disconnected the negative cable, but because we have multiple batteries in the truck,
we would have needed to disconnect all of the negative cables
or else there would still be a drain.
He mentioned that most people install a battery shut off switch to make it easy,
so I asked him to check out the whole charging system and install such a switch.
Then I would have to make a new appointment with discount tire,
and of course we have also an appointment with General RV in November
to do a number of RV maintenance and repair tasks.
Well, more fun a few weeks later.
We got the RV to discount tire for the installation.
We made the appointment for 8am when they opened,
but we went down there closer to 720.
And the reason for that is I wanted to get the RV into the position they asked
before the parking lot filled up.
Now, I might have had room even with the cars, but I don't like taking chances.
With the truck and the RV connected, the total length is about 50 feet.
And you don't do tight turns that way.
So I got down there and no problem.
The installation process took about an hour and a half,
but we ran into another little road bump.
I bought five identical tires,
but the spare was undersized and on a smaller rim, which I did not want.
So we ended up taking the spare tire with us and ordering a proper rim on the internet.
But we had new tires on the RV, so I felt good.
This is called for shadowing kids.
We took it back to the storage lot and took the truck home so I could do a little maintenance,
such as touching up the paint and a few stops.
A few spots.
Cheryl told me she had made an appointment for 11am on November 11th,
which would be the 104th anniversary of the armistice.
But when we got to the storage lot to pick up the RV,
we discovered one of the tires was flat.
You really don't want to see that with a brand new tire.
We had only had the tire 10 days at this point.
So we called roadside assistance again,
and they actually had someone there in about an hour.
While I was dealing with this, Cheryl sent emails to the service person
that General RV explaining the situation,
and that we would be late,
but we'd get there when the tire was fixed.
The company that roadside assistance set us was a local truck tire service,
which I was glad to learn about.
It makes sense that there would be such a service,
but I'd never thought about it before.
Now, the service person diagnosed the problem instantly
when I said we had just had the tires a few days,
and said it was probably the valve stem.
He removed the tire and sprayed a solution of soap and water on the valve stem,
and you could see the bubbles.
That pretty much proved the point.
So we took the tire off of the rim,
replaced the valve stem, and remounted the tire.
And he said, if one was bad,
what were the odds on the others?
And spraying them with that soap and water solution showed a second bad valve stem.
Not as bad as the first, but it would have been a slow leak.
At this point, we unanimously agreed to replace all of the valve stems,
a valuable lesson learned.
The service charged us $15 per valve stem.
This is the truck tire roadside assistance service.
Now, I have no idea if that's a standard price,
or if it is marked up, nor do I care.
The point is that if the salesperson at discount tire had said to me
when I bought the tires in the first place,
hey, you have all brand new tires here.
We recommend you get new valve stems in addition, only $15 each.
And I would have gladly said, make it so my good man.
Instead, I spent over $300 for a service call to the storage yard.
I only wanted peace of mind in the first place,
and an extra $60 on my tire bill would not have bothered me in the least.
I later went back to discount tire,
and they put in a refund claim,
which was paid to cover my costs for the roadside assistance.
I had to show receipts and everything,
but I did in fact get the money.
While all of this was going on, Cheryl heard back from General RV
that she had the date of our appointment wrong anyway.
It was not November 11th, but November 17th.
My lessons to be learned here.
Okay, I never really knew much about the importance of valve stems,
but I think that from now on I will insist on new valve stems whenever I get new tires.
I'd rather spend a few bucks up front than be dealing with roadside assistance.
And the other lesson learned is the importance of not putting things off until the last minute.
Our trip does not start until December 15th, so we have a month yet,
and can deal with these issues without disrupting the whole trip.
In fact, next year we plan to move our RV maintenance trip to General RV
up by more than a month.
We're probably going to set it up for something like August,
just because it's better to have everything done well in advance.
So we took our RV into General RV and November 17th
gave them a list of things we wanted to work on.
Our service advisor Chad warned us that they were very busy
and might not be able to get through the whole list.
Again, this is a reason for moving up our visit and in future.
So we triaged the list, told them which ones were priorities.
We also told them that we needed to get it back by December 13th to make our departure.
Happily, he called us on December 5th to say it was ready,
so he went down to pick it up with them.
Now, we brought the spare tire with us so that they could install it
since I thought it was too heavy for us to manage.
A couple of senior citizens trying to get a big truck tire
and it mounts underneath the carriage of the RV.
It did not make sense.
So we had them do it.
Did they charge us for it? Of course they did.
They charge us for every single thing they do. It's a business.
The RV looked good in any event.
We were looking forward to making our departure on time.
I told the RV back to the storage lot.
Cheryl followed behind me in her car.
I noticed the truck was running a bit rough and Cheryl said
I was emitting white smoke from the exhaust.
Then we got to the storage lot. We thought the front jacks were not working.
And if we couldn't use them, getting the RV off the truck would be a problem.
But as Cheryl was going to look for help, I started hitting buttons
and suddenly it came on. It was working, so I disconnected
and drove the truck back to the house so I could plug it in.
Now one of the things I learned from the roadside assistance guy
who came for the truck in October was that these little trucks
should be plugged in if left parked in cold weather.
And he showed me where the plug is.
That's another thing I didn't know about.
But I could park it in my driveway and plug it in through the garage
so that was the plan.
But we were worried now about the truck.
So on December 7th we took it to a westside freightliner.
They were very busy and told us they probably could not look at it
until December 13th.
They did in fact look at it and diagnosed that we needed a new injector.
So that's another 2000 in repair bills.
I thought RV travel was supposed to be inexpensive.
But then they said that most likely the truck would not be done
until December 16th, which is one day past our scheduled departure.
So once again I have to make some calls to reschedule our first few reservations.
This should mostly mean less time in Memphis.
But since there were only a few things I wanted to do there,
it probably isn't a big deal.
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