How I came to be, a full time RV'er this time.

How I came to be wintering over in Denver.

Okay so set back and let me tell you a story, you see I am quite experienced with living at least long time in an RV. But back then we called it Booming not Full-timing. You see we would go from one construction boom to the next. As a Millwright (with a capital M) my local was Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and western Texas. Then should the work lead us we would work outside our local.

The point to all this is, I wanted you to understand that in my younger years living in my camper was work not fun. About the time I hit the ripe old age of forty; I got me a nice normal job working as first a mechanic then as an election. This is for a Transit agency, RTD Denver (regional transportation district) or as we like to call it the RT&D, this is because we are a Rail Road. Course most folks like to call it the Reason To Drink or Retarded Truck Drivers or some such disrespectful nonsense. But whatever; I understand only too well, them Trains and Busses do get in the way a lot; been known to cuss at them my own self from time to time.

Well anyhow, way back in about 2000 I learned about an RV my brother in law’s father owned. It had been parked in a storage lot for over six or seven years at that time. It would appear they had taken it on one and only one road trip; the Mom hated it so badly that the old guy parked it and forgot it. I asked if he would be interested in selling it and got the response that; no he was going to fix it and use it.

Then along about 2012 the old guy had passed on; the Mom had past the previous year. This meant that the brother in law (hence forth to be known as the BL) was now the proud owner of a 1992, 33 foot, Coronado by Fleetwood. Said RV was in sad shape and the storage fee was $60 per month. As the BL is a CPA and not the mechanical type he contacted the RV dealer that had originally sold this fine unit.

This forever to be unnamed RV sleaze lot and RV center gave the BL a quote so high that even a CPA had to gag on it. That is when my loving sister suggested he call me, because and I quote “He can fix anything” love Ya Sis. Well the deal was worked the BL would buy all the parts needed and pay me $250 and I would get it started and out of the storage lot.

Now let’s all learn from my mistake never take on a project until you have thoroughly researched it. This bad boy had sat in the same exact spot from 1994 until 2012. Yes kids that is eighteen years. Needless to say it was a sight. All the tires were flat and sunk to the axles in mud. Well at one time it had been mud it was more like cement now. No way would it even try to start; so first order of business was to get it up and out of the ground.

I used a technique I know as cribbing; this is where you lift one wheel at a time with a low profile hydraulic jack called a pancake jack. Alternating back and forth between all four wheels you can lift a sixteen ton vehicle slowly one 2x4 thickness at a time. As you must understand, it takes a lot of time to lift anything this way.

After it was in the air I removed all six wheels; did you know that big RV’s like big trucks torque the lug nuts to 450 foot pounds. Then add eighteen years of rust and other unmentionable goop and well this is no easy task. A breaker bar with a six foot cheater pipe works much better than a one inch impact. This was not my unit (Yet) so I did not have to pay for the new tires. Nope this kid only had to get the wheels off and over to the tire shop; then put them back on afterword.

Now came starting this fine beast; she was built on a Chevrolet P-30 cassis. This meant she came with a 454 cubic inch gasoline engine and a something 80 transmission. I soon ascertained the problem was a bad fuel pump. This was after replacing all the batteries. Now in standard GM wisdom the fuel pump is inside the tank, a 100 gallon tank and the tank is; yes you guessed it, underneath the RV. So it (my soon to be bad boy) was back up in the air. I took advantage of this time to thoroughly flush the tank and lines with clean gas.

After she coughed and sputtered to life I drove it over to the BL’s house. I will say he did not hesitate to pay up everything he owed me. Then he and my loving Sis cleaned it out and up and down, well they did a nice job. Somehow the BL got it over to another RV consignment lot where it sat for a year with no buyers. After a year it would not start again, so the BL once again made me an offer. He would put all the money in it if I would fix everything and then we could split the profit.

I did not have the heart to tell him that I did not think there would be a profit, but I did promise to get it running again. It would seem that the new (old) problem was fuel. Someone had dumped a lot and I mean a lot of fuel stabilizer into the almost empty tank. This had dissolved the short piece of hose between the pump and the steel fuel line. So out came the tank again, this was in the RV consignment lot. I did my best to be unobtrusive about the whole thing. This guy at the lot was helpful beyond words (he just wanted this ugly beast off his lot) and I thank him for it.

When you work on something long enough it tends to grow on you and I made the mistake of saying this to the BL. His reply was that I should buy him out and keep it. This is when the idea started to take form in my old head. The kids were all grown and moved out, the wife was passed and it was only me and the cat in my big house. For the longest time I could not sell the house without bringing money to the table; but right now the market is strong so I put it up for sale. Within one day of the house being on the market I had an offer that would work.

I still have some time before I can retire, but me and the cat moved into the RV and are living in a RV park, slash trailer court. Life is good so far and I will keep everyone up to date. My plan is to move to either El Paso Texas or Deming New Mexico as soon as I can. The kid lives in El Paso and me and the grand baby are vatos.