Camping Lifestyle in an RV Part II

Our second camping RV was also our first motorhome. When the kids reached the age where they wanted to play little league and generally stay around home during their summer vacation from school, we no longer used the camping trailer as a family that much. I still used it on the job myself but eventually I found work in the local area and I really didn't need the camping trailer anymore. I sold it to a couple of guys who wanted it at their hunting camp. It was about 15 years old at that time and was starting to deteriorate.

Around 1987 or 1988 when both kids were in college, I began thinking about getting a motorhome. I didn't want to spring for an expensive motorhome and didn't want to just rent one for a week or two because I didn't feel that would give me enough background to make a decision on buying a motorhome.

I found a cheap 1975 Escapade class A about 20 feet long. It didn't take me long to find out what made it so cheap. The first week we had it we decided to take a test run from Upstate, NY to Ft. Collins, CO to visit my brother-in-law and my son who was going to college there.

I don't think we drove the motorhome fifty miles down the road before I could smell smoke. I looked in the rear view mirror and the back of the motorhome was filling up with smoke. Not good. I pulled over and looked in the rear of the motorhome and couldn't see anything burning inside. I checked underneath the rear on the outside and discovered the exhaust pipe had broken or rusted off inside the motorhome body area and was pointed directly at the wooden rear of the motorhome.

The motorhome was built of wood covered with an aluminum skin and the wood was glowing and smoking. Fortunately a motorhome carries its own water supply so I took a pan of water and threw it on the smoldering wood. We drove the rest of the way to CO without bursting into flames and I had an extension put on the exhaust.

As we were driving west just south of Chicago I had my wife take over the driving so she could see how the motorhome handled on the road. She seemed to be having a hard time holding it on the road and decided we should stick with a camping trailer you pull behind.

We pulled into a campground for the night and while listening to the news found out there had been 7 small tornadoes touch down in the area she was driving through. She never would drive a motorhome after that.

The roof of the motorhome was constructed of tar paper and then painted with a roofing tar with aluminum mixed in with it to reflect the sun. It was no problem on sunny days but the seams and joints would crack from the vibration and movement of the motorhome while going down the road and if it rained the water would run down the inside walls.

We made two round trips to CO in that motorhome. On the way home on the second trip we had a flat tire near Omaha, NE. It wasn't really a flat tire. The rubber was flying off like a retread on a tractor trailer. Apparently they were the original tires and were over 10 years old. Like many motorhomes it had not been driven very much so the tread on the tires looked like they were new. They tell me any tire that reaches 5 years old should be replaced regardless of how it looks. It was one of the dual rear tires so we could drive until we came to a large truckstop. The wheels had split rims on them which no one liked to work on. They could fly apart while inflating the tire and injure whoever was working on it.

The truckstop people had a terrible time getting the split rims apart. They worked on the motorhome for 3 1/2 hours trying to fix the tire. Big rigs were driving in and they were replacing tires on them like a pit stop at a race. I thought it would cost a fortune with all the problems they were having. They didn't charge me any more than if it took them 10 minutes. I think they were embarrassed that it took them so long on a little motorhome while the other guys were putting new tires on the big rigs right next to us.

Another problem I had with that motorhome was "vapor lock". That's when it gets so hot around the fuel line the gasoline vaporizes into a gas. That was a real problem in the Midwest and I would have to pull the motorhome over and park until things cooled down. This problem went away when fuel injection came about.

By the time we got home from that trip I had to keep the accelerator to the floor to maintain 40 miles an hour with the motorhome. I think I was losing compression and coupled with the vapor lock problem, we were lucky to make it home.

Time for RV number 3, motorhome number 2.

When I traded the Escapade in on a 1983 Winnebago Brave, the Escapade quit as I drove into the parking lot to pick up the new motorhome. They must have thought it was the quietest motorhome on the road. I just rolled into a parking space, got out and gave them the keys. I'm sure they were just going to push it over a cliff somewhere so it didn't really matter.

The problems I had were the exception not the rule. If the good didn't outweigh the bad by far then we would not have gone through all the hassle we did. Even while the water was running down the walls while we were in bed we could see the humor in it.

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