fennkids

I can't believe we are going on a year since posting anything. I wanted to post our latest adventure. We bought a 22' 1982 Lazy Daze Motorhome. We bought it from my aunt and uncle Marlene and Steve Fenn. If you don't know Lazy Daze, they are custom built motorhomes out of California. They only built a few hundred a year and they are top quality. We only knew about them because another aunt and uncle have one.
We drove down with my brother James over the weekend to San Diego to Pick it up and then drove back to Utah without incident. Actually we did have a radiator hose start leaking outside of Barstow, but other than that, nothing! Since we got it back we've put some money into it. Here's what we've done so far:

1. Complete tuneup including changing all belts and main radiator hoses; flushed coolant, tranny fluid; packed front wheel bearings, inspected all brakes and brake cylinders; new plug, wires and distributor, timing and carb adjustment, new fuel filter, oil and lube, new battery for the coach and the standard emissions and state inspections.
2. The oven didn't work and after much research finally found the part (oven safety valve). appliancepartscompany.com Was very helpful. I even emailed them a picture of my part and they compared it to the part they were going to ship to make sure it looked like the right one. Works like a charm now.
3. The water heater tank had a leak so we ordered a new water heater from adventurerv.net. Their prices were very good, but it did take about 2 weeks to finally get here. We decided to upgrade to the electronic ignition instead of the go-out-in-the-cold-and-light-the-pilot kind. So this week end we're planning on getting the wiring done for that. We have everything winterized, so no big deal.
4. We bought a new vent lid for the bathroom, water heater bypass kit, LP detector and CO detector;
5. This weekend we'll be resealing the roof and exterior seams.
6. I also bought a cheap cassette deck at wal-mart. we don't listen to cassettes, but it has an aux plug so we can connect the ipod. I figured this $30 unit was better than $20 for another type of device to connect the ipod.
7. Finally we got a new set of tires all around. (ouch)

Other things we're planning on doing in the next year as budget permits

• upgrade to 2 deep cycle 6v batteries for additional capacity
• 1000-1500w inverter
• something to replace the 13in TV/VCR combo. we mostly watch stuff off the video ipod and DVD so I'm looking at either a small LCD or even some of the smaller 7" LCD screens. I've seen some for about $70 each. That way we could do one up from and one in the back by the bed and wire them together.
• My Aunt and Uncle had a bunch of upholstery redone and they had all the fabric cut to redo the valence and curtains. The idea was to evolve it from 70's browns to modern blues. So we'll look at that. We might even tackle that this weekend.
• Generator. This will be a little more pricey and I'm still trying to figure out how to rig it up so we can have it mounted permanently. Right now we're thinking of the 3500 Yamaha inverter generator.
• We have a little microwave that we keep on the top bed or in the closet. We're thinking of removing the current stove vent and replacing that with a small microwave/hood vent unit.

All in all we're really happy with it. Everything else seems to work fine. We've taken it out two times now for the weekend and lots of little drives. Last weekend we even got down to temps in the teens. We'll see how it does driving up to Montana this weekend for thanksgiving.