Owners manual and basics help!!!!
I am new to the rving world. My wife has juvenile parkinsons and unfortunately we live in a very small town. It costs me and arm and a leg to drive to a big city to get her to her doctors and on top o...
Forum Discussion
There is SO much to learn. Unless you are a good mechanic, I would start by finding a local shop that can work on an older Ford and have them dial in the engine and transmission.
Next thing is to make sure all your fuses/relays are in good shape. You have chassis and coach electrics, so make sure they are all healthy.
Your heater is likely a propane powered furnace like mine. I wouldn't mess with it. I prefer to pay people to fix the parts that can go boom.
Multi-power RV specific refrigerators are EXPENSIVE, as in $1200 and up. You could buy a residential fridge for about $500 that fits in the space, but you will no longer have multi-power. I went with home type fridge and have an inverter if I need to run it off 12V. A fridge doesn't run 24/7, it cycles. So plugging in overnight to cool everything down is a good idea. Run off generator when possible and off inverter when necessary. I will soon be adding an auto cutoff so that I can just leave everything plugged in. The fridge can then switch from 110V to inverter without me needing to touch anything.
To operate things off shore power, you have a high amp extension cord inside a smaller access panel (probably at the rear, left). You can plug that into a regular home 110V outlet with an adapter available at any RV place or even Walmart. Be careful about running a lot of stuff when you use a regular home outlet. It can overheat the plug and melt things. If you have a generator, then look in the space where you find your power cord. There is an electrical box. You plug your extension cable into that box and now the generator can feed power to the coach.
A critical issue is tires. If they are more than 7 years old, replace them no matter how good they look. One blowout can cause major damage and replacing a tire on the road is twice as expensive as buying a new tire at a local shop. Your motorhome might have 16.5" coined wheels. You will only find one or two tires on the market if that is the case. I bought a set of Firestone TransForce and they were $1150 installed for all 6.
Those are some starter pieces of info. I am sure the rest of the forum will pitch in some useful tidbits. I hope you have another member nearby or a local shop that can walk through the RV with you and explain anything you don't understand. Enjoy your rig.
Jose
Next thing is to make sure all your fuses/relays are in good shape. You have chassis and coach electrics, so make sure they are all healthy.
Your heater is likely a propane powered furnace like mine. I wouldn't mess with it. I prefer to pay people to fix the parts that can go boom.
Multi-power RV specific refrigerators are EXPENSIVE, as in $1200 and up. You could buy a residential fridge for about $500 that fits in the space, but you will no longer have multi-power. I went with home type fridge and have an inverter if I need to run it off 12V. A fridge doesn't run 24/7, it cycles. So plugging in overnight to cool everything down is a good idea. Run off generator when possible and off inverter when necessary. I will soon be adding an auto cutoff so that I can just leave everything plugged in. The fridge can then switch from 110V to inverter without me needing to touch anything.
To operate things off shore power, you have a high amp extension cord inside a smaller access panel (probably at the rear, left). You can plug that into a regular home 110V outlet with an adapter available at any RV place or even Walmart. Be careful about running a lot of stuff when you use a regular home outlet. It can overheat the plug and melt things. If you have a generator, then look in the space where you find your power cord. There is an electrical box. You plug your extension cable into that box and now the generator can feed power to the coach.
A critical issue is tires. If they are more than 7 years old, replace them no matter how good they look. One blowout can cause major damage and replacing a tire on the road is twice as expensive as buying a new tire at a local shop. Your motorhome might have 16.5" coined wheels. You will only find one or two tires on the market if that is the case. I bought a set of Firestone TransForce and they were $1150 installed for all 6.
Those are some starter pieces of info. I am sure the rest of the forum will pitch in some useful tidbits. I hope you have another member nearby or a local shop that can walk through the RV with you and explain anything you don't understand. Enjoy your rig.
Jose
