Thanks for the encouragement Jim@HiTek. Fortunately the steps were 95% retracted, so I just rigged up a step using a box of firewood, some foam pads and my grill cover....a little McIver-ish, but it was sound and did the job. Each trip has provided learning, so it gets better each time. Fixed the shower plumbing myself, replaced shades, upgraded tv electronics, wifi-HD, etc. The mechanical stuff causes me pause...but I figured this would be a good one to jump into. I crawled under on the trip, but decided to wait, then promptly left all the manuals back at storage. I know there's a fuse box under the dash when I hooked up a CB, so I just need to find which goes to which, and I have all electronic testing stuff, multimeters, leads, 14v PS, etc. Just gotta watch the fingers, as pointed out.
Gonna be 100+ dgrees here this weekend, so will look for a bit cooler weather before I take on something that will take three times as long as expected to figure out.
Asking the forum is probably my way of getting confirmation that I can do this!