This is just a last ditch suggestion that has worked for us on a home freezer. We, after thorougly cleaning, put in an open bag of charcoal and stuffed the rest full of crumpled up newspapers. It worked pretty good.
Thanks, Homer. We have tried charcoal, but never heard of the newspaper. How long did it take? Do you need to change the paper? It has gotten a little better, or we are getting used to it. That's what makes it harder--we're living in our rig and need to use the fridge.
You might try a bag of activated charcoal, specifically designed to absorb chemicals and odors from a pet store. Aquarium charcoal comes in very porous mesh bags and is very pure. I use it between trips to prevent odors and clean out residue from trips.
Handicamper: Yes change the newspapers every day or two, you should notice less odor with each changing. The activated charcoal is the most important. Some hospital supply houses and fire clean up places have access to special chemicals that do a very good job. Most will sell you a bottle to help you out. The charcoal and paper will probably do about as well. Ozone generators are too bulky and expensive to rent. Good Luck, we have been there.
I do not know if this will help or not. The large tank trucks you see on highways use chemicals to kill odors inside tanks. Trucks transport a number of chemicals and stuff that has odors. I talked to driver long time ago and he said they washed out tank and add very small amount of some type of chemical and all odors are gone. You may wish to call a truck transport company and see if they could help you. Check the yellow pages.
I almost had a bad driving experience but luckily I averted it. I was checking a pop-up we had before going on our first trip of the season and found about a 3-4" square peace of tread missing on one of the tires and the belt showing underneath. Don't know how it happened but I figure it happened over the winter. I would have hated to see what could have happened if we had driven on it. Just goes to show how important it is to thoroughy check out your camper before going on a trip.
The old Chevy chase Vacation movies owe us royalties. We never take vacations, we take adventures. 2006 was no exception. We loaded up with gradkids and treked westward from Texas in late June. New tires, oil changed and everything in working order on our 34' MH with only 52k miles on it. When did all the gas stations on the Petrified Forest National Park close? Let's see at 6 miles per gal and 28 miles back to Painted Desert services and only 21 to Holbrook we chose Holbrook. Not one station open on the highway. Sitting atop the overpass at the entrance to Holbrook waiting for a train that went back and forth the engine died. Lucky for us we made it downhill to a nice station that had the lowest prices in Holbrook. Try coasting with no power and no power steering. While driving up[ the incline to Mesa Verde the engine died and we had to coast downhill backwards to a pull off. Try that with no power steering. The copilot made all the grandkids get out and watch Pop as he defied gravity and common sense. Fionding nothing taht would manifest itself after an hours wait we continued on. After a few hours driving the next day we developed a backfire about every fifty miles. I blamed it on the cheap octane but changed the fuel filter as a precaution. We continued on only to blow a new inside tire between Arches and Green River, Wyoming. Limped into Green River at 6:00 p.m. on July 3rd. Had to wait until July 5th to get new tire. Oops make that tires as one other new tire had tread falling off. oops one new tire is non radial as taht is all they have on hand and it has to be replaced when we get home. Back fire returned so we switched to premium at $3.69 per gallon. Darn Mh runs fine at night but horrible during the day. Have lots and lots of suggestions but none pan out. Mountains get higher and engine runs worse. No repair shops anywhere on the weekend or on our route. Leave Yellowstone Park by the East entrance as it is downhill and there are no mountains to climb. East Entrance under construction. Four hours to go 17 miles. Outside Cody, Wy. smell something burning. Discover the house batteries have been shorted out by the battery charger cable coming into contact with the battery. Repaired charger and charged batteries while family ate supper. Unit dies at gas station in cody, 8:00 p.m. Friday night. No repair shops open until Monday. Have important busienss meeting Tuesday in Houston. Drive to Casper and have minor disaster when unit stops on high hill outside of Metetsee, Wy. Finally starting we make it to Casper Saturday morning and put grandkids on plane for home. Mh running perfectly we decide to forego repari shops and continue to Hosuton, Tx. Approaching bridge under coinstruction on I-25 Mh decides to backfire again and die. choice is to block traffic or drive off road onto new section being built. You should ahve seen the construction guys run when we sailed off the interstate. After an hour of fiddeling and much discussion amongst those learned men we started up and headed on. The darn MH does not want to climb hills but runs great on level road. Take short cut to Ft. Laramie where the unit dies right at the rr tracks in the middle of town. The only merchanic in eastern Wyoming happens by and after much discussion amongst several learned bystanders it is determined that the coil is bad. Als the mechanic has a job underway and can not install one until finished with that job. Saturday ticks away amd there are no parts houses within 45 miles of Ft. Laramie. mechanic arrives back and takes old coil out and drives to Scotts Bluff to get a replacement. Now dark he returns and installs the new coil. After much testing and an hour of driving around Ft. Laramie ( Population 200) the Mh is running great and we thankfully embark. For the next 200 miles we do fine and then the familiar backfiring starts and the unit dies and we sit for 30 minutes until we can go again. We cross Nebraska Sunday going twenty miles at a time before stopping. It's hot in Nebraska! Ditto Kansas! At least the generator churns out juice to run the ac's. Texas finally comes into sight and we will make our Tuesday meeting. Ha ha! Calculating we can make it home going twenty miles at a streatch we gas up in Childress. Generator quits running. House batteries are dead. We now can go only ten miles before having to stop. Finally make Houston and rush hour afternoon traffic. Knowing we have to stop frequently we pull into s strip center. Wild driver peels out and almost hits us as we pull in. Slamming on the brakes the Mh dies and we have to coast onto grass to avoid the speeding driver who leaves in a cloud of smoke. Copilot threatens me with my life if I don't make the unit run for the remaining 20 miles to home. Two more stops and we finally reach the hacienda. Exhausted we go straight to bed. Wake up Tuesday and discover that meeting was three hours ago. Wednesday go to tire store to replace the non radial purchased in Wyoming. Tire has to ordered. Take tools out of garage and proceed to work on MH engine. New plugs (again), new wires,distributor cap, rotor and relay and upteen opther items. Unit runs great. Head out to station to fill up. On the way home unit begins its familiar backfire and rough running. Neighbor comes over and offers friendly advice. Neighbor starts work on engine. Has to be something simple he says. ( three weeks later unit finally runs.) I meanwhile trouble shoot the genertor. New batteries did not solve the problem. Ahh here it is a broken resistor. Onan has none and the closest rv supplier has none. Friendly electronics store has several. Bad choice. Wrong resistor burns up rotor on generator. This vacation turned out to be more an adventure than even we wanted.
Nothing like on the list. The last morning of our 2005 trip, as we pulled out of camp the right rear axle bearing on our trailer gave up the ghost and destroyed itself, and the axle. We had just spent three weeks out, and this happens 120 miles from home. Guess we were fortunate. Managed to get the trailer to a repair shop, grabbed our stuff and made it home. Had to return a week later for the trailer.
On the way back from pigeon forge tenn that we take every year comeing down black moutain the electric brakes on our 30 foot t.t. would lock up and smoke the tires the only way to get them to realese was to unplug them then plug them back up and go at it again trying to go down the moutain without useing any brake leting the truck low gear hold us back thought about leaving them unhooked till we got to the bottom but the grade was steep and if i had to have them at least they would work only problem was if i had to stop to unplug there was only two lanes with no pull offs because road work was going on at the time only had to stop three times and block traffic good thing we was pulling with a 3500 chevy duelly got to the bottom and took a hammer and beat on the drums no more problems the rest of the way home
We were at a camp in Michigans UP and I lost a chinch pin for my Blue Ox tow bar. Managed to get a bolt at a hardware store about 20 miles down the road. I now carry extra clevis and clinch pins. Learn something every day.
Ants!!! OMG, the ants!!!! This isn't really a driving experience, but it does illustrate what greenhorns from New England can get themselves into when traveling outside of their region. We had left Charleston, SC, two summers ago and were on our way home to Maine. We stopped at a lovely state park on a lake outside of Aiken (I forget the name of the place). It was big, with a golf course, pool, lake-front sites etc. Nice looking place...and we had a shaded site just above the lake. We spent the first night and when I awakened the next morning I saw a 3-foot wide black trail moving up the interior bedroom wall, about 10 inches from my nose. Of course, I didn't have my glasses on, so I just watched it for awhile, thinking "what on earth is that??" When I finally found my glasses, I realized that we had been invaded in the night by hoards of ants. I can't describe how many there were! We started slapping, and smashing them....but they just kept coming and coming and coming. They were all over one whole interior side of the trailer! Finally, I went out and bought insect spray (lots of it) and we sprayed inside and out (tires, hitch, tongue, leveling feet, etc.) The fumes were something, but they seemed to do little good. The park rangers then came out with major spray guns and covered our whole site, but by this time we were all wheezing and gasping for breath (even our Welsh Terrier wanted nothing to do with the trailer). Although we had pre-paid several days, we decided to bail out and left that afternoon; but the ants came with us....ALL the way back to Maine. 5-6 times per day, all the way home, we'd have ant killing sessions, where we'd smash them on the wall. They were with us all that summer (even tagging along on our end-of-summer trip to Prince Edward Island). Finally, the Maine winter of 2005/2006 seemed to do them in....or else they just marched back to the Carolina's once the leaves fell in New England. I don't miss them.
QUOTE(mogulman @ Jun 17 2006, 04:13 PM) [snapback]4410[/snapback] Answer the poll! If anything else weird happend on you vacation tell it to us. B) On our trip out to AZ June 2006 we were driving along I-20 in Lousianna in a relatively flat section of road when we encountered an obstacle in the roadway. At first we didnt realize it was an obstacle as we thought that it was just a semi truck cruising in front of us. We we going about 65 mph towing our 25 ft pioneer and all at once we realized that the trailer in front wasnt moving!!!!! Hubby looked in the side mirror to check that he could move over and say a pickup that was running along side the pioneer-- he also had noticed that the trailer in front of us wasnt moving. Thankfully he slammed on his brakes and went over into the shoulder allowing us just enough clearance to clear that obstacle in the road. Whew ! As we flashed our thanks to the pickup driver we looked in the rearview to discover that the semi- truck was the back trailer of a semi. It must have become unhitched from the rest of the semi trailer and had stopped perfectly straight in the road. Yep---that day our guardian angels had been working overtime..
QUOTE(mogulman @ Jun 17 2006, 04:13 PM) [snapback]4410[/snapback] Answer the poll! If anything else weird happend on you vacation tell it to us. B) Well, a couple of years ago in our 1st Southwind, we lost our brakes coming out of the east pass of Yellowstone. Had to sit on the side of the "under construction" road, about 1/2 way down, for 1 1/2 hours waiting for the brakes and fluid to cool down. (for those of you who have been there, you'll probably remember the 400' drop w/ no guard rails). We gingerly made it to Cody, WY and pulled into the CG right on that curve, on the left, before town. Tried to get someone to do the brakes....no dice. Sooooo, DW and I went to Wal-Mart and bot some jack stands, and I begged and borrowed a few extra jacks, and blocks, in addition to my own, and we did our own brakes and fluid change in the park. Oh yeah, it was 109', w/ the wind blowing dust in our eyes the whole time. And of course, the clincher is, we came 1" from losing the coach off of the jack stands, w/ me and my wife under it. Curiously, even though a few people offered tools, no one offered to help us. They would just stop by occationally to "see how we were making out" !!! Got more stories, but my wife and I decided that if we could make it thru that, we could do most anything, so we bot an '07 Southwind. Go figuire. :blink:
There are a lot hairy stories on this subject. I know most/all are true, as I have have lived some of them myself in 40 years of RV'g. RIGGAROB: Yours makes my head hurt, when I contemplate what could have happened. I am sure you had to use your own resources to get back on the road and I am so glad no one was injured. This exemplifies what Americans were made of. Ingenuity, resourceful, and that Can-Do attitude. Some one said, "Get R' Done". You did.
QUOTE(Homer @ Oct 31 2007, 05:41 PM) [snapback]8956[/snapback] There are a lot hairy stories on this subject. I know most/all are true, as I have have lived some of them myself in 40 years of RV'g. RIGGAROB: Yours makes my head hurt, when I contemplate what could have happened. I am sure you had to use your own resources to get back on the road and I am so glad no one was injured. This exemplifies what Americans were made of. Ingenuity, resourceful, and that Can-Do attitude. Some one said, "Get R' Done". You did. Why thank you ! However I agree w/ you about the part that sez "what Americans WERE made of". Today, if we left to settle the west, we wouldn't make it past St. Louis, because a wheel would fall off the wagon, and the owner would sue the Conastoga coach Co., the wheel manufacturer, the bearing manf., the guy who sold him the wagon, and of course the Wagon Master for starting him on such a perilous journey !!! :angry:
QUOTE(mogulman @ Jun 17 2006, 04:13 PM) [snapback]4410[/snapback] Answer the poll! If anything else weird happend on you vacation tell it to us. B) Got another one fer ya all. After we stopped at the Camping World in OK city (traveling west on I-40) to have a safety-steer installed, because the wind was blowing so hard we couldn't make it any farther w/o one, we got back on I-40 west to continue to AZ. Well, the Safety-Steer worked great, so we're toolin' down the road, and there is this guy standing in the middle of I-40, waving us to slow down !! I-%$#^#@!#-40 !!!!! We were going about 65 MPH, and almost ran over this kid, before he jumped out of the way. We were sweating bullets, when, all of a sudden, YIKES there's a belly dump in the middle of both lanes, dead stopped. But, here comes the good part....his hydraulics had let go, and dumped about 20 ton of hot top in a nice straight line, right in the middle of 40. The 1st car had hit the pile, and rolled over to the right side gutter, the 2nd suv hit the pile and rolled to the left, a semi w/ trailer missed the pile, BUT, went off to the left missing the SUV, but went so far into the median that it blew ALL of the tires off the rims !!!! By now, there was hot top spead out everywhere, and believe me, it may as well been marbles, it was so slick. We managed to shoot to the left between everything, at about 50 MPH (and w/ our toad attached), and just buy the grace of the Man himself, we slid right on through. It took us a week to get all of the hot top off of the MH and toad, plus we had to listen to the sound of the asphalt pinging off of the wheel wells (over the sound of our heart beats !!) for about 20 miles after that. Now we're back on track, hearts are only racing at about 30% over normal, and there's a State Trooper on the side of the road watching a fire burn ! Those of you from around OK city may remember the fire that got out of control (July/August, '06 ?) and made the headline news. Anyway, that all happened to us in about 20 minutes time. That one was right up there w/ a couple of my experiences in Viet Nam !! :unsure:
