After returning from our San Diego trip, which included a excruciatingly long afternoon at Camping World in Santa Clarita for a free checkup, Harmony was cleared for action. We planned a local overnight visit to Refugio Beach State Park, about 20 minutes north of home. We loaded up and headed up 101 to the park. Upon arrival, I was chagrined to find a gaping hole in the side of the RV. Our refrigerator vent had detached itself during the short highway drive, and was missing! We drove back and forth a couple of times looking for the missing vent on the side if the highway, but never saw it again. Apparently, I had not secured the vent properly after “exploring” the nooks and crannies of the Chinook, and it just detached itself and blew off while driving. A valuable lesson for us, and an additional item was added to our RV checklists, to check the fasteners before driving.
We enjoyed our visit to Refugio, and celebrated our first pleasure camping trip with a bottle of champagne, which was generously gifted to us by a friend, to celebrate our new RV. We enjoyed a full moon over the ocean, and returned the next day with no further incidents. Immediately upon our return, I found a replacement refrigerator vent on Amazon and ordered it, wanting to cover the scar as soon as possible. Fortunately, it was a standard RV part, available in many places. Apparently, we are not alone when it comes to losing or breaking parts, and there is a healthy market for spares and replacements for most items on the Chinook and other RVs. One thing I discovered is that most of the RV components are common across most RV makers and brands, so they are fairly easily serviced and repaired or replaced if necessary. My question to the dealer, “Does everything work?” is a common concern for new RV buyers, but in fact, should not discourage buyers from accepting a great deal, since repairs are not hard to come by. As the RV ages, most of the components get upgraded, repaired, or replaced over time anyway, often with better features developed since the unit was manufactured. These components include items like the water heater, furnace, solar components, water pumps, fans, refrigerator, air conditioners, etc.
Here is a link to the refrigerator vent, for about $35:
This vent is made of plastic that yellows over time, so it might be a good upgrade, for cosmetic reasons, even if it’s not lost. Alternatively, a white paint job could also do the trick.
Lake Cachuma
Our next local excursion began with an overnight stay at Lake Cachuma, at a county park about 45 minutes away from home. Lake Cachuma is our local drinking water storage lake, which unfortunately has been over half empty due to the long-term drought conditions in the Santa Barbara area. We found a nice campsite, relatively isolated since the park was not crowded during the week. When we decided to extend for another night, however, the site was reserved, so we decided to move over to the coast.
On our way to the coast I decided to check out a local RV service center in Buellton, which is the nearest one to home. I was still totally clueless as to who could service the Chinook, even for s simple task like an oil change! At the time, I was under the impression that an RV service center was needed for any type of service on the Chinook.
(Now that we have a lot more experience, let me share what we have learned about servicing the Chinook, for other first time owners, who may beas ignorant as we were. First off, the Chinook is composed of two separate parts, the Ford or Chevy cutaway van, and the Trail Wagons camper shell, with all of its camping components in the back.
The Ford or Chevy portion can be serviced like any other vehicle, by a dealer or mechanic who can handle light trucks. I prefer using the dealer for maintenance, even though they may charge more, because the manufacturer stands behind the local dealer, and will pretty much guarantee a problem will be fixed. Our local dealer in Santa Barbara is pretty cramped for space, and I was leery about them being able to service the ten-foot high Chinook. Probably they could handle it with no problem, but I decided later to use a dealer in Buellton, which is an agricultural community which probably has much more truck business, for pickups and farming equipment.
The RV portion generally cannot be serviced by a regular mechanic or dealer, but can be serviced by an RV service center. An RV service center can also provide mechanic service on the truck, but a dealer or trusted mechanic is probably a better choice for the truck maintenance. We had a very poor experience with a Camping World service center. We had made an appointment for an oil change and a complimentary RV inspection of the main components, including the propane system, electrical system, plumbing system, generator, and appliances. Even though we had an appointment, we had to wait for over four hours before they started the work, and essentially spent an entire day in the Camping World parking lot, for a routine oil change and inspection. The reason was that the RV mechanics were overloaded! They were “stuck” trying to diagnose and fix a mysterious problem with someone’s RV, and spent an unscheduled better part of the day working on it, and our work was forgotten in the process. I suspect this type of delay and slow progress is typical for Camping World and probably many RV service centers, because of the huge demands for service, and the very wide range of RV repairs. Since the RV is a “house on wheels”, the RV systems cover the whole gamut of a residence, so maintenance requirements are similar to a residence. In spite of our time delay, I would recommend the inspection from an RV center or experienced mechanic for new owners, just to ensure a safely operating RV.)
Back to the story. Since we didn’t want to return to Camping World for service, I wanted to check out this local center. It turns out they were very small, and overloaded with work as well. In the meantime, disaster struck in the parking lot!
Our First Collison!
I had parked in front of the service center office, but was blocking a driveway, so I decided to back up a little. As I confidently backed up slowly, we suddenly heard a “crunch”. Horrified, I now looked at my new backup camera display (way too late) to find a parked car behind us. Our ladder smashed in its rear quarter panel. I pulled forward, and felt devastated over the mistake. There was pretty much no damage to the Chinook. The ladder corner had been damaged much worse in our Chinook’s previous life, so our already bent bumper may or may not have been tweaked. The rear door was hard to close, but was easily readjusted afterward. The other car had a huge dent in the side near the rear. The poor owner of the car was predictably upset, but her first reaction was, how could this dent have even happened, since it was so far from a typical collision one.
Anyway, I took pictures of the damage for our insurance company and we exchanged information. I submitted the report to Progressive when we got home, and they covered the loss (and raised my premium a nominal amount at renewal) without any controversy. It was a valuable hard earned lesson for me in regards to taking great care when backing up the Chinook. How dumb was it to install a backup camera, and fail to look at it while backing up! This was a symptom of a problem I have of overconfidence, which I still need to pay attention to while driving the Chinook. The few problems I have had usually occurred because I assumed the path was clear, instead of rechecking before a maneuver. Fortunately, there haven’t been any more collisions, but there have been some close calls, and some unexplained damage to one of our gutters at home, near our RV parking space. Another contributing factor was the poor quality of the backup camera and display. It was really pretty washed out, so you had to pay pretty close attention to see what was behind you. I have since upgraded our head unit (again), to a top of the line Pioneer unit, and replaced the camera with a cheap but better unit, so our reverse camera is now crisp and clear, and safer. The first head unit I installed was a cheap Chinese version, which had all of the features (GPS, navigation, rear view camera, radio) but clumsily designed. The Pioneer unit (AVIC-8200NEX), although much more expensive at about $800, is much more like a modern dash head unit found in new cars.
We talked to the RV service people about future business, although we never returned, partly because of the very bad memories.
El Capitan State Park
We then headed down the coast and found a nice campsite at El Capitan State Park, at the beach. El Capitan is a sister campground to Refugio State Park and Gaviota State Park which are on the beach to the just a short drive to the north. The California state parks are expensive, but the locations are great. WE spent the night and the next morning at El Capitan, and returned home in the afternoon.