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Our 1st RV outing in our ‘brand new”(to us) 89 Palomino popup was an experience.
1st off, when we bought the thing used it took us about 2 months before we were ready to camp in it. We had to clean it up (previous owners smoked and the whole inside was covered in cigarette tar), replace the mattresses (they were just plain nasty, had to have some custom made), replace the fridge (that worked when we bought the dang thing, went to wallyworld and bought a small cube dorm fridge), and replaced the A/C (that stopped working after I cleaned it real good, window type unit so homedepot trip).
After all this we were itchin use this thing that we have now sunk a pretty good bit of change into.
The day finally comes so we head out to the closest state park and setup. It was on the cool side and misty. 1st thing we notice is the “Discharge of grey water prohibited”. Ummmm this popup doesn’t have a grey tank it just has a drain on the outside of the trailer at the sink. Ok grab a bucket and stick it under the drain in case a park ranger drives by. All right we get settled in. My mother being the generous lady that she is loaned us an ancient space heater (you know the big steel ones that use like 150000W of power). Yep, this’ll keep us warm. Plug the thing in and ahhhhhhh, toasty. We play a few card games inside till bed time as it’s cruddy out. Around 11:45pm I wake up freezing my bojangles off. The heater stopped working. Fumble for the flashlight. Breaker has tripped (breaker located under the dinette table). Reset breaker, bang head on dinette table, heater comes back on, go back to bed. 12:00 midnight, click, breaker trips again (I hadn’t even gotten to sleep yet). Still had flashlight, reset breaker, heater comes back on, make it back to bed without banging my head this time, very proud of myself. 12:15am, click. ARGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! This went on ALL night. The heater was drawing more amperage then the breakers could handle.Next morning we made breakfast, packed up, and headed home as it was still miserable outside and we didn’t have any heat.
I started investigating as to why the breaker kept tripping. The deeper I dug the worse the wiring looked. Must have been wired by some lab monkeys on LSD. I was very surprised that the trailer never caught on fire. Went to homedepot and purchased a new breaker box, a 30A main breaker, and 4 15A distribution breakers and proceeded to rewire the trailer.
After the rewire job every other trip went smooth. We bought a small 10 gallon blue grey water tank. Did some other mods like extending the tongue and adding a storage box.
But man, that 1st night was nowhere near being an enjoyable experience. We weren’t prepared.
Ever since then I learn something new almost every time we go out. And the trips keep getting better and better. I’ve learned not to sweat the little stuff because something is almost ALWAYS going to happen. Let it roll off and move on. It’s part of the experience.
Hope this tale made your experience seem a little less major.
greg
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