Lessons Learned--West Coast Walk-About (long)

[Trawlerphil]

We just finished a 2 month, 9,992.73 mile “Walk-About” around the country in our Forest River Flagstaff Classic 8528RKWS 5th wheel. Fully loaded she is around 9,000 lbs. and we tow with our 2012 Toyota Tundra with the HD towing package. I am especially anal and keep track of everything so we’ve accrued some complete and interesting data on our trip.

RV Forums spend a lot of time discussing why a ½ ton pickup can’t tow a 9,000 lb. 5er. It seems the ¾ ton folks make fun of the ½ ton folks and the 1 ton folks make fun of the ¾ ton folks. The Freightliner folks make fun of everyone. Some don’t believe an F-450 will tow a grocery cart.

I’m a 73 year old “gear head” so I came at the problem of a tow vehicle from a different perspective looking at individual systems. For example the Tundra puts out 381 horsepower and 401 ft. lbs. of torque through a 6 speed paddle shift transmission with “tow/haul” programming to a 4:30 rear end. The four-wheel disc brakes use large ventilated rotors, 13.9 inches and 1.26-inches thick with four-piston calipers in front; and 13.6 x 0.71-inch with two-piston calipers in the rear. Our pin load is 1,520 lbs. sitting on a 16K Pull-Rite slider hitch. These pieces-parts almost exactly match many ¾ ton trucks.

I understand the arguments, but the fact is we’ve gone through the Great Smokey Mountains, the Appalachian Mountains, the Green Mountains, the Cumberland Mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Allegheny Mountains, the Adirondack Mountains, and the Rocky Mountains without problems, stress, or concerns. We haven’t embarrassed ourselves ascending mountains or down grades up to 10%. Here is a useful summary of all of the detail accumulated over our 60 day adventure:
• $3,086.46 Gas Cost
• 1,043.288 Gas Gallons
• $2.958 Average Gas Price/Gallon
• 9,992.73 Miles Travelled
• $0.31 Average Cost per Mile
• 238.03 Driving Time Hours
• $1,762.58 Camp Site Cost

Here is a summary of lessons we learned on this Western Walk-About in no special order.
• The potable water hoses with the plastic ends don’t last very long. We put the water pressure regulator on the end that screws into the camp water because it is bronze and the threads won’t get bunged up like the plastic from frequent use.
• On the RV end I put on a bronze 3 way. One of the ports is a quick disconnect facing down where the blue water filter plugs into, the other faces up and allows me to vent air when I turn on the campsite water. It also serves as a port for the “water flush” of the black water tank using a 3’ hose.
• Tire pressures are critical, if they are too low, they get hot and will blow up a “China Bomb” tire quickly. Same result for over inflation. I have new load range E tires on everything. They have a max inflation pressure of 80 PSI, but travelling in 100+ degree temperatures, I run them at 70PSI. You can spend a few Benjamins for a Tire Pressure Monitoring System, or just buy a good digital tire gauge and have the discipline to check them frequently. When you upgrade to load range E or higher tires, be sure you also use the load range “E” or higher valve stems or something may go “bump in the day”. Many folks forget the valve stems.
• Our fresh water tank is 43 gallons or 358.62 pounds. Unless we’re boondocking, we only carry 10 gallons or 83.4 lbs. Good water is pervasive in the USA.
• Grey water tanks total 76 gallons or 634 lbs. and the blackwater tank is 40 gallons, or around another 340 lbs. It makes no sense to cart around 1,333lbs of fluids so we keep them as empty as possible when we are on the road.
• If you have a crank-up TV antenna and do some boondocking, you will lose it to a branch at some point. We even lost the replacement Winegard Razar Z1 antenna to a pine branch at my granddaughter’s in Mosier OR so have an alternate plan. Mine was to take 400 gigabytes of recorded TV programs I like with us. I brought 115 episodes of the original MacGuyver which started in 1986 for example. You simply connect a HDMI cable to your laptop and PC and use Windows Media Player to send them full screen to your TV. You can “advance the bubble” with your cursor to skip commercials. The Admiral gets everything on her I-Phone so she didn’t care.
• The folks at Lippert decided not to put a safety shutdown on their landing gear so the result is if you hold the button too long you will snap off the mild steel 1 ¼”x ¼” bolt holding the drive shaft mechanism. This will put you out of business so you need to carry spare bolts. Lots of discussion about this on RV forums and the conventional wisdom recommendation is to use 5 star (hardened) bolts. I stick with mild steel because it won’t do any damage to any other part of the landing gear. I mark the highest and lowest points on the legs with magic marker so I know when to let up on the switch.
• I replaced the single group 27 house battery with two golf cart batteries. I need to run my CPAP machine at night through a 150 watt inverter and if you are boondocking in cold weather the furnace blower fan takes a lot of juice. It added about 80 lbs. of weight to the pin load, but it was worth it.
• Last western walkabout in 2012 we regretted not bringing more cash. This time almost everything important could be done with a credit card.
• West Coast fires torpedoed our Yosemite visit and lack of pre-scheduling of RV parks torpedoed out Grand Canyon visit. Travelling when the kids are out of school is likely a bad plan for folks who don’t like to schedule everything in advance. Our motto was “we’ve got no schedule, and we’re sticking to it!” Other than that a few days’ notice and we had no problem scheduling RV parks everywhere else. We can run on 30AMP and we don’t mind back-ins so we’re pretty flexible.
• We bought the “Western Mountain Directory” which is a PDF file managed by the Javelin 3 PDF reader which points out, on state maps, where the steep inclines are and links to text describing the descents. The material was very useful, but the presentation was horrible and difficult to use IMHO.
• Navigation is critical and the software must carry its own cartography because in some places there is no internet. I use Co-Pilot from ALK Technologies on my Android phone and my Windows 10 laptop. You can set up an RV profile with air draft (how tall your rig is), highway preferences and speeds which lets you “strongly favor” to “strongly avoid” types of roads and it will route you around propane restricted tunnels. Carolyn uses Google Maps and WAZE which are helpful (sometimes), but don’t differentiate between cars and space shuttles being towed.
• Having a backup for everything electronic is a good policy. My navigation computer is a Windows 10 Netbook and my primary machine is a large Windows 10 ACER laptop. I have both Streets & Trips 2013 and Co-Pilot on both machines and I still find the old Streets & Trips useful for planning. We have a spare GPS, a spare inverter, and back up the primary laptop’s critical data to big thumb drives every weekend after I publish my “driver’s log”. Carolyn’s I-Phone hotspot backs up the sometimes flakey and slow WiFi found at RV parks and my Alfa 36 repeater can clone campsite WiFi networks to improve access and make our Lacrosse temperature monitor available to the internet while the dog is “home alone”.
• Since flat tires are a paradox with Dexter axles, we bought a Camco Tire Changer Helper for $20 which allows you to back up the good tire on to the helper and it will also raise the bad tire high enough to change it, all without jacks. Dexter folks warn “Do not lift or support the trailer on any part of the axle or suspension system”, and Forest River says the same thing about their frame. I used it when I replaced my OEM load range C “China Bombs” with load range “E” 10 ply tires, and we used it again on our trip when one of the new load range E tires turned out to be defective.
• Carolyn may take over 400 pictures a day documenting our “Walk-Abouts” so an important addition to inventory is either a 3 step “step-stool” to be able to frequently clean windshields or a very long stick on your windshield washer like the ones truck stops provide.
• We use a 64GB Thumb drive which plugs into Carolyn’s I-Phone and downloads all of her pictures. We do this periodically, and then I use the same thumb drive to load them onto my computer for additional backup. I retain Apple’s “.HEIC” format to save space and I have a HEIC to JPG converter on my Windows machines.
• Staying hydrated at high altitudes helps to stave off altitude sickness. Jennifer (Montana girl daughter) gave us 36 oz. thermoses which have a built in straw which draws from the bottom which means you don’t need to tilt it up to drink—handy while driving. I like Propel because it has electrolytes.
• Our little counter-top Igloo $89 ice maker is perfect for an RV and I calculated the “break-even” as 28 days which we’ve long since passed. It makes 9 thumb sized ice cubes every 10 minutes and the size is perfect for our insulated thermoses as well as cooling the adult beverages in the big cooler.
• There are arguments pro and con on the advisability of using the automatic change-over for the two 30 pound propane tanks. I use it because 60 lbs. of propane goes a long, long way unless you are boondocking in the winter and every once in a while we top the tanks off if the RV Resort has convenient propane at a per gallon price.
• We use a Black & Decker insulated carafe coffee maker. It is efficient when boondocking and it doesn’t matter when we aren’t.
• We installed a “paper plate dispenser” under the cabinet adjacent to the stove. It takes a whole bundle of up to 9” paper plates and dispenses them easily.
• Carolyn uses “industrial strength” Velcro for almost everything she wants to keep on the wall or counter for that matter. We have been over some very crappy roads and nothing has fallen off.
• If your Forest River RV has “slam shut doors” and the base plates are held on by two minute screws, an “engineering change” is required. My first test is to bed the base plate in contact cement and use slightly larger screws. I lost one screw holding the base plate in place and the door was at risk of opening on a nasty bump.
• Another required Forest River modification is the shelving in the “pantry”. Both the carrying rails and the shelves themselves are fastened with long skinny staples. An entire lower shelf collapsed under a fairly light load. My plan is to try contact cement again because it will spread out the compression loads. Carolyn also wants more shelves added in some of the cabinets with retainers.
• Conventional wisdom says the Rockies are more dangerous in terms of steep inclines than the east coast mountain ranges because they are much higher. The fact is mountain height has nothing to do with it. The steepness of the incline and the drop in feet are the drivers of brake failures and “white knuckle” adventures. If you go from 12,000 feet to 10,000 feet you have descended 2,000 feet. In the east if you go from 4,000 feet to 2,000 feet, your drop is also 2,000 feet so it is moot how high the mountain is. The only advertised 9% incline we saw was in Lake Tahoe and it wasn’t very long. I think the Rockies road builders had more room to make inclines more reasonable than their eastern counterparts who have to manage much older roads.
• We mounted a wireless Furrion camera on the back of the 5th wheel which serves as a “rear mirror” when on the road and avoids screaming matches when right side backing in to an RV park “back-in”. I tied its power to the parking lights and leave them on at all times when driving.
• Our table with 4 chairs was configured perpendicular to the outside wall of the slide out. Since there are only 2 of us we rotated it parallel to the slider wall, left 2 chairs home, and gained a lot of space. If we travel with another couple, we can easily switch it back. Similarly, we don’t need two recliners since Carolyn is a sofa person so we removed one of the lazy-boy recliners before we left.
• We bought a Predator 3500 watt inverter generator to handle our boondocking needs. The specs were comparable to Honda and the price was about 25% of Honda’s price. It runs 11 hours on a 2.6 gallon tank and puts out a pure sine wave. I leave it in the bed of the truck and move the truck parallel to the RV when we are boondocking. We can’t even hear it running from inside the RV. It won’t drive both AC units, but it will drive the larger unit and all the other electrical needs if used thoughtfully.
• At home, I have a mirror stuck to the shower wall so I can shave in the shower. This isn’t practical in the 5er so I bought a battery powered Norelco shaver which can literally be washed out with water and I charge it about once a week. It also has a trimmer built in for mangy sideburns and “Spock” eyebrows.
• We noticed regular gas was 85 octane in higher elevations rather than the 87 we’re used to in North Carolina. Octane measures resistance to knocking, ergo, higher altitude means you can use lower octane. If your car runs fine on Regular (87) at sea level, it should run fine on Regular (85) at high altitudes. It's not an exact equivalence, but its good enough not to worry about it or spring for mid-range fuel.
• When we left, gasoline in North Carolina was $2.19 per gallon; the worst price was California at $4.49 with Montana around $2.99, Oregon, Nevada and Utah around $3.29. Colorado was $2.82. Mississippi was the lowest at $2.41.
• My lifetime senior “America the Beautiful” pass saved us around $35 at every national park. Don’t leave home without one if you are at least 62!
• California law says the maximum speed limit for “anything towing anything” is 55MPH on all highways regardless of speed limit. They also confiscated our Oregon cherries and a lime bought in Oregon at their state entrance checking station. I won’t even pretend to understand this.
• Speed limits in Montana appear to be “advice” except through towns; other western states have up to 80MPH speed limits. We stayed at 60MPH or below even though we are easily capable of 75 or greater speed because the Tundra will pass anything but a gas station.
• If you carry any weapons or have a concealed carry permit, check each states requirements and reciprocity agreements with your home state. Sometimes you have to lock them up.
• All the camping stores want to sell you “special” toilet paper at a premium price. Admittedly, some toilet tissue is NOT RV friendly, but there is an easy test to figure out which ones are. Tear off a few sheets and put them in a glass of water. Swish the water around and if the toilet tissue comes apart, you are good to go. We use the cheapest Scott tissue we can find and have never had problems with the blackwater tank.
• Consider provisioning items which may be hard to get before you leave. For example, we brought 4 jars of Dukes Mayonnaise (a southern thing) and said we’d go home when it ran out. Guinness beer was also hard to find for some reason as were Le Seur peas.
• Make sure you carry good quality duct tape. We had a tempered glass window shatter thanks to Denver’s poor roads and had to make a temporary replacement with “100 MPH Duct Tape”. It held all the way back to Aurora, NC.

We’ve still got a few states to go before completing our map, but we’ll get to them on future walk-abouts. Next will be a “southwestern walk-about”.

[AbdRahim]

Wow. Great detail. Thanks.