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Goodbye Brougham

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Katya Posted in RV life | Leave a comment

So we sold the Brougham, well rather traded. It was a sad day but much less so knowing it was going to a good home. Many people looked at it, a couple older men who wanted to live in it in their yards while they worked on their houses, a couple who wanted it for a mobile kitchen but found no way to get a full size fridge inside. One girl had been living in a warehouse with some people and decided to try in an RV in her friend’s yard instead – but she didn’t even care if it ran and didn’t have much money. After that, a few kids showed up wanting to use it for their band’s tour bus, none of them knew anything about cars mechanically so it probably wouldn’t have worked out very well since he did still need some work before he’s really treated hard again.

When I got an email from Rus, the new owner, I was actually excited about the Brougham’s future for a change. He offered a trade straight up for a 700cc motorcycle which unfortunately I was too short to ride. He just so happened to have a smaller motorcycle, a 1981 cm200T Honda Twinstar. Much more my size, physical and engine wise. The bike was worth a bit less than the Brougham, so he made up for it by sending a list of other things we could have to make up the difference. We ended up choosing an awesome Les Paul guitar (which Rus threw in a free Epiphone amp). My new bike also came with a helmet, harley gas tank (I could get fabbed on if I waned) and some nice leather saddle bags. I’ve yet to ride it more than a few hundred yards sadly so far, partly because I have no license. but now that we are out of city limits, It needs a new battery and I want some new tires before I go on a longer trip. I’m also still getting to know the clutch, though figuring it out quickly. Me and Ross have had debates over whether or not I should be down-shifting all the way to 1st but 2nd sputters out several yards from when I actually want to stop the bike, and neutral would just stop too soon – I’ll get it.

We bought a ramp (into the back of the truck) and after a couple interesting loads, I think we’re getting the hang of it. Its really steep but since the bike is only 300lbs and there’s 2 of us. As long as I can get a good run, it wont fall over and crush me. We also figured out how to strap the bike in pretty quickly, stiff enough to where you shake the truck if you try to move the bike but only half shocks down to allow the bike cushion. If you wonder how we figure all this crap out, forums and youtube for everything, even for the brougham. There’s so many things we wouldn’t have known if now for other people posting about it online somewhere. When you really don’t have anyone to ask, or want a consensus, that the way to go.

Bike in truck

Rus was a good match for the Brougham because he both known about cars and fixing them and actually plans to use it – and in its natural environment, colder weather. The heater on that thing will keep anyone toasty, including people who just fell in frozen lakes if needed. For some places, when we were plugged in, we often just used a space heater and blankets, especially when we were sleeping – saved on propane and kept Chena from accidentally burning herself on the vents.

Of course, as always seems to happen when you buy a new car, he got home fine, 2 hours away in Mississippi, and on his next little jaunt, the alternator went out. We did get it used, as explained in a previous blog – it was a whole big  ”stuck on Tonopah” ordeal, but we never had any problems with it so didn’t replace it for a newer one.  Other than that it seems he has had many of the same problems we did when we got the Brougham, figuring out the electrical system and fixing mechanical quirks. We mostly did the big priority things like shocks, rebuilding the carburetor, new started etc and he got stuck with the little things we didn’t get to yet, like fixing the parking break (yeah it seems like a priority but somehow hadn’t been haha), and patching up a rusty hole in the floor.

With the Brougham gone, we were finally able to plan our escape from New Orleans. After we bought a ramp for the motorcycle, we finished up our work week and tried to make a run for it Friday night. An attempt which took over 4 hours of packing and preparing (we did live there quite a while) – just to end up with us having to stay another night. We had the truck all hooked up, animals in the car enjoying the A/C and just as Ross came back from the bathroom and we were about to leave, the trailer lights stopped working. Another 2 hours, with the neighbors help, was spent trying to troubleshoot the problem. I sat in the car with the animals looking up wiring diagrams and fuse box configurations while Ross and the neighbour  tested all the connections between truck and trailer. The neighbour even pulled over his truck and hooked it up, which worked fine. We basically concluded that it must be a fuse or something on the truck side, and accepted out defeat. It was after 11pm and all the Walmart in town close at 11. The only other thing open would be a Walgreens,  gas stations and bars. no fuses till morning. We hooked up the electricity, put the slide-out back out and headed off to a Denny’s for a garden burger before bed. Both of us exhausted and Denny’s being the first meal of the day for us both, we actually got to bed before 3am and rose at 7:30 the next morning to walk over to the parts store and get our fuse.

The drive was good and towing turned out to be surprisingly easy and comfortable with our nice new hitch. We had been worried about taking wrong turns or getting out of tight places but Ross was able to do everything just fine. After about 200 miles we stopped and got tires for the trailer, an ordeal that took about 3 hours of our day looking for a place that could get us in. We bought the tires at Firestone and took them to a mobile mechanic (Took them TO a MOBILE mechanic hah). He seemed a little pissed off, maybe about the heat (which was making me sick and the animals drowsy in the car) and after he changed the tires on one side of the trailer, he would let the hydraulic jack drop the trailer like a ton of bricks with no regard for the things inside of it. Its no wonder half my shit was on the ground when we finally got to a park. He may have also been annoyed that I took his photo but he dropped the first side before I had even gotten my camera out. Oh well, nothing broke.

Tires for the trailer

The remaining drive to our semi planned destination kept us driving into the night. There were several parks along the way but this one was far from New Orleans and recommended by the neighbour who had helped us with the trailer lights. We kind of skipped over Mississippi, but we do have to come back this way, and did hang out in Gulf Port a couple times – so we didn’t completely miss out. We got into Oak Mountain Park around 10pm and had an interesting experience of trying to park the trailer in a spot for the first time.. in the dark. We are now about 4 feet too far to the left, giving us a less space out front than intended but a pretty good try given the circumstances.

Next blog will be photos from the park and more about how great this place is!

Last Days in New Orleans

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Katya Posted in RV life | 1 Comment

Planning to leave New Orleans is just like moving all over again. We don’t know anyone and we have a bunch of crap to get rid of before we can go.

Well most of it is crap except of course the Brougham, our home and/or project for the last 11 months. I would do whatever possible to leave it with some family or friends who can use it while we travel in the trailer till I can work on it more, but everyone I know is thousands of miles away. So we have to sell it due to the excessive costs of having an RV, trailer and truck – insurance, gas and possible extra costs at parks for being selfish hoarders…and I don’t have a drivers license.
Anyway, throughout our travels I have tried to take photos of the Brougham, most of them have Ross in them so I didn’t use those but what I had left over I made a video for its sale. I went into excessive detail with the craigslist add as well, going over every repair and addition I could remember to try to seek out people who actually give a crap about vehicles (as opposed to ads that say “74 dodge camper, runs and drives $####, mechanics special). So here is my sad sale video, well, stills made into a slideshow and put on youtube, with music from youtube’s music selection which is totally terrible.

Ross already sold the 5th wheel hitch, goose neck adapter plate (both came with the truck) and our hitch shelf and the only junk laying around outside now is the hitch shelf extension and adapter, and half of Ross’s extensive tool collection. We have no idea how moving and driving with the trailer will be, it hasn’t been moved since we bought it and neither of us have driven with a trailer this long. Truck and trailer together will be over 50 feet long and interesting to maneuver in.. or not maneuver in. Planing on how to pack things without them flying around while we drive, tomorrow.

Jude park has been really great to us. Even if we’re not the most social people, the owners, previous and present, have been really lenient about having the RV here and us staying so damn long. About 70% of the people here are men working locally, construction or otherwise, staying in older trailers and driving big trucks. The other 30% is a regular rotation of older couples you never see and people crazy enough to stay in tents in this humidity (usually they’re put in the very back next to the trailer shaking loud train yard). I guess when coming to New Orleans, staying close to town to party is better for most people than staying a little further, where you can see the swamps and armadillos in the state park.

Jude has a pool, which through the owners, has gone from bug infested mud puddle to clean, resurfaced and lit. It used to get used about once or twice a week by people who mustered up enough to bear the nastiness for a cool dip but now there is almost always someone in it throughout the day – or the hot tub next to it.

The only negative things, that I cant wait to have a break from, are the really cramped spots, with barely enough room to extend your awning (depending on who parks next to you) and the crashing train yard that I cant even go explore due to a massive poisonous snake filled wall of vines and barbed wire. Seriously.

The south itself is what has made it bearable to stay here so long. As much as I love the southwest, if this was Pecos, Texas, Id have driven off in the RV by now – even if only into a ditch or off a friendly canyon. The weather has been consistently interesting, storms, heat, humidity and always awesome clouds, and the fact that it’s one of the most interesting cities on the planet, has kept us fairly busy although with working weekdays, we don’t get out as much as I would have liked.

Hopefully these are the last few days, although we still don’t have a set destination (probably west Florida then west again?).

New Trailer and Brougham Retirement?

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Katya Posted in projects, RV life | 3 Comments

It was kind of a gradual decision and a sad one. We have spent the weekend looking at trailers and after being told (and noticing) several times that anything under $8000 goes really really fast, we took the first thing we could afford. It was settling so much as being open minded. Its a 2005 Rockwood with an 8 food slide out, making the living space livable, and its in pretty good condition though needs regular (probably never been done maintenance). It’s about half the price of one in awesome condition because, now heres the catch, a tree branch fell on it and punched 3 holes in the roof. The repairs look really good though and there is no water damage inside, even after a very rainy storm on Saturday night. We looked at it on Sunday while the place was closed. A guy just left the gate open and said to go in and take a look. We spent our time poking around and called him back to arrange a time to meet and test out the appliances.

This morning we took our generator to the trailer, 75 miles away, to be able to turn things on and see how it goes. Of course the first thing I turn on, something goes wrong. I tried a switch on the wall that said pump and a splashing water sound came from somewhere. Ross went outside to see if water was going outside and sure enough there was water coming out – from an unknown source. Inside there was only once place the water sound came from, a cabinet that was screwed shut. We managed to unscrew it with our keys and see that luckily it was just a missing inline water filter, the water was just pouring out where the thing used to go. Hopefully that’s the only water issue, aside from a loose sewage pipe, probably hit while parking or driving. We then tested the speakers, sound like crap (they’re cheap of course), plugins, vacuum, space heater, fan, ac turns on, heat turns on though we’re not sure the thermostat works properly. The carpet was removed and replaces with linoleum, the shelf in the back bunk area was torn out to fit a TV – and I mean torn. the mattress in the bedroom is springy but we figured we might have to replace that anyway. The slide out works..although it was a huge pain in the ass to find that out. After we’d checked out most everything we were in the car trying to figure out how to close the slideout because when we hit the button it sounded like the damn wall was being cracked and ruined. While we were sitting there a man we spoke to on the way in, a very rude man, showed up and with another guy – to show the trailer to. We walked up to him and asked if we could pull in the slide to make sure it works – he had previously changed his attitude to crap when we said we wanted to test out the appliances- this attitude got worse when we further “doubted his honesty”. He really expected people to just take his word that the slideout worked – people who were making a significant purchase were just supposed to take a salesman word haha. I let him have it with that little fact and more about how unreasonable it was that he would say no. We were providing the power to the RV, imagine if we’d wanted to test things out on their power, 100 yards from a plugin. They would have flat our refused probably.
I don’t know what kind of idiot would buy a home without knowing if everything worked but this guy was sure it was unreasonable. The guy went to far as to tell Ross to leave, getting in his face like we just told him the house he built was a piece of shit. Somebody said something and Ross eventually said “then you wont mind if I just pull in the slideout then” and the guy finally agreed with a smug “I’ll prove you wrong” smirk. We never said it didn’t work, we said we’d never seen on e work and we didn’t want to break it by turning it on. Either way, the guy was a piece of crap. He finished giving the other guy a tour of the trailer, a very basic tour where the holes in the roof were neither mentioned or looked at, and they left.

While they were walking away I heard the guy who had also been “looking” say “well I’ll just call Wes in about 15 minutes then”. We called Wes right away. The original guy we spoke to on the phone, and arranged to meet him in a few minutes at the trailer. Wes was much friendlier but the other guy, Chris, had left a bad taste in our mouthes and if there were any other options we could afford, that were that large, we would have left. At least we did as much research as possible before hand and brought the generator to safeguard ourselves from scandalous salesmen but theres always things you just cant know. Like, whether or not it was a FEMA trailer. Chris said it was “they all are (there were 2)” while Wes said it belonged to a guy who worked there. Either way, theres no way to get honesty out of those people and we knew with the way things are down here, the thing would go fast to a hunter or construction worker (or anyone really with summer coming up). When Wes came, we put the slide back out and negotiated a price. From there it was an hour or 2 of dealing with the loan company and salesmen with rebel flags and dead deer on their wall.

We were glad to leave but didn’t leave excited unfortunately. It’ll be nice to just have it here and go on with our lives – try to forget dealing with that place.

No photos of the trailer yet, its not so special looking anyway since its a modern one but once I get the interior how I like it I’ll take more photos – especially of any upholstering or major decor changes. We will up the value on this thing big time.

I’m so sad to leave the Brougham but more space will make life so much easier…and less painful. I’ll be fixing up and cleaning up the Brougham while we wait to be able to get a truck but wont be able to imagine life without him for a while. I much prefer classic vehicles over modern ones any day. They’re sturdy, have personality and style while newer vehicles are stale and boring. I just hope the Brougham goes to a good home with someone who will use it and not let it rot like most RV’s do around here….