Parisian Phoenix Publishing

By Rachel C. Thompson

If you read our book, Motorhome Gypsies, you will have seen a good measure of motorhome gypsy luck— good and bad. On a recent trip, we had both kinds. As usual for us, good luck won out.

 We wouldn’t be motorhome gypsies if we didn’t have a problem on the road. This was our first time out in a while with the 19-foot Sunline travel trailer which quickly turned an adventure into a disaster and back again. Let me explain.

 We planned to leave Florida and arrive in Pennsylvania three days later. after one full hook-up stay at a winery campground and one-night boondocking up in them there hills. It’s summer and hot, but not high in the mountains at night along I-81 North in Virgina. This good plan went sideways in South Carolina after six hours of driving as the truck broke down in a region where we knew nobody.

This was no ordinary breakdown. All was thought well with the truck. We had put a ton of work into it. New three-core radiator, fresh transmission, timing chain, HP water pump, belts, hoses, ignition system distributor, tires, and brakes. Anything that could break on that motor was replaced, even a new fuel pump. All this to prevent trouble on the road. The last part we expected to fail, failed. It was a recent part, but not brand spanking new. I have never seen an alternator fail this way before. Strike one for bad luck.

Running along fine on I-95, I heard a squealing sound. We were pulling off for gas anyway so we hit the exit. We parked at the gas pumps, fueled up, and checked the fluids. Everything was fine until I tried to start the motor. Crack, crack, nothing. We immediately guessed a bearing had seized. It had to be the only part never replaced, right? The power steering pump was our best guess. Turns out that wasn’t it, but we knew it had to be a bearing. We were stumped but had no time or energy to figure it out. More bad luck.

We were parked at the pumps, truck and trailer taking up the row, and we couldn’t move. What do we do now? You can’t block the pumps. Management said we had to move it, but how?

 First, we had to unhook the trailer so we could push the truck away from the pumps so the camper could be moved. The tow truck people, on the phone, refused to move the travel trailer. Management at the truck stop could not help us. But the manager knew a guy with a truck and called him. I had to pay 50 bucks for him to move the Sunline 50 yards and park it. Now what do we do? Camper is stuck in a parking lot with no truck.

Finding the tow truck via our insurance took time and a lot of hoop-jumping. Finding a shop to take the truck in the middle of nowhere at 5 p.m. took longer. And, it was 95 degrees outside with us making arrangements in a boiling parking lot. It took hours to get the truck towed.

 The car shop was located less than three miles away. The driver would not let us ride in the tow truck. More bad luck. The mechanic shop lady called. She needed us there to sign papers to get the truck fixed, and it was already after 5 p.m. We worried the shop would close. They couldn’t get parts so late in the day. We had no way to get there. The truck had gone, but the camper remained parked at the hot truck stop with no shade.

 We got lucky. A hotel was walking distance from the truck stop. New plan. Stay in the hotel and deal with the truck in the morning, but the shop needed us that night. Good luck, I guess— they work 24 hours a day, but they won’t work on it without the paperwork. We were in a dilemma. Walk to the shop in the morning? Walk there now?

Our luck changed big time. The shop lady said she’d come and get us, and she did. She not only picked us up, she also hooked up the Sunline and brought it, and us, back to her shop. Fantastic good luck, but now we were miles away from the hotel. 

What now? She let us plug the camper into her power so we had a place to sleep with air conditioning overnight. We didn’t know they offered 24 hour service until we got there. They had the truck running by 8:30 p.m. We were in bed by 9, and back on the road in the morning just like nothing had happened. 

Thanks to the kindness of the shop lady, we didn’t miss a beat. That’s what I call good motorhome gypsy luck!

What was wrong with the truck? The alternator’s pully bearing froze solid. The alternator was still charging, working as it should, so we didn’t suspect it. It had to be a bearing, just as we thought. It could have been something critical but wasn’t. Alternators are easy to replace and not too pricey. Our luck changed. Disaster averted! 

To be fair, we could have fixed it ourselves. We had a good idea of what it could be and enough tools to fix it. First step would be to loosen the belts and spin each pulley until finding which one was frozen. Alternators aren’t hard to replace. We could have walked to the parts store. But remember, it was 95 degrees with no shade.

Our good and bad luck wasn’t over yet. The truck thereafter ran fine all the way to Pennsylvania (and later back to Florida). We had no other issues with the truck. 

However, it was the camper’s turn to rain on our parade. First, it was hotter in Pennsylvania than it was in Florida. That became a big issue. The roof air conditioning unit died. A few hours later, the RV refrigerator also took a dump. New replacements for the two would be more than 3,000 bucks. Ouch!

 “Now we are screwed,” Lisa said.

She wasn’t wrong.

Our family lent us a window air unit, which we were able to put outside on a table and pipe it into the rig via our side window with some extremely convoluted cardboard and tape duct work. Later, while there, we bought a window unit and got a big discount on it. We borrowed tools, and I had to buy some that I already have at home. We later converted an RV window to accept a regular house window unit. That’s one problem solved, though less than ideal. Later, we will find whatever part failed or permanently mount a window air through the wall.

The big nut to crack was the RV refrigerator. The space was too small for a 110V home unit. RV refrigerators are specially built in weird sizes with features that regular home units don’t have which is why they cost so much. The odds of finding a good used one were nil. In Florida we might find one, but in PA where we were? Impossible. 

Or so we thought. Our relative went online to Facebook Marketplace and found one posted just 40 minutes before. We don’t have Facebook. Unbelievable good luck? Yes! We got it and it fit— and not only that, it was cheap and the exact same unit we had but newer. Dang, that’s lucky.

Of course, that good luck came with some bad luck. Installing it was a nightmare and took two days. Why? The RV door is too small to bring the unit inside. The door had to be removed, frame and all. The refrigerator had to have the doors off. Everything was in the way, from the ceiling lights to the interior’s roof air cover. The new unit had 1/8 inch to spare to get it inside. The entire time, it was 98 degrees outside. We got so banged up and bruised doing the job, it took a week to recover from the effort. But we managed it.

There you have our recent example of motorhome gypsy luck in action. We had hedged our bets by doing all we could to make the rig and truck 100% right. But bad stuff happened anyway, that’s not just our luck. It could be anyone’s luck. 

Like we said in our book, RVs are a hole in the pavement you dump money into. But things turned out well and it could have been much worse. Our luck proved more good than bad. There are many levels of good luck we didn’t mention. For example, the refrigerator was 25-years-old, and if it didn’t break there, we would have missed out on a great deal. I guess the key to good MHG luck is seeing it when it presents itself. 

Despite all the problems on this trip, it was well worth any trouble we experienced to go see our Pennsylvania family and friends again. Having them, and the help they gave, is the best luck of all.

Rachel C. Thompson is one of the authors of Motorhome Gypsies: Practical RV Living Advice & Real World Adventures, which released from Parisian Phoenix Publishing July 14. She wrote the book with her partner, Lisa Cross. You can purchase the book from your favorite retailer, download it from Kindle Unlimited or order it from Bookshop.org here.