As many of you know, we spent the last week or so in Vonore, Tennessee parked at the shop of our good friend Jeff Rowe. We originally planned to be there to have a tag axle tire replaced and find out the reason it was wearing funny. It blossomed into more than that. This is my story.
On our way home from Kansas, we stopped overnight in Effingham, Illinois. The next morning I looked at the tires and found the driver's side tag was wearing in a pattern I had never seen before.
This pattern was all around the tire.
We drove 277 miles home and it looked no different. I figured we could easily make it to Vonore and we did.
I immediately made plans with Jeff Rowe to go to his shop a day or two before we came to Virginia so he could examine the tire in person and look things over. He guessed it might be a bad shock.
The last day of our Tent/Cruise-In revival our 25 year old Sub Zero brand refrigerator went on the blink. My Dad and I spent the next three days diagnosing the problem and slammed against a proverbial wall. After consulting experts, we determined the fridge was toast!
Thankfully Steve and Karen left this very small fridge in the barn, so we had something to keep a few things cold, well mostly frozen.😀
The fridge in the bus was a huge built-in residential style unit and we loved having all the room inside of it. The fridge was on top and there were two huge freezer drawers.
Jeff wanted us down there as soon as possible so that they could figure out how to remove the fridge, measure the available space and get another one ordered.
The Sub Zero must have been installed very early in the conversion process because it barely fit in the space. It seemed like the bus was built around it. In 2009 we added flooring about 1/2" thick and that did not help the situation.
Most refrigerators in buses have to be removed through the windshield, but our mid door is wide enough to get it out. However, the fridge was so tall, we could not lay it over to get is started out the door.
Jeff whipped out the Sawzall and in a couple of minutes, both pieces were easily removed!
This is the wall hidden behind the refrigerator.
This black device on the end of the pipe is an air admittance valve. They are sometimes used in plumbing when it is not easy to run a vent through the roof. They are not permitted in a lot of applications, but when they are used, they are supposed to be easily accessible in case they fail. They do fail.
Obviously, the people that converted our bus did not care about anyone getting to this one if it failed. The refrigerator had to be cut out to get to the $20 air admittance valve. I replaced it while it was accessible.
There was no way we were going to replace the fridge with an exact duplicate for two reasons. First, Sub Zero is a very costly brand and this exact unit is out of production. There are several leftover new ones still available, but they cost a king's ransom.
Second, since the first one had to be cut out, there was no way a duplicate would ever fit back in. That meant we had to compromise quite a bit on size. Jeff found one that fit the bill and ordered it.
The refrigerator in the old unit was just slightly smaller than the fridge AND freezer in the new one, but we did the best we could. It is still much larger than a typical RV fridge so we are very thankful to have a working fridge and freezer again.
KJo and I were talking about refrigerators when we got this one in. We think this is only the second new residential refrigerator and it may be the first new one. We purchased a new mobile home in 1987 and we are not sure if it came with a fridge or if we put our used one in it. We are both inclined to remember it as new, but we are not sure.
In the mid 90's we purchased a huge side by side fridge used and it was the nicest fridge we ever had until the Sub Zero that came in the bus. All those are behind us now and we hope to get really good service out of this new one.
That pretty much wraps up the refrigerator drama, but we have more to come. Later in the week, I will tell you more about the tag axle tire's abnormal wear and then explain the solution.
Thank you for dropping into Mile Markers today.
Davy
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