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Star Dreamer

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Everything posted by Star Dreamer

  1. I thought that I had read something awhile back that the RV groups had pushed back on the testing and that they had changed the requirements that they were not going to test out of state RVs. Oh well, guess we won't plan to go there anytime soon! We are going to be right next to the border in AZ, I should run the truck, titled as an RV, across to see what they do.
  2. It is the only way to avoid the mountains. Alot also depends on the time of year you are doing this. We did I80 and I84 to Idaho and I was surprised it wasn't that bad just a constant uphill that sucked the fuel down! But you have to watch for high crosswinds. We only went as far as Caldwell Idaho so can't say anything about farther west. Bring snow chains if doing anything farther north if you are thinking about this in October or later.
  3. I have a list that Morryde suggested for alignments and they show a few in AZ, TX, FL a couple in NM, and in other Southern States. Where will you be near and I can let you know which ones it shows.
  4. When driving I use our Garmin Dezl 770. I update the maps before a long trip. But for trip planning I use Google Maps and plan my route between stops. I use to use Microsoft Streets and Trips but that is no longer available so I started creating my own map book. I will have the route displayed on Google and then do a snip of the screen and copy and paste that into Microsoft Word. I can zoom into to towns and areas where there are turns at and show route numbers and paste these into my word document. I can also switch to Satellite view especially if campgrounds I will be stopping at and paste that in. With the snippet tool I can add marking to it like if I want to note where my site is at in the campground. I have a double sided printer that I print the final document out. Our trip we are leaving on Wednesday to head west was about 38 pages so only 19 sheets of paper which o but in a 3 ring binder along with our campground reservations. I also then load the stops in my GPS under trip planner and verify that it agrees with my route and I can change it if needed. The only issue with the Garmin is it avoids route is marked "no trucks" which normally is fine but like on I20-/ through Atlanta it wants to reroute around the bypass but being an RV we can go straight thru so I just either put it in car mode or turn it off as it will drive me crazy with the "No Trucks Allowed" alerts! I can't rely on the wife to look at maps on her phone but she does great at changing the pages in my maps and can tell me what exit numbers are the exit for our route.
  5. Lots of info here, enjoy and post pictures when you can (check out pinned post on how to do pictures)
  6. There are a couple of places near us in Hartsville SC that have RV spots that aren't really campgrounds as they don't show up on Google Maps. I can get you some phone numbers if you want to call them. I think they were set up when a Nuclear Power plant was built near by for workers and they now get used by people that know about them. They are near HWY 151 about 20 miles from Darlington Raceway and about 30 miles West of I95 so it may be a little farther than what you want but it is warmer here.
  7. Star Dreamer

    HDT advice

    You are correct, most tandems only have the axle interlock that ties the front drive and the rear drive axles together but they typically just have an open differential. You can then get air lockers for at least the rear drive axles and they may even have them for the front drive axles but not sure on that. Obviously ones with lockers do get harder to find. As far as signage, in our case for 10 years, we have had "Private RV" on the side of ours. We are titled and registered as a motorhome. We have never been pulled over or have stopped for weigh stations. The DOT officers may be confused when they see us but obviously not enough to pull us over. In your case you will look more commercial than one pulling an RV so just make sure you have all your paperwork including proof you own all the vehicles you have on the trailer.
  8. Check the resource Guide. I thought there was some wiring information there for the Volvo's.
  9. Star Dreamer

    HDT advice

    We have a 2005 Freightliner Century with the 14L Detroit and a 10speed Ultrashift transmission. We have not done an EGR delete as we still take ours in for service and I do not want to have any issues with a repair place saying they need to put it back to work on it since it is illegal to remove it. I only do minor maintenance and repair items, the big stuff I leave to the shops. Ours runs good, we bought it with 450k and after 10 years, we know have 575k with us using it in RV service. It was a factory tandem and singled short by previous owners. It works but if I were to do another one, it would be singled Mid or left Tandem. Since you do not know what your weights will be with the 7 cars loaded on a trailer, you may find you might be limited on the number you can haul with the single axle. You budget might be a little low, but that depends on how much you need to bring the truck up to the standards you want to have to drive it safely without breaking down. You should keep at least $5k in reserve for emergency repairs, or have a good credit card. A tow alone could be expensive. You may end up with needing a set of chains to get up the gravel hill if you go single and probably need to have a set anyway if heading to Colorado! On the Freightliner, look at the area around the dash brake valves. That area of the dash gets broken. We were able to get a replacement dash piece from the dealer and it wasn't very expensive at around $50 at the time but you will find that the plastic in the Freightliners do break and you could spend a lot replacing all the broken pieces. I have replaced a few in ours as they get bad enough that JB Weld is not holding it together. Luckily most of the parts have been still available at the dealership but who knows for how long.
  10. I did a Black Friday sale one at Menards a few years ago. 3 years at it still works. It has a removable SD card. I would have to remember to turn it off if we had a hit that I wanted to save. There are buttons to stop recording but it has been so long I forget which ones would do it.
  11. Star Dreamer

    Air system

    We have also noticed that the pressure is affected by the ambient temperature outside at least on our truck. Warmer temps seem to give us a higher pressure. I haven't paid attention to see if elevation makes a difference.
  12. With the issues we have heard of lately on long response times, we will just use Visa and call our own service.
  13. Disregard my comment, I found what I was looking for.
  14. It sounds like your current Etrack is fastened on top of the floor and is currently located not centered on the jeeps tires but more underneath the Jeep. If the etrack was outboards of the jeep wheels some, I would use it in that location but underneath may make it for difficult to access the connections and ratchet mechanism. L track is nice but I do not think it has the strength rating of the Etrack fasteners so you may want to verify that. Recessed L track makes for a nice floor to use when no vehicles are in the garage but may be difficult to install now. You may be able to run it alongside the Etrack and be close to your center of your tires. It can be expensive plus you need all different tie down attachments. The flooring you posted looks to be just the additives that are put in a resin floor and not the whole floor. If your floor twists or bends it may crack the resin flooring. You might want to try like the bed liner material or garage flooring epoxy which you can apply yourself. If you can handle the extra weight, could you add a plywood floor of appropriate thickness to mount the L track flush and then coat that plywood with a flooring that you want?
  15. It would really only be helpful if we were in an area close to the locations and needed something from that type of business. This is a big country and lots of local stores that sell various products. Necessity, price and distance is what determines where we will go to get stuff. We shop Walmart's alot because the wife worked for them for a lot years and when she retired, we got lifetime discount cards and they are usually close to where we stop and usually have our every day items. I recently tried to get propane tanks filled locally near a campground we were at. The local propane place would not fill RV tanks but they referenced us to the campground we were staying it who was charging about 25% more than the Tractor Supply place so we went to TSC. The nice thing about a smart car is the cost to drive a few miles is not very expensive.
  16. If possible, I would take the trailer for a spin around the area for at least 15 minutes if possible. It would be a shame to pay the money for the balancing and it not be right. I always balance my RV trailer tires as it will give a smoother ride for the trailer and we all know how poor our roads are. We pull with a semi truck and use the Centramatic wheel balancers on all of the wheels on it and they have improved the ride immensely.
  17. We love our Torklift Glowsteps, luckily ours were factory installed as our trailer was built to order.
  18. We have known of spring hanger issues where either the weld to the frame broke or the hanger itself bent and had to be boxed in to reinforce it. It appears Lippert uses the same size hangers for a 2000# axle as they do for an 8000# axle, same goes for the spring shackles (we personally had one fail in less than one year and we were not any where near full capacity on our axles, 6800# vs 8000# axle rating). The other area that the Lippert frames are know for issues is at the gooseneck area for both welds and frame cracking. Luckily we can see the critical areas on our frame to inspect them but many times these areas are covered up and the sign of an issue is cracks on the side walls at the gooseneck area or at slides up on the gooseneck area. Also the statement that Lippert builds to the manufacturer specs is incorrect. Our manufacturer movies the frames after they get them to reinforce areas that they don't like how Lippert did it. If Lippert had built it to their specs, they would not need to do this. We watched our trailer being built and have pictures of the frame before starting and when they started the build plus when it was complete and could see the difference.
  19. Our first 5th wheel that we had for about 10 years was a triple axle and we had 9 blowouts and went thru a total of 27 tires. Some lasted 5k miles and some lasted 30k miles. We put on over 100k miles on the trailer. We had it weighed by individual wheel weights and none were overloaded, close but not overloaded. We also had the axles aligned. They were only 15" wheel diameter and very hard to find good tires in that size and they didn't make wheels to work with the lug pattern for a 17.5" diameter. Our next trailer had 8 lug 16" wheels and we replaced them with 17.5" Sailuns as soon as we got it home from the dealership. We transferred those wheels and tires to our current triple axle trailer and they now have 60k miles on them without any blow outs. Some still look good but we are replacing them after this trip as we had a bad alignment done last year and it has worn some of the trailer tires pretty bad. New alignment just done found the issue.
  20. Check the lower shocks bolts on the IS suspension. They hang down pretty low and I found one of mine bent at a 90° angle from normal. Morryde said it wouldn't affect anything when we recently had an alignment done, but I bought a spare shock from them anyway just in case.
  21. Try contacting Henry as he is still involved in the ET hitch development even though Pop up products is making them now. His contact info should be on the Jackaloppe website.
  22. We put down an area rug about 5'x9' and a separate smaller oval shaped rug by the side door. The area rug rolls up to about 10" in diameter and I stand it up in a corner and strap it to the wall for when I have something in the garage that would drive over it.
  23. If you are going to the Balloon Fiesta this year, you may want to make sure it runs. We didn't need to use ours a lot but we did use it to top of batteries a couple of times.
  24. Yes, all entrances except the Northern entrances are open.
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