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Nwcid

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Everything posted by Nwcid

  1. I would agree. That is why I have had a Chevy 3500 dually as a daily for over a decade.
  2. There are the same number of steps between both options. You reference a toad so you would still have to "mess with connecting it". As to leveling I do the same thing as a MH and hit auto level (I know some do not come with this but most that would compare with a MH do). If you are hooking you still need P/W/S and both attach the same way.
  3. Not full time but you asked a question but you also used a situation. I know my answer regardless of full time or not. Less than 2 weeks, fly, visit, return to "normal" life. Over 2 weeks, take my home, be comfortable and have some adventures on the road.
  4. Nothing like digging up the past. A 6 year gap! Not bad........
  5. For the SxS registration I just opened the envelope mine came in. There is a tiny sticker that as stated looks like a sticker you would put on your license plate. It was small and not attached to anything. Just loose in the envelope and easy to overlook. My plan is to keep in the glovebox to prove I paid my money. I have too many stickers now and will be removing those also once they expire. After 4500 miles in the last 18 months in 5 states I have yet to make any contact with a LEO of any kind. For the Rally, we are going to do some last minute things in the morning and hit the road. We will RON near Pendleton at the Arrowhead Travel Plaza since they have the cheapest fuel along the route and I will need almost 200 gallons at that point. Will also top of the propane and fuel tanks on the trailer. Plan to pull into the RV park between noon and 2 on Monday.
  6. Nwcid

    Can I Make It?

    At first I was going to say I would have just backed out like SD suggested. I have done that a time or two knowing ahead of time from scouting. Then I mapped my house..... I basically do that turn every time I park my combo at home. I am 60' from building to building and my driveway cuts further back than your campground image because my drives parallel each other. In my Volvo 630, with a 265" WB and OAL of 30' I can do it with one jack knife. Staying to the outside of the right hand road I pull forward turning lightly until the hitch passes the grass, then turn hard. I go until I am close to the building, back up in a medium jackknife move until I can pull straight down the lefthand drive. In my dually I had to forward/backward 2-3 times to make that same turn.
  7. Thank you for this. I will have to check that out on mine. I have 1 Aux switch installed. I have no idea what it is connected to, if anything. I did find the switch connectors in the date for Aux 2 and 3, but not where they came out either.
  8. If you are going to single then it should not really matter what rear end style you get. I am in the PNW and 6x4 was minimum for me because I am tandem. I would have really liked lockers also, but they are not very common in the style of truck or gearing I wanted. My previous trailer was a factory gooseneck so my pick up was set up to pull that when I got my new toy hauler. I did a lot of research and debate about 5th wheel vs gooseneck with the toy hauler since all options were about the same price. For my pick up I decided that I wanted to keep my bed "clean" so I went with gooseneck and the Reece Goosebox. For a direct answer, yes, the Goosebox will work with an HDT, that is how I am set up now that I have an HDT. I am happy with the set up. For a longer answer/question what do you have now and why are you considering switching? Each type of set up has pros and cons. If you are looking for this style of hitch I would also look at the Gen Y. They were not a option when I bought my system. They have options for both goose and 5th hitches.
  9. Many good replies in here so far. We mostly boondock also, campgrounds have nothing to offer us. I echo the try it while at one of your "normal" locations and see how it works for you. First you have to decide what you expect when you boondock and where you want to boondock. Then decide if you are currently set up for that, or if you want to invest to be set up that way. In our case we typically want to live a fairly normal life style. We do not want to live ultra conservative. I call it living "aware" vs conservative. We are aware of our power, fuel, water, food levels and use, but do not do extreme conservation. We typically move every 5-7 days so that is when we dump/fill/replenish. If we really wanted to be conservative we could probably do 10-14 easy. Does boondocking mean a campground with no hook ups, out on FS or BLM land, other public land, etc? This will determine what is "acceptable" behavior. In another forum there is a lengthy thread about running your generator being "rude". For me boondocking, if anyone else is close enough to be "bothered" by my generator then either I picked a bad spot or they did when they came after me. On the flip side many campgrounds have many rules including "quite" times. Last night my buddy had his heater keep kicking on and off. I would much rather hear the mild consistent hum of a generator....... My set up has 120 gallons of water and 2-44 gal grey and a 44 gal black. For the wife and I this typically lasts about a week. We both typically shower daily without turning the water on and off. We do dishes, use the bathroom, brush teeth, etc. While we are not taking "Navy" showers we are also not just standing under the hot water for long periods, get in, wash, be done. We fill a sink with water for washing dishes and not just run water. Right now we are on Day 8 and yesterday I had 1/3 showing on fresh and 2/3 showing on gray and I am in a location where I was able to drain my grey and top off my fresh. My black tank is what has me worried since I had some GI issues last week. It is still showing 2/3 also. We are here for 2-3 more nights. Black tank can really vary depend on how much water you put in. Normally we keep just enough water in to cover the ring which I would guess is maybe 1 cup. For pee there is no reason to add more. If you are doing your other business add more as needed. Even if you used 1/2 gallon/flush, in my case that still = 80 flushes. For power I have solar but I also telework so when all of my stuff is on I draw about 1/2 of what my solar provides. On sunny days it is enough to keep up, on cloudy days I typically run the generator 1 hr in the morning and 1hr in the evening. I have a 125 amp charger so that works for me. My battery bank allows evening TV watching, over night CPAP use, often times a fan and normal base load with plenty of reserve. For generator run time you will have to find out how many GPH it uses and how large of a tank you have. Mine uses ~0.6 gal/hr and I have a 30 gallon tank. I have yet to run it out that would be almost 2 days of straight running.
  10. I have been using the TSD card and online fuel price search, to include gas buddy, to get the best price. My favorite part about the TSD card is I can used it at the pumps and get a full fill without it kicking off at a preset $ limit. One thing about the TSD card is that while the savings from the advertised price is large, it is often not cheapest in the area. I know of 3 stations in our primary travel area that routinely beat the TSD best price by ~$0.25/gallon. Yes these are still truck lanes which is all I use now having saddle tanks on the HDT. Last time I fueled, just over a month ago the best TSD in my area was $2.86/gal, I paid $2.61/gal at the local station. I did use my TSD card which charged me a total of $1.65 for the use of the card. Some of these cheaper places I have found using gas buddy or similar websites. One the flip side, a couple of months ago we went to AZ. I did not have the time, effort or "want to" to find best price so I just went with best price TSD showed.
  11. In the PNW it has been mid-$2 for the most part.
  12. I can understand why someone may want an ambulance conversion. I have spent too much time in one and it would be hard pass for me. Most ambulances are typically built as 2 separate systems. The chassis manufacture, in this case Ford does all of their standard wiring. Then the "box" manufacture builds their system and the 2 are joined together. The ambulance box will have a main power source coming in to power/control all of the non-chassis items. There will be wire bundles going to the over head or doghouse in the cab for switches/controls. If I was going to "un-wire" an ambulance I would start at what is being controlled and work back to the switch and/or distribution panel. Good luck.
  13. I think the 3 main ones I see are Progressive and National General. Others say they are still getting policies but I did not have luck with either. State Farm seems to be most common right now. There are some others that use local companies or farm type insurance. It will also matter if you are registered as a truck or an RV.
  14. Depends on the brand, the panel and how far apart you mount them. All of the panels I have used are rectangular and had ~6" connectors on one end. In my last unit the 2 on the left hooked together and the 2 on the right did and I had to run wire between. In my current unit I have 2 pairs that I did not need additional cable but to hook the 2 pair and the 2 other singles I did need more wire.
  15. Nwcid

    Tires

    I get the Radar put on today. I had to order them and I am under a time constraint. I am hoping the MPG is not too bad. I was hoping for 8-8.5 MPG loaded. I have 2.47 reared with the 12 speed ishift. Bobtail I can get around 9.5 MPG average after about 3000 miles. Loaded after only about 500 miles it looks like I am in the low 7's
  16. I know boondocking/dry camping means lots of different things to different people. My RV is fully self contained and we can easily spend 5-7 days in a location with only power/water awareness, not conservation. If we want to get conservative then we could probably go 2x as long. My suggestion for the OP was not to full-time boondock, but be set up where being able to adjust the reservations by a couple of days and not be dependent on others. I see lots of comments about boondocking being "roughing" it. We get to shower every day, cook all of our normal food, run heat or A/C as need, I am able to telework all day and we get to stay at the places we are actually traveling to. If that is roughing it I must be missing something. I know each of us has a way they like to travel. To me being self contained provides freedom.
  17. If you are relying on campgrounds then you have found what the current situation is. We travel frequently. I spent 100 nights out last year and less than a week of that was in a campground. I am not against campgrounds but for the most part they have nothing to offer us. Setting up to boondock, even if only for a day or two will really open up your options.
  18. Nwcid

    Tires

    What model of tire?
  19. Nwcid

    Tires

    I am sorry I did not specifically say, but I am replacing drives not steer. In reality the drives are in good shape and would probably easily last me 5+ years if I was not worried about the traction issues. I could go to the next town, but that is 2 hours away and I do not think I can find a significant savings. The R-D1 set is $2800 installed with them giving me some credit for the used tires. Is there something that is better, that is still under $3500 installed for 8?
  20. Nwcid

    Tires

    We only have 2 local shops that do big tires and this is my first HDT. A local place I have used several times, but something is always wrong when I get my cars back. Never anything major but I am over it. The other option is Les Schwabs which overall has good service. I use to use them back in the day, but the price went up and service went down many years ago so I stopped using them. Overall I know they still do a good job and they have a lot of shops in the PNW if I have any problems. With this said they offer 2 brands of tires that are in my price range and style. First is the Radar R-D1 the other is Falken BI-850. On the Radar they were very comparable price to online and with the Falken they were on average about $50/tire higher than the best price I could find. There is almost $1500 difference between the 2. These are installed prices. I did some searching and I could not find any reports on either of these tires. Maybe I was not searching right...... So my question is can anyone give me feedback on these tires? We live in the PNW and boondock. Dirt, mud, snow are realities of where we live. I am tandem and use my interlock on a semi regular basis. I am looking for a tire that provides reasonable traction and reasonable life. We will travel 10-15k/year. I do have chains, 1 single and 1 three rail. Do I just do the less expensive for now and worry about it again in 100,000 miles?
  21. Well if you are worried about warranties following manufacture recommendations could play a big role. There has been lots of changes in many things over they years. Somethings may still work as well as in the past, some do not. To each their own 🙂. I try and stay up with the current recommendations on a wide variety of topics.
  22. I do not recall the last time I changed oil at 3000 mile intervals. I am sure some manufacture still does, but it has been a long time since I have seen that recommendation. What does your owners manual state? I do not have a link because I found this on another forum on a web search: FORD's 2014 F-Series Super Duty Class A Motorhome and Commercial Chassis Owner's Manual (PAGE 125):Every 7,500 miles or 6 months change oil and filter (Page 127...If towing a trailer(car) every 5,000 or 6 months)Every 15,000 miles or 12 months inspect the transmission fluid, consult dealer for requirements. Further down the page it says change the transmission fluid at 60,000 miles.Every 15,000 miles.......Inspect steering linkage, ball joints, suspension, tie-rod ends, driveshaft and U-joints. Lubricate if equipped with grease fittings. (mine has grease fitting)Every 30,000 miles change Air FilterEvery 97,500 miles replace spark plugs.Every 105,000 miles change engine coolant, and rear axle fluid. For most of my non-daily driver vehicles/equipment I will change oil annually unless I put lots of miles/hour on it. I am still trying to decide what to do about my HDT since it takes 10 gallons of oil and 3 filters. I will not come close to needing a changed based on miles. I am debating about annual vs every other year.......
  23. This interest me because I still have to work. We spend most of the summer out because my wife is a teacher. Last year we had to travel and camp along cell service routes. I am in the PNW and there are still a lot of areas without cell service. We mostly boondock so we had a compromise a few times last year due to lack of cell service. If I was not working, as much as I like the internet, I could do without.
  24. I did schedule an appointment but I had to cancel it. In the past month I have been driving it on a lot of local trips. This includes lots of parking and turning on and off. I have not had this happen to me again.
  25. There is no such thing as an anti-theft device. There are only devices that deter or slow down an item being stolen. There are lots of products that hook to ball, goose, or 5th wheel hitches that would slow down a determined thief or deter a "target of opportunity"
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