Monday, August 3, 2015

Blog Update - RV Upgrades and tasks accomplished

Still enjoying Kalispell Montana!

Since returning from my vacation on the North Fork, I have taken the opportunity of time gained to make a few upgrades to the RV and also get a few personal items taken care of.

I am now officially a Montana resident - registered to Vote and a new drivers license. This is important because I am still trying to get the title to my truck corrected and legally registered. The nice thing about Montana is there is no sales tax on auto sales, so inexpensive to register here. Also they allow permanent plates on vehicles and RV's which are over 10 years old - so one set of plates and forget about it. I have to have a State Trooper come out and do a VIN number verification since the title is not correct as soon as that is done I will register the truck and also the RV with Montana.

Since I don't have an address here in Montana and cannot prove residency I had to find a work-around. To get a drivers license you have to have a statement for rent or utilities to prove you live here, or a voters registration. Voters registration does not require proof of residency...so I registered to vote and then used the registration to get my drivers license. You need a Montana Drivers license to register a vehicle...so I have jumped through 2 of the hoops in the bureaucracy! All should be accomplished before the end of the month. I am happy to have gotten this done.

I am also in the process of scheduling a major physical with a local internist and cardiologist. That will get done in the next two weeks, now that I am officially on Medicare!

Saturday Night was another night at the races, it was not the best night as we had car problems for the first time this year. We had high hopes since we had four new tires and expected to be able to really compete with the car now handling well. However, we timed in for the time trials in first place which was nice, but the car developed a bad miss and was backfiring and shooting flames out the exhaust and did not have all the power we needed. We still finished in 4th place in the 75 lap main event...had it been running good we all feel we could have won the race.

This week will be finding out what the problem was - we tore the carburetor apart at the track 3 times and checked electrical and the distributor...we will have to dig deeper.

New Tires!



First Place in the time trials...



Now to the RV Upgrades!

Since putting in the new batteries, I was amazed at them lasting the whole time I was at the North Fork but wanted to be able to quickly determine the voltage without going outside and digging out my meter and measuring. So I added an interior gauge package which also includes 2 USB Ports for charging things and a 12 volt outlet (Cigarette Lighter type). It works great and I can now monitor the condition of my batteries easily at a glance.



I have wanted to add covers to my roof hatches which allow them to be open even in the rain. These also protect the hatches from the sun. I installed 2 and have one more to go - so that all my hatches have the ability to stay open in the rain.



I am also replacing the bathroom sink fixture which was broken and I removed it when I was installing the outdoor shower...so a nice new shiny bathroom sink fixture!



HOT! It has been very hot here again - broke a record Saturday it was 101 - thankfully we had a decent breeze at the track but it was very hot there. Yesterday was 98 and the same for today - so getting outside work done in the mornings...supposed to cool down later this week. And there are fires everywhere and smoke. Most of the smoke here is actually from a large fire in Washington!

Stay tune for more adventures....

Capt. Jim - "The Wanderer"

Traveling and photographing the Southwest and Alaska!


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