Towing our new Lance 1685 travel trailer, we learned a few things in the first extended 1,250 miles …
1. First things first… apparently our new sewer hose knew exactly what it was in for & wasn’t having any part of it! We barely got on the interstate from home when I happened to look back in the mirror just in time to see our sewer hose making its valiant attempt to escape. STOP!!! David pulled over just as the hose was starting to scrape gravel. Whew, another catastrophe averted! (NOTE: the photo is a re-enactment since the orange sewer hose has since been relegated to a tub in the slideout storage area … we’re not allowing that to happen again!). 🙂
2. Did you know that a trailer refrigerator pilot light will blow out with highway “turbulence”? We didn’t and flashing lights caused the trailer owners (us) to freak out every time we stopped and lights are flashing everywhere. We also learned that our dealer, Pete Kramer at Kramer’s Campers does fabulous tech support. Every time the lights would blink indicating the pilot light blew out, turning the fridge off & back on would reset the pilot light and all would be well until next time. Pete said if it continued to be a problem, to put a piece of metal window screen (not fiberglass) inside the exterior fridge vent door – that would cut down the turbulence. But it’s never happened again, so now we know.
3. We learned that 3/8″ screws are insufficient to hold the refrigerator base plate in place. What were they thinking? Ours vibrated off after the first few hundred miles bouncing all over the floor. Longer screws eliminated the problem.
4. We felt like they suspected us of being terrorists at the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel on I-64 East. We apparently missed the fact that all RV’s are required to stop and be inspected before driving through the tunnel. We were waved to the side just before the entrance. Turned out all they wanted was to make sure our propane was turned off. So do yourself a favor, find that inspection station & avoid being the traffic jam.
5. None of our cabinet drawer or cabinet latches survived the first hundred miiles. Every latch vibrated so that the drawers and doors were wide open each time we stopped. Later David repositioned them and we haven’t had any further issue.
6. Apparently extended mirrors on a Toyota 4 Runner aren’t extended enough. We still can’t see behind the trailer? Yikes, a bit scarey when we had to yield to merging traffic or otherwise move from our favorite slow lane.
1200 miles plus later … we’re loving life!
But we made it & life is good! Cheers! Jan
3 Comments
Thanks! I thought it was a stretch that it would be the marker lights. Would be a great feature though if they could figure a way to do it.
When you say the lights were flashing, indicating the refrigefator pilot was out – which lights? Was it your clearance/marker lights or the lights on the refrigerator panel?
Hi Robert — the lights on the refrigerator panel – we didn’t know that’s what they indicated until we called our dealer (i.e. tech support) and he told us. Gotta love a good dealer!