Making Lemonade

 

Seffner Florida, (high 71, low 52)

We are still at Lazy Days, camped out in one of the 300+ service bays, affectionately known as “Bay View” or the “Bays Inn.”   Or some might call it “hell.”

When we decided to come here, we had two problems.  The most urgent was the burning smell coming from the rear of  the coach.  The second was the clicking noises coming from the inside remote panel for the inverter.  

As I explained in the last blog, the burning smell was coming from a burned wire in one of the overhead fluorescent lights.  

The clicking noise from the inverter panel went away and frankly once the burning smell was corrected we weren’t too worried about it and wondered if it was just some kind of fluke.

While we were here, we decided to have some maintenance work done.   We ended up having the coolant changed and flushed, the brakes checked, a lube job and the wheel bearings repacked.   All expensive on a big rig like this, but all important.

We planned on leaving Thursday and since the inverter panel hadn’t made any more noise, we thought we were good to go.  Just a fluke, right?

Wrong………..

Early Thursday morning someone’s car alarm went off about 4 am.  Of course we jumped up to make sure it wasn’t ours and that’s when we heard the familiar clicking noise coming from the inverter readout panel.

Then it started reading “equalizing” and the voltage was rising rapidly.  

The first thing in the morning, we grabbed our service tech Rob. This time, he was able see and hear what it was doing. He wondered if it was a bad inverter, or a bad panel.  He saw first hand the rise in voltage as it went into equalizing mode.  He confirmed voltage over 15 16 is not good and hard on circuit boards on appliances and such.

He happened to have a spare panel matching ours and plugged it in and viola…..the clicking stopped.  He put ours back, the clicking started.  He did that a few times and concluded we had a bad panel. 

What luck for us that he happened to have pulled one of these panels, for his own use, from a previous repair.  It helped diagnose our problem instead of just buying the part and hoping for the best.

The bad news is that Lazy Days did  not have a brand new part on hand and it will have to be ordered. 

The good news is it’s being sent overnight and should be here today. 

The bad news is the part alone is almost $400. 

The good news is that we have an extended warranty with a $100 deductible.   We paid good money for the policy and this is our first chance to see what kind of service we will get from them.  I’ve read the policy and exclusions, and I believe this should be covered.  Let’s see how long it takes them to respond.

Since our policy covers multiple repairs under one deductible, we decided to get everything else we could find fixed for the single deductible.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, the only thing we could find that may be covered is the automatic step cover.  Rob fixed it in about 5 minutes. 

So, it’s Friday and here we sit, waiting for the part and waiting for the go ahead/denial from the warranty company.  The last extended warranty claim we filed on our other motorhome, was initially denied.  Being the good little ex-claim adjuster that I am, I had read the policy, understood what exactly was wrong, and was ready for them when they initially denied the claim.  After having it denied 3 separate times, they ended up paying our claim. It was a broken bolt inside the generator.  The policy clearly said outside bolts were not covered.  We went round and round over the inside verses outside issue, and I won and it saved us over $1500.   Moral of the story is, if you have a warranty claim, read your policy, especially the exclusions and know exactly what the problem is.  If they deny it and you feel you have a valid claim, ask them to review it. Make them explain exactly why they are denying it.  Don’t trust the shop to fight for you, do it yourself.

So, what have we been doing while camped here at Camp Bayview?   When Rob’s working on the coach, we have to be out.   I’ve had to put the kitties in cages during the day and of course that means they can’t get to the kitty pan.  Not good for them and I think that caused Chatty to get sick the other night.  It’s hard on them and it’s hard on us.

The good news is they have a nice customer waiting room, with Tv’s, comfy couches, free coffee, free WiFi, and plugs to charge your stuff.

The bad  news is just before we came here, Al was trying to fix a shower leak and removed the old caulk.  So, we have no shower to use while we’re here. 

The good news is that Lazy Days Campground is next door and has showers which we have been able to use. 

Our site in Bayview has full hook-ups…  water, sewer, electricity, but we’re under cover, so we couldn’t raise our satellite dish, and we missed Survivor and Nashville!  bad news.

So, what did we do for Valentines day?   Dinner, drinks, movie, flowers?    No….we already got our presents.  Al got a Lube Job and I got wheel bearings repacked!  Romantic, huh?

Last night, it was cool (about 60 degrees) and raining.  We decided to go over to the campground and have a nice soak in the hot tub, if it wasn’t too crowded.  We went over there and found no one in either the pool of the hot tub!  Perfect!   The hot tub was nice and warm so the cold rain didn’t bother us at all!  It felt so good!  That  was our Valentines celebration.  

So, while we’re forced to be here, we are dealing with it as best we can and trying to make lemonade!

Hopefully, we’ll get out of here today, but we’re not holding our breath.  There are certainly worse places to be!