Or...Changing Priorities
After the devastation of all my hopes and dreams (yes, that's hyperbole) last Saturday, I've spent a lot of time thinking about my plan to move in to the RV, and I've been doing a lot of rearranging of a lot of lists.
My priorities have changed. Now that I've had the RV out on the road, and seen it fail and how it failed, a lot of the plan has, by necessity, been reconfigured, and a lot of it has not.
First, my number one priority is no longer getting completely moved in to the RV as soon as possible. Instead, the base functionality has taken precedence. The RV doesn't "work just enough" to make moving immediately feasible, so getting it to that "just enough phase is top of the list, and getting it there is going to be a few different processes.
First, I need to reassemble the drive shaft. This isn't so much of a problem, as the drive shaft works fine, but due to the nature of an RV, and the nature of the vehicle that provided the tow back to Lexington on Saturday, the drive shaft was disconnected. I still have all of the parts that were taken off, and I'm told by YouTube that this is no more than a 20 to 30 minute job. For the sake of preventing any future frustrations, I'll be replacing some of that hardware with brand new pieces, just to be safe.
Second, I need to figure out this fuel issue, and I plan on doing that the only way that my limited expertise will allow, by replacing everything. A fuel system, as it turns out, isn't a terribly complicated thing on the surface. The tank holds the fuel, the pump pushes the fuel, the lines carry the fuel, the injectors put the fuel in the engine, and the spark plugs burn the fuel. In the very specific case of this very specific RV, there's also the minor complication of there being TWO tanks, TWO fuel pumps, and a junction unit between them. One by one, each and every piece of this system will be removed, and replaced, functional or not.
Thirdly, the RV needs new tires. Maybe not all of the tires are bad, and maybe I could get away with just replacing a few, but again, in the mind to prevent future headaches, I have 9 tires now (8 on with 1 to spare), and I will be replacing all of them with brand new tires. I don't want to be stuck in a gas station parking lot for an hour and half breaking tire irons trying to replace a tire again.
This brings me back around to number 4, the water system that has been plaguing me since the beginning. The official move in will likely happen before this is taken care of, but it has fallen far from my number 1 priority.
These are my new priorities, but they will sadly have to wait. After the incident of last Saturday, my bank account is empty, which means that I can't afford to do any of the above until I have another paycheck. So what to do in the meantime? Stick with the original plan.
For now, I'm slowly moving myself into the RV. Thanks to my dear friends Kathryn, and Kayti, and Jakob, a good portion of this is already done, and even though I'm still parked outside my brick and mortar house, and I don't have running water inside the RV, for the last three nights I've slept in the RV. The last three days have been spent in the RV (what wasn't spent at work at least). For all intents and purposes, my home is now a 1982 Chevrolet Vogue II RV.
Saturday may have been the realization that I'm not nearly as far along as I thought I was, and it definitely hurt my pride, and my motivation, but fear not faithful readers, the plan and I, are still moving forwards.
-Z
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