And now for the year 2010

A long time waiting for another post since last time, I am glad that I didn't hold my breath in between times.
Many things have happened since then, some are good to mention but, as usual, some are not good so we will attend to the first things first.
 I believe the last post was about March 2010. What took place around that time has made a drastic change in my life, I will say that it is not a good change either. In August of the previous year, I found out that I have hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). This is a type of diabeties where the blood sugar level drops too low for comfort and sometimes safety. I had a tough time that fall and part of the winter getting accustomed to this disease. I had no energy and sometimes very little strength either. Let us say that I did a lot of research on the Internet and stayed connected to the doctors for the most of the next year learning how to live with diabeties.

Finally, in the spring, I decided to get involved in working on our motorhome, our baby. I likely mentioned that it is a 1971 Triple E with a  Ford Econoline drive train. When we used it last year we would step into the coach via the entry steps and it would feel like we were standing on a mushroom or something similar. With the help of my neighbour across the street (a welder by trade), we discovered that the floor of the entry well was rusted badly and needed replacing.



 I started working on this by removing the bad stuff and replacing it with new steel plus I totally disassembled the passenger sidewall of the coach and completely rebuilt this wall. I found many of the
wooden structural pieces were rotted and had to be
changed. One piece came out of its' position and fell
on the ground in a pile of shavings.


 The picture to the right shows the original floor material that I removed.



As seen on the right, the overhead bunk sidewall was rotted as well and had to be changed.This was a real challlenge as I had to remake the framework that fitted just inside the roof covering aluminum. The orignal wall above the cab was just a piece of 3/4 inch plywood and no insulation so when I replaced it I made a wall of 3/4 framing material on its' edge and made a cavity to insert styrofoam insulation.






Here is some of the installation of the foam insullation. I glued the panels to the inside panelling and left a gap around the outside of each piece so I could fill it in with spray foam.After the foam hardened, I trimmed it level so it would make each cavity solid. This should make the motorhome warmer and quieter then ever.
 There is a wire crossing the cavity beside and above the space housing the furnace. This wire had to be replaced as I found a hole burned through one conductor of this AC electrical wire.





 I also made and installed new aluminuum siding.This siding was made from aluminum flatstock sheeting by the roll. I bought a 50 ft roll and used all of it but about 2 ft.










After this I painted the side wall to match the paint
scheme on the cab.








 This little job started about early May and I shut it down around the end of August so it was an involving job for sure. There were still some small tasks to finish off but these are items for another time and another year. Since I spent so much time on our motorhome this year, we were not able to use it for camping this year. We will see what happens next season.

I will continue on next year's activities and see what I can write about next time.
Wilf Blakey