First trip...shaking out misadventures - Page 2 - Montana Owners Club

BusyCarol · 09-09-2012, 06:16 PM

Oh boy dejama! Window putty?! OMGoodness! This stuff is silver/grayish in color and STICKS to everything! We cannot do dishes in the sink without putting a towel down first. That would make sense as to why it started oozing when we put hot water in the sink. It is a pain! What did they have to do? Remove the sink thingeys (and yes that is the technical term) and reputty them with plumbers putty???? What a job!

And the floor blowing up like a marshmellow...we laughed at that description...ours is by the furnace vent too. I will be curious to see if that is the same issue. We only ran the furnace a little bit to test in this 100 degree weather! There is only 1 vent in the linoleum area so I guess I should that the stars for my 'luck'!

Thanks for letting us know! We will be contacting Keystone tomorrow to add to the growing list. All is good though! We are taking a trip to Bozeman, MT to visit my daughter in college as my birthday present. YEAH! It will be a good test run of the rig.

dejama · 09-10-2012, 04:26 AM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by BusyCarol

Oh boy dejama! Window putty?! OMGoodness! This stuff is silver/grayish in color and STICKS to everything! We cannot do dishes in the sink without putting a towel down first. That would make sense as to why it started oozing when we put hot water in the sink. It is a pain! What did they have to do? Remove the sink thingeys (and yes that is the technical term) and reputty them with plumbers putty???? What a job!

And the floor blowing up like a marshmellow...we laughed at that description...ours is by the furnace vent too. I will be curious to see if that is the same issue. We only ran the furnace a little bit to test in this 100 degree weather! There is only 1 vent in the linoleum area so I guess I should that the stars for my 'luck'!

Thanks for letting us know! We will be contacting Keystone tomorrow to add to the growing list. All is good though! We are taking a trip to Bozeman, MT to visit my daughter in college as my birthday present. YEAH! It will be a good test run of the rig.

Yes, they had to remove the drains from the sinks and had to put in all new ones since they could not get the junk off...of course if they had put it in hot water long enough it would have came off..lol. DW was fed it up with using towel or goo be gone to clean the stuff off her new dishes and pans. If you have not checked out the nesting pans made by Magma, I would suggest u do. They are great and take up very little space since they nest. Very heavy duty pans. After I took alot of my dw kitchen away when we bought the new rig, she insisted to get a set and she LOVES them.

F3fifty · 09-10-2012, 03:01 PM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by Exnavydiver

Another item you need to check is the U-bolts around the axles. Several of us have had them loosen to the point that the axles shifted and destroyed tires. Torque them to 75 lbs. You probably should not use an extension on the torque wrench. Just use a deep socket. There should be 4 nuts on each end of each axle. Just another item on the "things to check" list....

Excellent advice, my Montana is now three months old with less the 250 miles on it and I just crawled out from under it amazed at how loose those axles U-Bolts were. Started out with the Torque wrench set at 50 lbs and 16 of the 18 bolts weren't even torqued to 50 lbs. I would say this information just saved me some misery down the road. If I don't have enough to worry about with the Marathon Tires on this new 5ver one would think the Axle U-Bolts were torqued to spec. Excellent advise, thanks.

BusyCarol · 09-10-2012, 04:22 PM

I thought the advice on the U bolts was excellent too because we had most of our loose too. We torqued them to 50lb because I couldn't remember what they were supposed to be. We looked it up in the book and 50 was in the middle. I guess we will be climbing under the rig again to tighten them some more. Thanks again to exnavydiver for the input! You definitely saved us some misery too!

Wheelhouse · 09-22-2012, 03:17 PM

Now that you have gone through the basics, have you kept an eye on the tires. Hopefully you don't have any "China Bombs" on your new rig. They fall apart, bulge, outta round and finally BOOM, there go the side panels and maybe the undercarriage of the rig. Also, keep an eye on the tire pressure. Good travels and have fun.

RonD · 09-23-2012, 02:12 AM

3 things you may want to also look for are, if your unit has a dresser attached to the bedroom wall, open the drawers, see if them flex up and down, if so the attachment to the wall is not correct, a lot of them do not have a wood shim for solid attachment, ours had a pair of small screws only, also pull out the drawer under the sofa, look for broken wood on the corners, and last look at the bottoms of the dinning chairs, if stuff is kept in them the staples that hold the bottoms on work loose, screws fix the problem, enjoy your new Montana

BusyCarol · 09-23-2012, 09:31 AM

UPDATE: We just completed our 2nd trip in our new Monty and she performed beautifully! We went to Bozeman, MT to visit our daughter at MSU! Here is what we learned from this trip:

1. We are getting the hang of the hooking-up/unhooking and the leveling system. However, this was the first time the leveling system was on uneven ground (one side was way low). So to keep the leveling system from lifting all 4 tires off the ground we put lynx levelers under one set of tires and she performed great after that.

2. Thanks Wheelhouse for your concern! We switched out the China Bombs before we left for this trip and we are the proud new owners of 5 NEW G614 all made in the USA! Can everyone say HALLELUJAH! There is less bounce in the trailer because of them AND it set our minds at ease!

3. We also used the TST Tire Pressure Monitoring System for the first time! That was GREAT for the added peace of mind. It is kind of fascinating to watch the temperatures/pressures change as you go! It was a little tricky to setup but fine once I got a tip from TST it was a breeze. I will post on this tip in a separate post.

4. While we were at the KOA in Bozeman (which by the way is actually located in Belgrade MT) we took the shroud off of the vent over the bed. We found the wiring for the 2nd AC unit but it is a NON-ducted unit. So we will be looking into a Penguin Low profile for that soon.

5. We pulled out the drawer under the cabinet in the bedroom to see how sturdy the area for the washer/dryer is. We will beefing it up (based on MOC suggestions) and installing a drain pan(also per MOC member suggestions).

6. We took the dogs with us this time! They traveled in the trailer in their crates and did fine. The only issue we had is that our one dogs crate is HUGE because she is HUGE and it was a pain to take it in and out. We put noodles around them to protect the walls but we are going to have to come up with a different plan because it was a pain.

7. The cable tv splitter is China JUNK so we will be switching that out as soon as we can. Most of the channels were fuzzy. Over the air channels were clear.

8. We will check the dining chairs, the under sofa drawer, and dresser when we get home! Thanks RonD for the advice!

Thanks to everyone for their kind words and support! We have learned so much from all of you.

BusyCarol · 09-23-2012, 09:38 AM

Forgot to mention that we experienced first hand the dreaded 'Black Tank Dribble'!!! Thankfully my husband was wearing gloves! When he opened the cap to the black tank it 'dribbled' some nastiness on the ground. Just a little but enough to make us want to install the modification of adding a gate valve. That is another thing to add to the to do list! The list keeps on growing!

woodtic · 09-23-2012, 10:52 AM

A little tank dribble doesn't bother me at all. I figure I'm lucky if thas all I get. Easy to manage. I've had cheepy hoses that squirted, split. or had the ends come off when dumping. I also always wear gloves "as ordered" when handling dump duty. I've had to deal with much worse over the years at work when the sewage treatment systems fails or needs maintainance.

BusyCarol · 09-23-2012, 07:42 PM

My husband is 'ordered' to wear gloves too! I used to date a guy who was a Roto Rooter and later he became a Journeyman Plumber. He was the same way...nothing could phase him when it came to 'waste'. My hubby is NOT squeamish but I don't think he liked the dribble at all. Plus 'What would the neighbors think dear?'

Wheelhouse · 09-24-2012, 05:10 AM

I hated to find dribble come out of my pipe when opening the cap. Recenntly I changed the closed-off cap to one that adapts to agarden hose. This way, I have a bucket under and slowly unscrew the hose cap. So if someting comes out, I can control the flow and tighten cap to empty bucket if needed. The adaptor is also used when site camping. I use the hose for the galley and shower and washer leaving those gate valves open. NOT the BLACK WATER. If I have to empty the black water tank, I switch hoses before leaving to clean everything out. I was at a site that had the dump 60' away and no dump at my sight spot. I hooked up the garden hose, ran it to the dump and emptied. No need to move every day to dump gray water.

You may also like: