Anniversary?

[DutchmenSport]

The wife just got a reminder on Face Book that we signed the dotted line for our Montana 4 years ago today! Happy Anniversary Montana!

Looking back over the last 4 years:

Year one. Lots of problems, lots of warranty work, lots of stuff I fixed myself. Had a tire blow out and got all new tires. Never had an issue with tires again. Another problem was learning how to use the Lippert 6 point electric self-leveling system.

Year two. Almost a flawless year. The only problem was turning on the electric on the water heater with the tank empty! BUT, I finally bought the tool to remove the heating element and since, never had to use it again! I made contact with the truck bed rails and fixed a crack on the front cap. I never had problems with the Lippert self-leveling system. It worked great all the time. I just made sure the trailer started out as level as I could before hitting the auto level and make sure the jacks never extended enough to stroke out.

The really good thing about year two was, we paid the camper loan completely off.

Year three. Got some bangs and dings on the baby, along with some scratches. Tried to hide or cover that up, and over time, they seemed to fade. Maybe not really, but I don't see them any more. I still have a slightly crumpled J-panel on the passenger rear where another car clipped me and kept going. Had a few occasions where the Lippert jacks messed up. I never could get the middle jacks to extend the 6 inches to re-home them. I sometimes hit the manual process by total accident and they retraced. I was never able to reproduce that twice in a row.

The really good thing about year 3, Covid! Really! Because of Covid both my wife's company and the company I worked for told everyone to work from home. So, we did ... home from the camper that is! They never knew where were were actually working from. We worked from Alabama, North Carolina, West Virginia, Indiana, and Michigan that year. It was absolutely awesome! No shortage of camping anywhere for us. It was the absolute best experience we ever had ... and it lasted the entire year!

Year four. This was the year of the broken slide cables (3 of them, and one broke twice.) I did purchase my own tools and I now have 2 extra cables I keep in the camper all the time, and hope I never have to use them now.

Also, had a front landing jack (Lippert electric) fail. I replaced the front jack myself but could not get the middle jacks to manually retract so I could re-home everything. But, the leveling worked (almost anyway). Then when we finally returned home (after being gone for several months, I took the time and was finally able to properly re-level (Manually) with the 4 corner jacks and did the 10 button pushes up and 10 button pushes down and got the thing reset. Middle jacks somehow finally knew what to do. And I finally realized the middle jacks won't move for me, unless the system is in an error! and then both right and left have to be hit at exactly the same time and held. BUT! I was able to reproduce it. Yahoo! It only took me 4 years to figure it out!

The really good thing about year 4, I retired. I told my people to "shove it! I ain't working here no more! (no not really). Actually, in the middle of August, I got a call from my former bass and wanted to know I'd reconsider coming back. I very politely told her "no." I was finally living my dream!

In 4 years, we've traveled and camped from Upper Michigan to the Pan Handle in Florida, Alabama and Louisiana. Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee.

And I had the fantastic experience in year 4 to finally do a campground host for an entire month in North Carolina. My Dually now has over 80,000 miles on it (yes, it's low mileage for being 7 years old), but this is the 3rd trailer it's pulled and about 3/4 of those miles was all put on towing a trailer!

During this 4 years, the truck died on us in Tennessee and we had to have truck and trailer towed. It turned out to be a turbo charger.

We just had all new brakes put on the truck. They were down to nothing! Apart from oil changes and keep up with DEF, we've had very little or no problems with the truck other than that turbo charger that went out 3 years ago. I do keep up regular maintenance on it and never let anything slip. My grandson broke one of the buttons for the power back door window, and the tail gate handle (lock) stuck and had to get it replaced. I replaced the windshield wipers this year (for the first time ever), and put all new tires on about 2 years ago.

So, that's my report! We're enjoying the good life! It just don't get better than this! We're on the road again on Aug 30 this year and not sure when we'll be returning back to the house. The wife want to be home for Christmas this year. I'd rather be in Alabama where it's much warmer!