I’ve spent the past two days being every preposition in relation to the RV. I think I now have a much better idea of what we got. Definitely will have a lot to learn but here is some of the good and the bad:

The Good:

• We got a new TV. Rather serendipitously, our home TV died about a week ago. The RV included a brand new 33 inch LCD that is now sitting in the living room.
• The RV has an aftermarket suspension anti-sway bar:

• We have two different shit hoses and one of them is really nice (you don’t need a picture 🙂 )
• We have a nice heated clean water hose so it will work even when it gets below freezing (though I’m not sure if that would be a good idea since the rest of the pipes aren’t heated.)
• There is a backup camera but it needs to be installed and we need a screen for it.
• It has cruise control.
• Both batteries are brand new.
• The pillows on the back bunks are new (but we’ll probably still give them away)
• One of the lower bays had 2 barrel jacks, a scissor jack, 2 kinda moldy ramps, 3 road side reflector signs, a bag of flares, and an ax. For the zombie apocalypse…

The Bad:

• The generator really doesn’t start (though it does turn over).
• There is a leak in both of the front two windows. It looks like it’s been there a while and the paneling next to the top bed has some water damage. Fixable, but definite damage.

• We’re going to have to throw away the mattress from the top bed. Lets just not talk about the condition it was in. That mattress had a built in metal bar for support and would fold up nicely to open up the cab more when not in use. We’ll need to find something that works similar (thick plywood is the current leader).
• The rear ladder is definitely broken:

• On the roof, all of the vent covers are cracked. They have tape over them so not currently leaking, but definitely need to be replaced. You can see it at the bottom of this picture, but all 3 vent covers have the same problem.

• The vent in the back probably needs to be completely removed and completely re-sealed. I have no idea how it isn’t leaking (though maybe it does and it just hasn’t been raining.
• There are a couple other random cracks in the roof that need to be re-sealed. No big deal.
• The rear window definitely needs to be replaced, that BB did a number on it. Even worse news, the front windshield also has what look like BB strikes in it right in the driver’s vision. We’ll see how long I can go without replacing it. Below is the rear window, the front ones aren’t anywhere near as bad fortunately.

• The 12 Volt DC electrical system is completely inadequate for our usage and upgrading basically means starting over from scratch. There is just one “house” battery (as opposed to the “car” battery which is for just starting the engine) and it is located in the engine compartment which makes it virtually impossible to add more capacity without major changes. We kinda knew this going in but it’s just starting to sink in what that means we’ll have to do. It does have a very effective disconnect switch though:

• And that brings us to the two favorite things I found, both of which you can see in this picture:

First off is that black cable and zip tie. The black cable is a cable for TV. It was strung so that the owner could set up a satellite dish behind the RV and string it to the input by the door. Fine. The problem though is that that cable was just draped underneath from one zip tie to another with loops hanging down low. This particular zip tie is connected to a water pipe. And, it was wrapped around the gas line. So if it snagged on something while we were driving down the road, we’d have a broken water pipe and a broken gas line. Fun stuff. It’s been removed.

Second problem is the ruffled paper in the bottom right. My only guess is that at some point, someone was having a very bad day. Their dog ran away, they accidentally spilled their beer, they got a bill in the mail and then the pipes in the back of their RV started banging together. So obviously the answer to the problem was to take the bill, envelope and all, and shove it under the RV between the gas and the hot water pipe. Makes perfect sense. Also, mostly removed.

So, that is where we stand now. We have a lot of changes/fixes/improvements to make but fortunately we have all winter. Step one is getting the water system winterized and sealing up the roof before it snows. Then we’ll go from there.