Progress Update - Hitting the road soon!

Hi all,
It's been a while since I last posted but much progress has been made.  The interior work has been completed including upgrades (photos to follow).  The exterior is nearing completion with only the roof seal job and wheel bearing clean and pack left to go.  Connie and I have been working on our packing list and will be completely emptying the cabinets and closets to remove winter and kid stuff.

The first picture is the battery rack modification and newly re-painted tongue.

Correctly resized battery rack

As mentioned in an earlier post, the slightly narrower rack was fabricated from 1" mild steel angle with tig welded joints (the mig was harder to get to with more "junk" in the way).  This rack will hold the batteries in marine cases level and secure.  I'm not sure if it makes any difference but I feel better and that's what its all about in this case.

Tongue put back together

One of the modifications done is to install an electric 3500lb capacity tongue jack.  This caused the LP bottles to be moved back 1" to clear the cover but no issues with that since the bottle rack was off already.  I was going to hook it up today but have managed to lose the in-line fuse for the power feed.  Not an issue as they are readily available at the local parts store but I will probably use a circuit breaker instead.

We had a couple of rainy days forcing the work indoors.

Head-banger cabinet replacement

Here is the replacement cabinet - much less likely to hit my head on this but I'm sure sooner or later I will.

Finished cabinet with side panels and hardware installed

The replacement cabinet finished out really close to the original stuff in the RV.  I stole the handles from the restroom and put the new plain ones there.  We almost forgot to put a ledge inside the door to keep sliding items from opening the door while under way but it was an easy add-on after installation.

The original layout of the wiring and antenna connections was made to support the TV cabinet that we removed.  Couple this with a really cheesy radio and CD player and we had a chance to bring the comforts of home into the RV.

New DVD/CD player/Radio

I bought this in-dash DVD/TV tuner/CD player/ AM-FM a few years ago (2008) and never got around to putting it in until now.  It is rated at 60 watts per channel (4) and will likely be less than optimal until I install some good speakers.  It has audio and video output to go to the flat panel LED TV we just got.  The TV is incredibly thin (about 1/2 inch screen), weighs less than 10 lbs and draws less than 20 watts of power at full volume (about the same as three Christmas lights worth of power).

TV mount and new connections

We moved the antenna wiring to this side of the RV and routed it to the TV location.  While I was doing that I also put a 12V outlet and ran audio and component video cables.  The new TV will operate happily on one of the small plug in inverters when we are dry camping.  The hard wires to the new DVD player eliminate having to hook up the player when entertaining the granddaughter (or Connie for that matter).  I am a little concerned about the cable length but will cross that bridge when we get to it.  For the record, the cables will pull out 15 inches from the plate.

Well, thats about all of the updates for now.  We plan to leave on our adventure on Tuesday or Wednesday depending on how quickly we get the remaining task complete.

Thanks for reading - Connie says Hi.
Ron