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We bought our 1987 Rockwood in November of 2011. It was a derelict about to be parted out by the new owner. The tires were high end Michelin X tires all dry-rotted to hell. The right front blew out on our way to the tire store, blew out only three miles from where we purchased our new home. All of the comfort systems were dead.

We’ve been dealing with systems issues on a priority basis since then and finally got to the engine. Our Chevy 454 has been misfiring and wasting fuel at prodigious rates and a new coil, plugs and plug wires twice as I hit the plug wires with a MAPP torch while plugging off the A.I.R. plumbing. But ignition repairs did not correct the misfire. So I began my diagnostic and repair journey by disabling the emission control systems that would directly effect the engine’s ability to run smoothly. First I disabled the exhaust gas recirculation , then the throttle controlled ignition vacuum advance without seeing any improvement. I posited water in the fuel due to phase separation and started adding fuel to the main tank 20 gallons at a time with a bottle of water remover each time, running the tank as low as I dared. I believe I still have entrained water problems but because it was cheaper than adding a possibly effective Wix fuel filter and water separator I chose to open up the carburetor, a truck Quadrajet number 17985212.

Going in well read and thoroughly prepared, I found the fuel level 1/32′ low at 7/16″ so I raised the fuel level 3/16″ to 1/4″. 1/4″ is within the established fuel level range of Quadrajet carburetor fuel levels and I arrived at this figure by bending the float. The first bend brought the fuel level up 3/16″ so I left it alone. I’m only making educated guesses here so there is no reason to be getting fussy with multiple bends back and forth for some other semi-randomly chosen value until I have some idea where I’m heading. Raising the fuel level tends to make the overall fuel mixture richer, something I wanted to do, and makes it easier for any entrained water to pass through the system. Next I raised the adjustable part throttle adjustment which for all practical purposes is the lean stop for the power piston so the lean cruise fuel mixture would be just that much richer. I also removed the plug over the power piston adjustment and the power piston rich stop so I have easier access to the lean stop adjustment. Allstate Carb and Fuel Injection in Islip, NY provided a pair of airhorn gaskets and after I gave up on finding the power piston return spring, a new power piston return spring. So this means that on the way to the end of this particular journey I drove the Rockwood for a few days with the power piston permanently at cruise lean because of the missing spring. The fuel level adjustment and the 1/2 turn enrichment on the power piston stop seems to have eliminated the misfiring driving around at cruise lean.

Entrained water still collects at idle but it is easily cleared upon acceleration. Adding the power piston back onto the mix has added smooth power that I haven’t felt since we put this old man back on the road. Now to drive for a while and check the exhaust color and fuel economy!

O-kay, I’ve run through twenty or so gallons of gasoline and find that the fuel mixture is still lean. Really lean on the secondaries, pop back through the carb lean and lean surge lean on the primaries. What I should do is drive around with the engine over off and the air cleaner removed and a soda straw sitting on the power piston. Then I can find out the vacuum level the power piston opens at and get a better idea if I need larger main jets or not. But not at these outside temperatures. The outside air temperature is still hovering around 0F. So that’s what I’m going to not do. I have found that with the higher fuel level the choke vacuum break needs to open the choke about twice as much as it dies now. So what I am going to di by guess and by gosh with some seat of the pants windage thrown in is tighten up the spring on the secondary air valve and open the primary lean cruise another one-quarter turn. And readjust the vacuum break.

You have your own home or a luxury loft apartment. You drive a relatively new car that speaks to your status. You dress in clothes that you think flatter your and put forth the image you want to show the world. You have a well paying job and your cat likes you.
We lost our home to the bank because we still owed $8,500 after twenty years of mortgage payments and we no longer had income or savings. We worked hard during our working years, often foregoing vacations for business interests. We lived frugally, took care of ourselves saved some from every paycheck and invested in company matched 401K plans. All gone. We used up our cash and our credit trying to support ourselves but feel that one of the unintended consequences that occurred when the state of New Hampshire agreed to allow health insurance companies to use the age and health of a companies employees to set the group policy rate is to encourage companies to hire only healthy younger people and thus keep health insurance costs under control. So we are unable to find employment.
At the beginning of 2013 we lost our job as church sextons with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Manchester, NH because we had a financial dispute with one of their members. And the church decided to stand behind their member because “we need Paul’s money” (spoken by Webster Anderson). It did matter one bit to the UUCM leadership that Paul Doolittle had engineered an incredible theft from Lynn Shackelford. “We need Paul’s money.”
Well the members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Manchester New Hampshire got their want except it didn’t cost Paul Doolittle a penny out of his own pocket.
So we’re homeless. We bought ourselves a derelict 32′ class A motorhome because we want to own our own home. We worked hard. We saved. But because we’re gay we’re second class citizens and not entitled to equal protection under the law. So we live on other people’s property. We try to find empty parking lots at closed stores. If we use an active property we park in a far corner and try not to be around when the owner needs the space for his customers.
Today we needed to be at the Elliot at River’s Edge for a wound check and a consultation on a leg brace Lynn needs because a total joint replacementtotal joint replacement can only do so much when your leg was crushed in a motorcycle-automobile collision.
More to follow. I gotta fold laundry.
We have an arrangement with Elliot security and if we have an early morning appointment we spend the night before in a far corner of the parking lot and we leave when we’re done with the doctor. We had a previous encounter with Elliot security when Lynn’s first total joint replacement the one on the good leg took longer than expected to recover to the point where he could leave the hospital.
Anyway. This last visit was for a wound check with the surgeon and a consultation with the guy that does the braces. The scheduled start time was 1:30 PM so we had plenty of time to get over to River’s Edge and we arrived about one-half of one hour early had a snack and headed into the Urgent Care facility. We saw the Elliot Security car coming around the corner so we waited to say Hi! to the security guard and witnessed the most amazing thing. After watching the scene play out we realized that some concerned citizen had seen us parking our home, the 32″ class A motorhome with motorcycle trailer attached and called security to report us. This responsible women had waited to point our home out to the guard so that he wouldn’t confuse our home with the SUVs parked in the parking lot and then continued into River’s Edge. What is it with people? I’ve owned four properties in New Hampshire, paid my taxes and lived in Manchester for over a quarter of a century. I lost my home through my being uninsured due to previously existing conditions and I’m doing my best to support myself. If you need to feel superior to a couple of guys making do with an antique RV in noisy brightly lit parking lots, keep it to yourself. You don’t have to telephone everyone in sight to point us out. Better yet, go get a life of your own.

So far so good this winter, we’re warm and comfortable but we tracked down an unexpected furnace failure mode that might be of help to others in our situation.
We’ve replaced the gas solenoid valve with a newer model that draws more power but also opens positively every time it’s told to by the control board. Something important when it’s cold outside and the batteries are getting low.
We replaced the Suburban control board with one from Dinosaur Electronics that among other good features turns the furnace fan off if the furnace refuses to light. And the Dinosaur Fan 50 Plus Pins tries to light the flame three times, turns off the fan motor and waits one hour before trying again. If your batteries are low an hour’s rest may be enough to squeeze out a little more heat before sunrise.
We still had instances where we could hear the time delay relay click on and not have the blower fan start. We replaced the time delay relay first with another used unit and finally with a solidly state timed delay relay from again Dinosaur Electronics. The furnace ran great for that season and most of this one so far with the exception of the sail switch beginning to stick. A NOS sail switch took care of that but still left us with a failure to launch. After many nights of restarting the furnace rapping on it and praying to the god of heat we finally had what we considered a hard failure so we pulled the furnace and started checking for electric faults. Nothing definitive except a bad return on the control board’s edge connector. Dinette bench testing showed the furnace to be cycling properly so it all went back together. There was one more failure to start before I saw the light.
Normally in an old Suburban like ours the time delay relay starts the fan motor, and the sail switch supplies power to the control board and from then on the control board, controls. With the new board everything works the same with the addition of a fan control relay on the control board. But the control board doesn’t get power until the fan is spinning and the fan control relay needs to close before the fan will run The fan control relay on the control board closes with power from the fan going through the coil in the relay and flows out the edge connector’s 12V- return. An iffy connection at the edge connector is enough to prevent this weak current from flowing and cleaning the edge connector can help. But after many rounds of doing the same things and getting the same results I realized that with the addition of the Fan 50 Plus Pins I placed two sets of replay contacts in series. Now relay contacts rely on a small spark to keep the contacts clean and conductive every time the contacts make or close together. The small amount of current needed to close the control board’s fan control relay isn’t enough to keep the time delay relay’s contacts clean. My solution is to unplug the two fan power leads and connect them together with a jumper and cycle the fan on and off through the thermostat four or five times. Since I’ve done this I’ve been sleeping the night through with reliable furnace operation.

Last night the Manchester police department stopped by and told us to move to Walmart from where we had been parked, an empty parking lot at a defunct Lowe’s. Now Manchester, NH Mayor Ted Gatsas announced in time for his last election that there was a business moving into that building in November. So far nothing has happened that’s visible outside the building. We have had a real-estate type of person following us around the city, changing his disguise each time we see him and telling the appropriate people wherever we are that “If you don’t do something your parking lot is going to be full of homeless people soaking up your free-WiFi.” Well that’s what I heard him say the last time. The first time this stalker violently evicted us from a parking lot by pretending to be the manager of the business. Violently? Pounding with a clenched fist on our home and yelling “You guy gotta be out of this parking lot now!” is violent in my playbook. Anything more than a discreet knock on our door and a civil conversation is violent and threatening.

And what’s this “move over to WalMart stuff from the police? The Union Leader, once a powerhouse in Republicqn politics has been writing and publishing writers on the topic of Manchester’s homeless population from the point of view that the homeless are “freeloaders moving to the city to take advantage of Manchester’s generous human services.” “These homeless have no fixed address but couch surf or live in recreational vehicles and are only here to take advantage of the city.”

And now the police re telling us to move to WalMart? Is this so that the Mayor can point to a new homeless camp at Walmart and suggest to the corporation that if they want to build another store in the city maybe Walmart can do something about the homeless? I bet it won’t be a food drive.

Today, the Friday after christmas I was in a pretty good mood. I need to take the furnace apart and look for a bad electric connection, but other than that everything else is working fine. Plus we have cold weather sleeping bags if it should become necessary to live on our body heat. Lynn had a visit with his surgeon and the surgeon’s nurse this morning to have his dressing looked at and changed — Lynn’s left leg is mostly scar and skin grafts with poor circulation so the wound healing is taking a little longer than usual but that was expected. The wound looks fine, and he’s got a new bandage and elastic wrap plus a “your body seems to reject foreign matter aggressively” comment from the good surgeon. Told you so. But it’s nice to hear that there isn’t any infection process at work from the professional.
Our next stop was to pick up the mail and yippee we now have Medicaid cards. Yeah great another step closer to death. But putting that aside, I decided to swing by the Goodwill store on John E. Devine Drive to see if we could use our SNAP cash benefits to purchase some clothes. We can’t and that doesn’t make sense but something did happen that’s worth my bitching about.
I dropped Lynn off at the door since falling down on the slush will be bad for his healing process and I carefully chose a parking spot for our home and transportation. Now I don’t do this lightly. When I park our home I pick a spot that is out of the way of the regular customers and is something that I can drive out of when we are ready to leave. Parallel parking a 32′ RV with trailer is a new skill to me and I’m getting better but it did take me three tries before I had everything where I wanted it. Then the trouble began. A Goodwill worker came up to me as I was ready to walk into the store and said “You can’t park here.” Three times. “You can park in that big lot over there (pointing).” Now this is a statement I interpret as “You can’t park on my property but you can park on someone elses.” And “I don’t give a shit because it’s your problem not mine.” Well I keep my boyish good looks by making my problems someone elses as much as possible, my problem being that Lynn was already in the store and I wasn’t going to leave the RV alone. So I politely asked the man to go into the store and tell Mr. Shackelford that he can’t shop here and he’ll have to leave. “Who’s he.” The owner of this fine rig. “Well I don’t know him.” Not my problem. My problem is that I’m not going to leave a guy with a walking handicap, recovering from surgery alone here and I’m not going to leave his home alone and risk it being towed either. By the way Manchester, NH has regulations allowing towing companies to steal you property, pay them to release your property and then try to prove that your vehicle was taken illegally. Good luck with that.
Anyway our repartee continued until Goodwill guy realized that we were there to shop, not squat and he changed his tune to “I have tractor trailers coming and going all day, this is a busy place and you’re in the way.” Yeah not so much so as I’d already taken that possibility into account when I chose the parking space.
Well at the end of all this Goodwill guy had me move over into the main parking lot and tie up 7 or 8 parking spaces.
Not only does no good deed go unpunished but I really didn’t expect the Goodwill staff to give me a knee jerk “You can’t park here.”

We had our first “You can’t park here and you’ll have to move!” today. Today was also our day to spend with Health and Human Services to be re-certified for SNAP benefits. Since we added the trailer this fall I can no longer squeeze the Rockwood into a two-car parking space and with Lynn’s knee surgery he ain’t gonna be riding his bike this winter so I have to drive us around in the Rockwood and park farther afield. After dropping Lynn off at the door of course. Today I parked on a city street down by the highway in the Mill West area across from the Alpha Bits Learning Center. After our visit with the HHS lady Lynn hobbled down to the house and was first to arrive and I was a little behind so I was unable to confront the concerned citizen. Lynn likes to give a courteous “We’ll be gone in a minute.” while I prefer to question the credentials of the person issuing the edict. I never get so much as a name but I like to try.