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RE: 3 Brunner Camp Stove
Garage sales or E-Bay? Coleman had a three burner white gas stove for years, as did some competitors.
You may not find one for LPG, at least not for 1-pound bottles. At low temperatures that size bottle has enough trouble generating gas fast enough for two relatively small burners. It might take a 5 or 10 pound bottle to have the liquid surface area to feed gas to three burners. That's why the Camp Chef is what it is.
Over the years there were many gas utility stove tops made for canning, a cast iron top with burners that could be mounted on home-made stand. We had one in our basement, and my grandmother had one in hers. Where we lived these were valved for natural gas, but could be valved also for LPG. They came in 1, 2 and 3 burners. They don't show up as often as camp stoves, somebody has to be remodeling or tearing down an old house, and they often end up at the dump. Would not be as portable as a camp stove, because of weight, and you'd have to build a folding stand.
If you want to build your own, 8000 - 12,000 BTU LPG burners run about $30-40 each as separate parts.
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tatest
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02/09/12 10:21pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: How long do most people keep their trailers?
Most of the depreciation is up front, prices of usable trailers tend to plateau at 10-15 years.
I've no idea what "most people" do, I have friends who have traded trailers every couple of years trying to figure out which one they liked, others who go 10 to 20 years until a life change means an change in how they RV. I have some friends. We have a couple guys in the RV club who buy them at 15-20 years old and keep them (more than one at a time) another 20 years or more.
We kept our first TT until my uncle borrowed it, pulled it up to Fairbanks and then down to Mexico City, brought it back literally shaken apart. That's a better measure than number of years.
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tatest
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02/09/12 09:59pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: Eliminating State Income Tax
I have not yet seen any depth to that proposal, e.g. details of plans to make up the revenue loss. Almost any place they would go to make up the difference would increase the tax burden for lower income residents, including most of us retirees.
As far as it goes for attracting business, I don't see it. Income tax on employee wages has little effect on cost, and the state already has incentive programs for corporate income taxes. Whatever taxes have to be raised to compensate would also be a cost to companies moving in. Are they hoping a CEO would move his company into the state to make his personal income tax lower?
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tatest
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02/09/12 09:49pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: fuel cost
Price variations for the same fuel are mostly due to differences in taxes and transportation costs. For some locations in the U.S. the transportation costs exceed the refining costs.
If you are in the right part of Tennessee, you might save yourself some tax money driving over to Arkansas or Missouri (nearly the lowest fuel taxes in the country), but the border stations can charge higher prices and take more margin, and it costs you some fuel to get there and back.
Variations locally can be from location costs (rent and taxes on the property) and lack of immediate competition allowing a greater margin. In the other direction, a convenience store can operate with lower margins on fuel because they are making big money selling you a few cents worth of flavored water for a dollar or two.
Yet another factor is variation in the cost of fuel, because it is different fuel. There are differences in fuel formulations to meet different emissions requirements, different costs for additives (and some additives, like ethanol, have much higher transportation costs than the petroleum components).
Comparing Great Plains or Corn Belt states to other places in the country, there are states that do not collect highway taxes on the ethanol component of the fuel, and the ethanol is a local product so that it did not have to be tankered halfway across the country by a truck burning 20 gallons of diesel per hour.
edit:
Paid $3.199 yesterday for 87 octane with ethanol, the refinery is about 80 miles away, nearest ethanol plant 150 miles, but the refinery's feedstock has to come up by pipeline from the Gulf because the local oil fields dried up 50 to 70 years ago.
Same gas is about 10 cents more across the line in Kansas, a nickel less in Missouri. That part is taxes.
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tatest
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02/09/12 08:55pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: Double towing (other states)
Don't just wing, plan your route and check the laws.
Pay attention also to local ordinances, when you get off the trunk highways. Rigs and combinations legal on the highway can be restricted from city streets by local ordinance. Though you might be allowed to pull your combo through Chicago on I-94, you may not be legal on Lakeshore Drive or allowed to pull it down State Street. That's why all the trucking terminals are on the city fringes, to break down highway legal loads to city legal loads, for going on in.
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tatest
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02/09/12 08:15pm |
Beginning RVing
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RE: Motorhome Tax
You have to look at your whole cost picture, not just registration fees, not just taxes. In rural parts of the Great Plains and in many south Central states, you can live on a small fraction of what it would cost you in urban California or in cities generally, because land values are low, wages are low, and income-redistribution programs are on a smaller scale, making taxes low.
It is a matter of figuring out what costs apply to you, and minimizing them.
In Oklahoma you would pay no sales tax on a motorhome, you would pay a 3.25 % motor vehicle excise tax instead. It would register as a passenger car, $91 a year the first four years registered in the state, $81 the next four, then $71, ... down to $21 after 17 years. As a motor vehicle it is exempt from other taxes (like personal property). Annual fees don't depend on cost, they are the same for a $3,000,000 motorhome or an old car you just bought in Kansas for $500 and has never been registered in Oklahoma.
But we do have a modest state income tax and relatively high sales taxes, moderate real property taxes (except in rapidly growing suburbs of Tulsa and Oklahoma city). Estate taxes don't really trigger until you get to the $3,000,000 level. Overall this state is in the bottom third for taxes collected, bottom quartile for overall cost of living, even when averaged among urban and rural residents. This makes nicer parts of the state popular as retirement destinations, even though land values and real property taxes are higher in the growing retirement meccas. I you want a house as a home base, you can likely find a '30s to '50s built home on a substantial plot of land for $40K to $100K, in a small town. Even less in one of the many ghost towns. If you don't want an old house in a little town, you can get a McMansion in the 'burbs for a quarter of a million, one that might cost you several million in San Jose, McLean, Westchester or Boulder.
Arkansas is quite similar in cost structure, and so is rural Texas, but each is different in the details, and for any individual situation, it would be the details that matter. Texas is popular for retirees with large incomes, because the state has no income tax, and is among the lowest for per capita taxes, though you can get burned by owning real estate in big cities and growing suburbs.
There are states where you can register your motorhome for under $30 a year, but someone might catch you on personal property tax if it is valuable and registered in the wrong county.
For people who want to full-time in a RV, not own property, not actually live there, South Dakota and Texas are popular for their tax structure and legal climate to support that lifestyle.
There are other states popular with retirees for having no state income tax (Florida, Tennessee) that have become expensive places to be from if you have to own property or have assets that do get taxed.
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tatest
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02/09/12 07:59pm |
Beginning RVing
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RE: Downsizing from a Class C @ 7.5 MPG
Been there (looking at a 2500-3500 target for my tow vehicle) and found 3000 pounds is just about the balance point between camping in a RV or dragging a small house around to live in.
Pop-up can be as small as 1500 pounds (well under 1000 for some tent trailers) but won't have all the amenities of home until the size gets up to 3000-4000 pounds. Not that they can't, but in the current market, they don't. When you get to around 2000, you can get your home amenities in a small "egg" trailer but you don't get all the sleeping space of a larger popup. In the larger sizes, the egg trailers will be back to your towing limit.
When we finally figured out that the wife's minimum house to drag around meant a large enough TT that we needed a full-size pickup to move it around, I went for the 7.5 mpg motorhome instead.
Any TT (folding or not) with all the space and amenities of a 24-foot C is going to cost you 8-12 mpg worth of gas to move it around, for any tow vehicle capable of moving it easily on grades and at highway speeds.
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tatest
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02/09/12 06:31pm |
Folding Trailers
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RE: Garbage truck conversion
Why is it that people in this country think anything cab-forward is a garbage truck?
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tatest
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02/09/12 05:22pm |
Class A Motorhomes
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RE: Ford V10 Tuners
If you can increase peak HP 20% (typical for tuners plus headers plus intake modifications on the 2-valve V10) you can expect maybe a 10-15% increase in your maximum speed on any particular grade. You have to be willing to climb that grade running full throttle at peak HP rpm. Thus if you are now getting 50 mph climbing particular grade at full throttle around 5000 rpm, another 60 HP might get you 55 to 58 at 5500 to 5800 rpm.
Tuners alone won't get you 20%. You need the headers to re-tune gas flow to raise the torque curve in the upper rpm range, for a higher horsepower peak. The tuner can adjust timing, dump more fuel into the intake manifold all across the rpm range, and raise the rpm at which fuel gets cut off, but it can't change full throttle airflow.
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tatest
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02/09/12 05:15pm |
Class A Motorhomes
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RE: Do Anode Rods REALLY work?
I don't think Winnebago uses the Suburban water heater. It should be Atwood, with an aluminum tank and no anode.
The anodes do work, where they are needed, and that would be a porcelain-lined steel tank water heater. As soon as the porcelain cracks, the tank will start rusting unless there is a sacrificial anode to corrode instead.
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tatest
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02/09/12 04:53pm |
Class C Motorhomes
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RE: what lowers value more, years or miles?
I did a lot of price analysis when shopping in 2004, several hundred samples.
"Average" prices for the first three to ten years are pretty much driven by model year depreciation (not age, no one pays attention to build or first sale dates). A few thousand extra miles or fewer miles did not seem to affect price much, but something like double the "expected" mileage might push the price to that of a model year older.
After 10-15 years, the model year depreciation levels off quite a bit, approaching a floor price in a market for usable but not particularly desirable RVs. Condition matters most, as to whether a very old RV will fall through that floor, and chassis mileage is a big part of condition for motorized RVs.
For newer RVs, under 10 years, high mileage may be more of a factor in how easy it is to sell the thing. Most buyers have a psychological mileage threshold, where they start worrying about expensive future repairs, that may be 50,000 miles or 80,000 miles. Very low mileage (like 20,000 miles at five years) might make it an easier sell, without necessarily adding much to what a buyer will pay.
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tatest
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02/09/12 04:41pm |
Class C Motorhomes
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RE: table in 2009 Winn Chalet (access)
You can take the leg and hinge mechanism off, remove the leg from the hinge, and try to bend the hinge back into shape using a vise, locking pliers, metal-working hammer and/or crow bars, whatever it takes. Same for the hinge part on the wall. These are just pieces of non-spring steel, if a rental customer bent the piece out of shape, it can be bent back into shape.
That's if you can figure out just what shape the piece needs to be.
Otherwise, you can buy replacement parts. The table and leg hinges Winnebago uses are fairly common across brands and types and a lot of servicing RV dealers stock the parts because they are often damaged by abuse (e.g. drop a pencil between the hinge and wall, then force the table up to release it). A Winnebago dealer can order the specific part.
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tatest
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02/09/12 04:22pm |
Class C Motorhomes
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RE: E450 Frt Seat Headrest
Check with the RV manufacturer to find the supplier of the seat, as there is no single answer for the E-450. Ford's RV package for the E-350 and E-450 does not include seats for the cab, each RV manufacturer has their own choice of seat suppliers.
Winnebago may have manufactured their own, or used a captive supplier. Most I've seen have the head restraint built into the seat structure, but there are aftermarket options for E-series with adjustable head restraints, if you are willing to change out the whole seat.
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tatest
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02/09/12 03:56pm |
Class C Motorhomes
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RE: E450 abnormal tire wear
One issue you face with front end alignment on a bus that is less of a problem for motorhomes, is that the alignment needs to be checked with a normal load, total weight and distribution.
For a C motorhome, most of the load is the house, and load (and load distribution) does not usually change greatly as you put your stuff in it. One of the biggest variables is the fresh water load, and we can take the RV to the shop with tanks filled the way we travel.
For a bus, half or more of the load will be the passengers, but your front end shop has to align the empty bus, estimating how the camber will change under load (more negative from passengers ahead of the axle, less negative as they load into the back).
A dealer could very well find camber on an empty bus to be within the (fairly loose) alignment specs, but it can go off spec when you load passengers. The alignment guy is supposed to be smart about this, but that is more likely at a specialty shop than at a dealer, unless the tech who does alignments is a specialist at that one job.
I take my RV to the a truck alignment shop, not the dealer. If I left it at my Ford dealer for an alignment, they would probably farm the job out to the shop I would take it to.
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tatest
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02/09/12 01:51pm |
Class C Motorhomes
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RE: Camping Too Much Trouble?.......How Sad
I think they may have developed a ritual that makes it too much trouble. I did that, dealing with remote storage, prepping the RV each time it went into storage as if it would be there a long time, and the wife would move a third of her kitchen into the RV and shop for half a week's meals.
The work would be enough that if I wanted to go camping by myself, I would throw the tent, stove, lantern and a well stocked cooler into the back of my truck, and just go camping. It was less work than RVing the way we were doing it, stocking and furnishing a house to take with us.
It is worth the work to prepare the RV as our mobile hotel for an extended trip, but that is a different thing from camping.
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tatest
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02/04/12 09:34pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: Minnie Winnie
"Others I have seen don't have this."
What others? Other 1987 Minnie Winnies, or other RVs generally?
Although type C RVs may look somewhat similar, each manufacturer builds them differently, some in very basic ways, others in detail.
Why? Because they are built to sell at different prices, and each manufacturer has his own way to balance cost of manufacture with the price the RV will be sold at. When I was shopping in 2004, the price of similarly sized Cs with similar floorplans ranged from under $50,000 to over $85,000 from mass market manufacturers, and as high as $130,000 from manufacturers providing custom building and special technologies (like wrap-around steel frames or one-piece molded bodies).
Winnebago has enjoyed a reputation that has allowed them to enjoy higher prices, among high-volume manufacturers. This lets them build to higher costs. The Minnie Winnie, when it existed as one of several Winnebago brands, was always the higher priced, higher content brand.
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tatest
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02/04/12 04:23pm |
Class C Motorhomes
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RE: An Automatic 10% Increase In Fuel Economy For Everyone
Measuring miles per gallon, you get more miles with colder, denser fuel. But the time when the temperature matters is when it flows to the injectors.
If you could buy the fuel colder, you would get more pounds per dollar, because it is being metered by the gallon. But for 10% shrinkage in volume, it would have to be a whole lot colder, because the expansion coefficient is relatively small (0.00095 /C). For 10% change in volume we need a temperature increase of 100 C. We don't usually see that much change in temperature morning to the daily high, not on clear nights out here on the plains or even in the desert. About 30 C is a more typical swing where temperature swings are extreme.
How many BTUs you get in your gallon, when you buy it, varies little because underground storage for retail is typical in the U.S.
The place where density change matters is when loading above-ground tanks and tankers, and for commercial transfers (and fueling aircraft) the fuels is sold by weight and the temperature is factored in when converting gallons to pounds, if measured by volume. Many times loading tankers, weight is measured directly by scales at the fill point.
Whether or not the actual volume changes during handling (up to 3%) are "significant" depends on how you view that difference. For wholesale transfers, the buyers and sellers consider it significant.
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tatest
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02/04/12 03:57pm |
Class C Motorhomes
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RE: H&R Block software rv loan tax question
I use turbotax and it asks you about if you received a 1098 on it..
The program has to ask you that because the IRS wants to know, for each mortgage interest deduction you claim, whether or not they should be looking to match your deduction with a 1098 sent to them by the lender. It is a check box on the form, they need to know whether or not to put the X in the box.
In the absence of a 1098, you usually provide a brief description, and the IRS will decide whether or not to come looking for supporting documentation.
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tatest
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02/02/12 11:10pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: H&R Block software rv loan tax question
I doubt that you entered it as a second mortgage. You probably entered it as a mortgage on a second home.
There is no Federal Income Tax deduction allowed for interest on a RV loan. The deduction allowed is for mortgage interest paid on a second home. To get the deduction you are declaring the RV to be your second home. That's why the tax program has to handle it as a home mortgage.
The primary mortgage on a second home is not the same thing as a second mortgage.
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tatest
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02/02/12 11:04pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: toll roads
I have not yet encountered a "pass only" toll road, but have come across toll HOV or "express" lanes that required a transponder. In that case, they photograph your plate to come after you for the fine, not just for the toll.
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tatest
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02/02/12 10:57pm |
General RVing Issues
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