When we headed west in the Ciaowagen in April 2019, we thought we might travel for a year tops. That initial trip turned into a year-and-a-half, and we've found that we REALLY like exploring the country at our leisure. We expect that over the next few years we will continue to spend at least three months every year on the road in our RV.
In preparation for our 2021 travels and the years ahead, we spent this winter fixing things that had broken in our rig, as well as making some upgrades. NOTE: You can view a more extensive tour of the "before" Ciaowagen by visiting this blog post from 2020. We were fortunate to find an excellent RV repair shop less than 30 minutes from our home.
RVs are hand-built in a factory, so things break more often than they would in an automobile coming off an assembly line. Plus, our RV is now five years old and has 60,000 miles on the odometer (not all from us, since we bought it used).
Some of the needed repairs involved fixing areas damaged by water leaks, which meant recaulking all the side and roof seams, and replacing some of the outside fiberglass, wood cabinetry under the fridge and the toilet, and the entire back wall of the RV.
We also found out the hydraulic hoses in our auto-leveling system were leaking, so had all four of them replaced as well.
The fake leather in our captains chairs and couch began shredding last year and would get all over the floor and our clothing. We made do with temporary slip covers. However, longer-term solution we knew we needed to replace or reupholster.
We found it was more cost-effective to just replace both captains chairs. We ordered from an RV furniture manufacturer based in California, and went with cloth covering rather than leather/vinyl since we thought it would endure wear better. For the couch, it looked like reupholstering was the way to go. We found a quality shop close to home that specialized in auto reupholstery, and were able to get a good fabric match from the captains chairs. There was enough fabric left over that the shop was also able to re-cover our dinette cushions.
We did a number of upgrades as well. When taking up the couch for reupholstering, we discovered the vinyl sheet flooring had some rips (plus Jeannette had always hated the color). We replaced the entire floor with vinyl, wood-look plank. We also had the dirty brown carpet in the driver area replaced with new navy blue automobile-grade carpet.
Here's a "before" and "after" look.
In the bathroom, we changed out the faucet and had a medicine cabinet installed - since storage space is at a premium in RVs, every little bit extra helps. We also installed a new "touch" faucet at the kitchen sink.
To improve air circulation in the RV, we replaced our three ceiling fans with newer models with larger blades, multiple speeds, and reversible direction.
We replaced our old Norcold refrigerator. It was useful because it ran both on electric and propane (helpful when at a campsite without services), but it was only 8 cubic feet in volume, which did not allow much food storage. It could also take 12-24 hours to reach optimal cooling temperature whenever we got the RV out of storage.
Our new fridge, from Furrion, fits in the same cabinet space but offers 10 cubic feet of storage. It runs off 12 volt (i.e., battery) power only but is very efficient and cools much more quickly.
To ensure we would have enough power to run the Furrion when boondocking, we upgraded our two "coach" batteries (which run things inside the RV - as opposed to the "chassis" battery which services the engine) from lead-acid to lithium-ion. They are much lighter weight, will last much longer, and can be discharged almost all the way down to 0% (lead-acid batteries can only be discharged down to 50% or they'll be damaged).
Some of the "chassis" maintenance items were routine but still costly: 60,000 mile engine tuneup, oil change, replacing the brake pads, fixing a broken gearshift indicator, and getting four new tires at $500+ each (interestingly, RV tires tend to "age out" at 5-6 years due to sun exposure, often before the tread wears out).
For our personal biological chassis to work better, we replaced the five-year old RV bedroom mattress with a new thermoelastic foam model!
Newly repaired and upgraded, the Ciaowagen is raring to get on the road! Doug and Jeannette each had some medical repairs during our six months at home and we're raring to get on the road also!
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