Here in north Texas we have gone from hot dry weather, to a hard freeze, to a torrential series of rainfalls; almost overnight. This whole year has been somewhat of an anomaly from a weather standpoint. Even Eva isn’t too excited to be in the yard. Regardless of the weather, there is always something to work on in the travel trailer.

Even in Texas folks winterize their trailers. Some owners are firm believers in the compressed air method which I have used successfully for a number of years. Other owners will run RV safe antifreeze through the lines. Now I do a combination of both of those methods. I blow out the lines and then run antifreeze through the entire system. My reasoning is that RV antifreeze is so cheap, it just makes sense not to take any risks. Then I open the low point drains to get most of the antifreeze out. Why? It just makes that much less to flush out in the spring. Click here if you want to read our blog post on winterizing your trailer.

Beyond the winterizing, there are a few other things I needed to work on inside the trailer. The most time consuming was replacing the control box on a brand new Thomas Payne (Lippert) recliner. I think the most frustrating thing about this experience has been that they (Lippert) expect the owner to fix their own new recliner. I understand that they don’t have service centers but let me tell you this is a rather tedious job.

This issue has been facing us since the second trip out with the new recliners. I switched power supplies, and checked all the connections, but had no success getting the recliner to operate. The power box just blinks with a dull green light instead of the steady green light it should have. Absolutely nothing works on the recliner.

So I received a new control box from Lippert. Now to replace the control box, the recliner must be flipped upside down. Once you flip the recliner upside down you need to cut quite a few zip-ties and trace a bundle of wires throughout the recliner. I thought this would be more plug and play; but it was more of untangle, search, and plug. Then once all the connections were made it was time to recreate the zip-tie circus.

The net result of all of this was over an hour of labor on my part, and unfortunately, it did not fix the recliner issue. To Lipperts credit they sent a new recliner. It arrived on a cold rainy day, however a slight break in the weather allowed me to get the box from the delivery truck into the shop without any problems.

I had to wait for a warm dry day to pull the trailer out and remove the old chair. Then it was time to install the new one. That went much faster than putting in a new control box.

The non-working recliner and you can see the bottom brace in the picture.

Here’s the funny/ironic part of this whole chair fiasco. We never wanted all the electric options that we got on these Seismic recliners. However, that was the only way we could get cup holders included the arms of the recliners. We could have purchased a console that would have been placed between the recliners that would have included cup holders. However, the aftermarket consoles are twice as wide as the original and we were not willing to give up that much space next to the table. That space is reserved for Evas’ crate.

So, I am a little frustrated because this is exactly what we thought would happen with all the electronics. Extra electronics usually equates to more things that can fail. So, we will see what happens with the replacement as we start to travel.

There is one other thing that bothers me about these recliners. If you decide to use them as a love seat, they hook together at the bottom brace between the recliners. They have a two hooks on the left side that slip into two pockets on the right side. The problem is that the fit is so tight that the recliners rub against each other in a way that makes you think the material will rip. So we have decided to keep them unattached and I will try to come up with a solution since there is no adjustment possible on attaching these.

Since the weather turned cold so fast I really had no time to touch up on the roof; which was on my to-do list. However, based on my inspection everything looked good up there.

All of my S-Puck sensors for my MarCELL unit need to be replaced, but I will wait until spring for that. I have to say that the batteries are not lasting as long as I would have expected but I am still very happy with the MarCELL unit. That unit has supplied me with a great deal of peace of mind when traveling with Eva. If you would like to read more about the MarCELL unit click here.

Until next time, be safe!