I spent a lot of our Saturday here at Storrie Lake SP working on the Urban Escape Vehicle.  I mentioned in my last post that I had a rattle coming from the dash and a squeaking noise coming from the TV area.  I think I fixed the dash rattle, (see yesterday’s blog), now I had to tackle the squeak coming from the TV.

First, I had to remove the metal cover on the bottom of the TV so I could access all things hidden…

here’s what it looks like under there…

lots of spaghetti…

The last time I was under here was when we first got the Coach (3-4 yrs. ago) and I had to hook up the satellite receiver/DVR and a new surround sound Blu-Ray DVD system to replace the old stuff.

The small diameter bolts on each end of the TV wouldn’t tighten much, I think they’re stripped (see arrows in pic below).

Luckily these larger bolts located near the middle of the TV (see arrows below), are doing most of the holding…

All the bolts holding the TV were slightly loose (probably from vibration) – I’m sure the fine Colorado streets had nothing to do with it 😐  Or, could it have been those silky smooth California highways near Pomona earlier this year!?!  Hmmm…

With Stilla’s help pushing up on the TV; I was able to tighten everything down except for the smaller bolts on the outside edges of the TV, because they seemed to be stripped.  I tightened them as best I could.  All the metal brackets seemed fine, it was just the bolts going into the back of the TV itself that were loose.

All back together again… ready for a test-drive 🙂

Now, I didn’t spend all day on this, but with lots of breaks – it did take most of it.  We managed to find time for another nice walk around the campground and Stilla made an awesome shrimp dinner for us.

I also mounted a key holder ‘shelf’ at the entrance steps, which took some drilling through the metal step wall.  And of course, as luck would have it, one of the holes I drilled just-happened to come out exactly on a metal brace on the other side, which didn’t make it easy on my screws… good thing I had extra 🙂

And I finally mounted this coat / hat rack- hook thingy on the living room slide that I’ve been carrying around for a couple months…

Now we just have to test it all out on a drive into Santa Fe today.  We plan on heading for the Elks Lodge there, the Elks website says they have plenty of RV parking but no hookups.  From there, we’ll see what else is in the area.  We checked our online resources, but all the parks in town seem rather pricey except for a couple casinos a little farther out along the highway.

We also need to dump soon.  Stilla’s been doing some loads of laundry.  The dump station here at Storrie Lake SP is closed… maybe we can stop at the nearby KOA – their website says it costs $5 to dump.

Check back to see how things turn out…