Fixing Things in our Airstream | RV Lifestyle

Today's video we are fixing things in the Airstream. We are replacing a broken bathroom mirror, we are adding new platforms underneath the mattresses in our bedroom, and we're going to replace the broken shower door that somebody broke, I won't say who, but we're also going to replace the backup camera with a new model that I think you'll find very interesting. So let's roll that logo and let's get started. Hi everybody, welcome back to Zephyr's Travels. My name is Randy and in this video we're starting out inside the Airstream and that's because we've got some things to do before we get ready for our next big trip this winter. And one of the things that we need to do is this right here, but I'll show you that in a minute. But we've also got some updates to the trailer that I've been meaning to take care of. Our beds, we've got a change that we're making on the beds, the improvement over what Airstream did originally. We've got some adjustments to the shower door that we need to take care of, and just a few other little odds and ends here that we're adding to the video. But one of the first things I want to start out with showing you is this. So this is a new backup camera. And you're going to say, well what do you mean a new backup camera? You already have one. Your Airstream came equipped with a Voyager backup camera. And you're right, it did. But the Voyager camera on this Airstream is probably a mediocre camera at best. The video quality on it is probably only 720p, maybe 480. 480 is what a DVD is. 720p is about halfway between a DVD and a Blu-ray. Give you just an idea what that would be like. So this is the existing Voyager camera that came with the Airstream. And this is the current image from that. And you can see that it's a little bit blurry. And that's because it's trying to focus through the moisture that's on the camera. And it's not that clear. It's also not that clear of an image to begin with. And this monitor is actually pretty large. It sits on a dash. You can mount it to your windshield. I wanted to mount it to the dash, so I came up with a dash mount for it, which I will reuse for the new camera and monitor. But you can just see here that it's not that sharp of an image. And I'm hoping that the new one will be much better and we won't have the moisture issues that this camera is pegged with. We've had some problems with our camera. And the biggest issue, and apparently from what I've seen when I've looked at some of the AirForums blogs, is that they get moisture in behind the lens. And ours is suffering from that because we live in the Northeast and it's very humid. And so I've had to take the camera apart multiple times and clean the moisture out of it. And it's getting to the point where I'm losing some of the screws when I take it apart because I've done it at a campground and the screws are pretty small. And so it's time to replace that camera, basically. So this is our backup camera. And if you can see here, there's a lot of moisture in the lens area. I've taken this apart. I've cleaned it. I've sealed it with silicone. I've actually put tape on it the last time because of that. I also have an issue with the antenna breaking. It's not staying in place. So that's been taped in place. So basically a lot of, a little bit of work here to kind of keep this camera working. And I finally figure that it's just really not worth it. This amount of moisture here pretty much ruins the rear view. The camera lens is right here. You cannot see at all with it. So TechnoRV carries this VisionWorks camera and they've tested it. And according to Eric at TechnoRV, he did not want to carry a backup camera on his store because he hadn't found one that he liked the quality. Well, he tested VisionWorks and he really likes it. It has good reception between the camera and the monitor and the video quality is 1080p. So that is Blu-ray quality for vision. So we bought one. Now this isn't sponsored by them. We do have an affiliate link in our description that you can use to buy one and it will help out our channel. We'd really appreciate that if you used it. But I bought this one, you know, called them up just like you would and placed an order and had it sent to me. So one of the first things we're going to do in this project is remove the old camera. Now this is pretty much straightforward. There's a couple of screws that hold the camera to the bracket and then the bracket is just screwed to the trailer. One thing I did notice is that there is a foam gasket on the back of that bracket and I decided I was going to reuse that bracket going forward to seal the new bracket onto the trailer. Now at this point, I've cut the wiring off of the old camera because it was hardwired in from the factory and there really wasn't a disconnect point on the cable. So now I'm installing the new bracket with the gasket from the old bracket underneath it to seal the bracket to the trailer. And one of the things that I happened to be very lucky is that the screw holes lined up and I was able to attach this bracket without having to add any new holes into the air stream, which is a concern. You actually don't want to put any additional holes in your RV if you don't have to, especially in the areas of the roof. So the bracket is all secured in and ready to move on to the next step. Now that the bracket is installed, I'm going to prepare the wiring to attach it to the new camera. Now the wiring is shielded with a rubber coating over the two power and ground wires that are inside of it. So I'm going to strip that off, strip the insulation off of the wiring and get them prepared so that I can solder the new connection for the new camera onto this existing wiring. I decided I needed to test the wiring first before I soldered it all up. So what I did here is on the seven-way plug is I popped the fuse. And if you didn't know this little trick, you fuse, but you look at where the little tab is on the top of the plug. And if you take those top two and link them together, you will turn the marker lights on the trailer. So I did that. So now the marker lights are powered, which means the camera's powered. And you can see back here, camera's powered. It's just temporarily wired in place. And if I go down here to the monitor, I've got an image. So it looks like I'm good to go. So we will solder this all up, heat shrink it, and then finish mounting it. Now I'm soldering the connections to make sure that I have a good connection between the two wires. And I don't have any trouble with these wires coming apart in the future. Now you may not have to solder these. You could use wire crimp ends, especially if on your trailer you're able to set the wires inside the body of the trailer and not have them exposed to the exterior like I have here. To make sure that everything is insulated and well protected, I'm using shrink wrap on the here. And then I will shrink wrap over this shrink wrap again to make sure that everything is sealed and weather tight and I do not have any issues going down the road. I'm now just stuffing the excess wiring back into the body of the trailer so that it's out of the way. I'm going to start mounting the camera in place so I can, you know, then finish up with the wiring. So I'm just going to hand tighten in a couple screws on each side. So it looks like each screw comes with a lock washer and a flat washer and then a rubber washer that I think needs to be on the inside of the bracket. This is one of those situations where you just don't have enough hands. So I'm using a pair of needle nose pliers to kind of get the washer in place without dropping it. I'll just get the screw started. There we go. So trying to hold that with a screwdriver or a pair of pliers is not working because it is not enough room there. So I'm trying... I attached it to a piece of tape. Slide that in between so I can get the screw into the washer and now I should be able to get it started. Got it. I'm just not tightening it up real tight. I want to be able to still adjust the camera once I have it all, you know, plugged in and working so I know exactly where it needs to be. Because you want the camera... you want to be able to see behind the trailer close so that you don't back into anybody or anything. But you also want to have vision, you know, farther behind you so you can see traffic. So it's kind of a balance between that. And before I tighten it up I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do with all this wire. I brought a couple zip ties. So my plan is to zip tie them together in a tight bundle as I can so that it doesn't rattle around and get in the way and cause an issue later on. I'm also a little concerned about this one. So I'm probably going to tape that plug so the washer doesn't get into it. You really need to be prepared for the worst weather. Now for this connection here I'm going to shrink wrap it. So I'm going to get a piece of shrink wrap and just put it over these two plugs for two reasons. One is to hold it together a little bit better and second just to weatherproof it. Now that we've got this camera pretty much installed here in the back with the wires all shrink wrapped in place and we just need to neaten things up a little bit we're going to switch gears and take a look at some of the other projects before we mount the monitor in the truck. So let's go back inside the trailer and talk about what some of the other projects are. I didn't record any of this but yesterday I decided to tackle up some maintenance items on the trailer. Now what I've been doing is I've created a list here on the refrigerator as we travel of different things that I feel that need to be fixed before we take on our winter trip. And one of the things that I tackled yesterday was this closet door. The hinges here were getting out of adjustment and were kind of stressing and starting to pull apart and threatening to actually come apart on the door. So I wanted to fix all that and I did. The next thing on the list was the shower door and well that's where we ran into a problem. So let me go show you. So one of the issues with the shower door on the Airstream is that it gets out of adjustment and so yesterday my attempt was and I've done this before to take the shower door off take it outside and get it back into adjustment. What happens is it starts to sag on one side and you need to kind of get both sides of the door back and square. Well something happened. This is the shower door. As you can see something's missing. Yeah I broke the glass. There's there's all the glass for the shower door right there. So today we got to take a ride and find a glass shop and have a new piece of glass put in this. We'll see how that works out and we'll catch up with that part of the story next. We stopped at Genesee Glass and Mirror in Rochester to pick up our shower door that has had the glass replaced in it and also a new mirror for our bathroom in our Airstream. I am sitting in the bedroom of our Airstream and today I'm going to fix one of the common complaints about the beds in an Airstream. One of the issues that I've heard from other Airstream owners and it seems to be common mostly with the twin beds but I think owners of the queenside beds also complain about the same thing and that is the platform underneath the mattress doesn't extend all the way out to the edge of the mattress. It actually sets in about two inches. Now Airstream says they do this because it makes it so that if you bump your leg against the bed you're not bumping against the platform you're bumping against the mattress and you're not going to hurt yourself but it tends to cause an issue and that issue is the side of the mattress here tends to roll under so here you can see now this is unscrewed at the moment but you can see the platform here is ends at the edge of the cabinets and I'm going to just kind of come down like this you can see that's a good two inches or more before the edge of the mattress so my solution is to extend that platform but I got thinking about it and there's another concern with RV mattresses in general and that is mildew because there's no air circulation underneath it so I'm thinking of while I'm doing this I ought to fix that issue too so let me show you on this mattress what I did so I created a piece of plywood that fits over the top of the platform it extends out an additional about two and a half inches so it comes right out to the edge of the mattress and then I put some slots in it for air circulation now this is a piece of quarter inch plywood but it's reinforced along the edges with another piece of quarter inch plywood making it half inch thick that raises the plywood up a quarter inch off of the original mattress deck so now there's air circulation underneath the mattress and it comes in from the sides let me go out and show you the pieces I made for the other side and then we'll install it but this is a piece that I made to sit on top of the mattress pad as you can see across the top edge it contours to the wall of the air stream and then it extends out about two and a half inches more than the original piece there are slots cut in it for air circulation you look at the back side you can see there's strips underneath it that raises it up over the platform allows air to circulate you can see the edge here that extends out past the base of the platform is now doubled up and overlaps the platform so this should resolve the issue of having the mattress not fully supported and curling under on the edges and it will also make another couple more inches of the mattress usable because you would before you would lay on the mattress and you get towards that edge and you could feel it start to lean off and roll you off the bed not that we actually fell off the bed but this is a piece installed you can now see that it overhangs a little bit more and there are slots cut in here for the air circulation plus room for air to circulate underneath it's held in by four screws now let's put the mattress on and show you how it works so here's the mattress on the pad and if I lift it up a little bit you can see the plywood now extends out to the edge of the mattress and when I sit on it it doesn't roll over anymore it sits much more flat which I think will extend the life of the mattress and make the bed much more comfortable to sleep on put a note in the comments if you have a similar issue with your rv where the platform for the mattress is smaller than the mattress and it causes the edge to kind of roll over and what you've done to correct that now I'm going to mount the monitor and as you can see our existing monitor is mounted here on the dash and I used a ram mount to do that and I'm going to just pop this one off so you can see how it goes together you can see here on the back of the camera there is a mount and then a ball that attaches to it the new camera unfortunately does not have screw holes on the back that I can line up with this you can see here so what my solution is going to be is I'm going to use 3m mounting tape on this and attach it adhesively to this I guess first thing I do is get the mounting tape on this while it's easier this is the mounting tape that I'm using I've had good experience with this it's something new that I've just I've just recently found in the store and I've used it in places where the very high bond tape doesn't work so this seems to stick pretty good it's clear it says it will hold 15 pounds so this is more than what I need for this application what I've done is I've just put a few strips on the back of this to get you some adhesive and it still has the protective film on it so what I'm going to do is I'll get this bracket back into place and now I can test fit this to make sure I know where I want to put it towards the back of this so I can have it up higher I really want to keep it fairly low to the dash so it doesn't block visibility as much so I think that's about I'm going to put it as low as I can get it okay and then right there all right I want to give you an update on where we are with the installations the camera is all mounted up in place you saw that the monitor is now on the dash of the truck where I've decided to keep it I showed you how I mounted it using the ram mounts that I've already had from my other camera and the two-sided tape to hold it in place the installation is good and the camera works really well I'm going to show you something I'm on the other side of the airstream and the lighting is probably not as good but right here is the airstream as you can see if I move there's the truck so the truck is probably 40 feet from the airstream maybe and I got a really strong signal I cut in that video there of the signal coming from the truck from the camera to the at this distance so it does seem to have a very strong signal it has a very clear signal don't know about the durability of this camera yet that's up to you know our testing as we use it and see if it holds up to the type of use that we give these cameras and if we like it better and there is also the question is the five inch monitor the best monitor or is there should you go for the seven inch or the nine inch I would think the nine inch would be good if you had a motor home in a large dash area the compromise that you're running into and what I'm looking at here is maybe the seven inch would work and it probably fit and take up about as much dash real estate as the voyager monitor that I had in there before but I actually always felt that that monitor took up a lot of space and was kind of you know blocking vision through the windshield through the center not where it's dangerous but you know just blocked it a little bit so I like the idea of maybe having a slightly smaller monitor but that's something we've got to use and see how it goes I'd give this a you know a great success it was fairly easy to install you know the any difficulties on the installation side of it was more related to my airstream and how whether I wanted to drill in additional holes to hide the wires inside the airstream or keep them exposed to the back and I decided not to put more holes in my airstream for now I may come back at another date and say yeah you know maybe this is a better idea to put these wires inside but for now this is how I've got it installed I think it will be fine for how way we use it and we will see so on to other projects we've got some more things to do and we will cut to those next I have a friend who has a saying and that is owning an RV is you get to fix things in exotic places well today's not an exotic place but we're getting to fix things right up here behind me there was a mirror and this mirror has fallen off four times it started with this piece of wood coming de-attached and we had that fixed under warranty but to get to it they had to remove the mirror and since then we've had an issue trying to keep the mirror stuck there on our last trip to Vermont we pulled into a rest area and the mirror was on the floor shattered so we ordered a new mirror I've got it and to make sure it stays in place this time I've done something different I've added these clips here here here and here and that's going to hold the mirror in and we're still going to use some two sided tape to kind of make sure it doesn't go anywhere we're actually just kind of adding extra so I'm in the process of putting the new mirror in and we will see how all this fits I've applied is the two-sided tape that was recommended by the glass shop that I got the mirror cut at so it's on here the tape is really what's going to be holding this mirror in place the clips are kind of the safety just to make sure that it doesn't fall and I've test fitted everything and I think everything's ready to go so I'm going to pull the tape off and now I'm ready to put the mirror in it fits very very tight there we go clips are in place it should hold it and I don't think this is going to fall off for the fifth time I think it's there for good let's hope so this week we picked up our new shower door from the glass shop and I wanted to show you one of the things that I think is a reason that this shower door gets out of shape when we're traveling in the corners up here there are these screws and this this screw is only about an inch long and it just goes into a groove in the aluminum and it actually cuts its own threads so I don't think there's enough bite on this screw especially over time to hold this door square so my fix is going to be to replace the screws with these two inch screws you can see the difference right there this screw will get more bite into this aluminum channel and should hold it longer but just to give it a little extra I'm going to put Loctite on all of these that should help hold it too so you can see these longer screws are going to put a lot of more area for the screws to bite into and hopefully it will keep the door from loosening up and racking which causes it to jam and have difficulty opening it because the last thing I want to do is replace this glass again it was a little pricey there I think that's going to hold really good so we're going to do the other four corners and I think this will set this door up to last a lot longer without having issues as you can see we're making good headway on our list of things here to do before we leave on our trip we've got a bunch of them knocked off we've got a couple left here they're not too big of projects we should be able to get them done before we leave back here this is the new shower door as you can see it has a slightly different texture it's more of a frosted finish it's very nice I actually like it I actually like it a little bit better than the other it kind of goes with the decor of the Airstream a little bit better not having such a gold tint to it and in the very back here we have the beds they're all all finished and the new platforms underneath them are making a big difference we have tested them and we've noticed that sleeping on them is much better and when you sit on the edge of the bed it doesn't fold under on you so I think the mattress is going to last a lot longer well that's going to do it for this video we hope you enjoyed the video if you did please give us a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already we post new videos on a weekly basis so make sure to hit that bell for notifications and until the next time we will see you guys down the road take care everybody bye