3 Reasons RV MAINTENANCE is CRITICAL, & 3 Kinds of RV MAINTENANCE YOU NEED...

If you are already on the road full-time or you're thinking about hitting the road as a nomad, you might be wondering how you can even handle all of the maintenance that you need to do on your RV. So today I'm going to tell you the three reasons that doing maintenance on your RV is critical and also the three types of maintenance you need to prepare for. I'm going to give you every tip and strategy and resource you need to make sure that you're safe on the road. Hey everybody, it's Robin with CreativityRV and welcome to episode 29 of Be a Nomad, Change Your Life. This is my Sunday series where I try and give you every tip and trick you need to hit the road full-time and today I'm going to talk to you guys about maintenance. As you guys know I live full-time solo in my 25-foot Leisure Travel Van Unity and when I first looked at all of the manuals and all of the maintenance that had to be done it was a little bit overwhelming. I'm here to tell you that if you just do the work one time to figure out what maintenance you need and you get into a rhythm, you can make sure that you keep the value up in your RV and also that you're going to be more safe on the road. Think about when you had a regular car in a Sticks and Bricks house. All the maintenance that had to be done on the car and all the maintenance that had to be done on the house and now combine those two things together and that's kind of how you need to think about your RV maintenance. Like I said there are three reasons that keeping the maintenance done on your RV is critical. The first thing is that it's a big investment and especially if you're going to live in it you want the life of your RV to be as long as possible and you want to keep the investment intact. So if you go to sell it to somebody else you can still get the highest dollar amount even though you were a full timer in it which can reduce the value. And also you really want to make sure that you're on top of your maintenance because if you're not and something goes wrong and you're a full timer you have to go off the road and figure out where you're going to live and if you have pets what you're going to do with them while they are repairing your RV. And you guys might remember from my Why I Chose a B-Plus video that I spent 86 days in the shop in my first six months and like I said someday I'm going to do another video on that tell you what I learned from that and how I got paid for that time off the road. If you're a full timer you don't want to deal with that so if you can do the maintenance yourself and avoid going off the road that is ideal. And the third reason and the biggest reason you want to be on top of this is that if you're a full timer and let's say a solo full timer like I am and you're in the middle of nowhere boondocking and something goes wrong you need to know how to fix it how to get help if you need it and how to get back on the road quickly. So like I said you kind of want to separate this into your chassis maintenance and your coach maintenance. So think about it like your car and your house and there are three different types of RV service or maintenance that you want to prep for. There's preventative maintenance, scheduled maintenance, and emergency maintenance. Now after I go through a few other things I'm going to give you some strategies for finding service places that will help you with this but for now let's walk through what's actually involved if you want to create a checklist and do this work yourself. I do a lot of this myself because I don't want to take my RV into the shop my cat is in there I don't want to be off the road so a lot of stuff I do myself I've learned to do myself it's easy and you can too. The first type of maintenance that you want to prep for is preventative maintenance. Super easy just every time you're about to head to a new spot or you've just gotten to a new spot of course you want to go around and eyeball your entire RV. Lube every moving part like your steps or your slide or your windows. You want to just eyeball outside for cracks take a look at your tires. You're looking for dents or rust or anything that seems a little bit out of the ordinary. If you find something do some preventative maintenance to mitigate the problem or fix the problem before it turns into something else. The second type of maintenance that you want to prep for is scheduled maintenance. Now I'm not going to tell you every little thing you have to do on your RV. I'm going to give you some examples but what really is a good idea is to get out your manual. So I know when I got my Leisure Travel Van you know I had this many manufacturer warranties for all the different components and a big book and then I had a different book for my chassis and I had a different book from the manufacturer and I mean it took up a whole storage cabinet and you look at that you go oh god I'm just going to look at it when something happens right. Well after I ran into all of my problems I'll tell you that I read and indexed my entire manual because I found out that if you don't know how things work you're kind of at the service shop's mercy right. It can be something really simple you can fix yourself and if you know the verbiage and the lingo then you're more likely to get the help that you need. You guys are going to be completely different than me but what I've done is I created a little spreadsheet where I have my coach and my chassis separate on the spreadsheet. Luckily if you keep the same rig this is the kind of thing you only have to do one time. You want to go through all of your manuals and just flip ahead to the maintenance or preventative care or FAQ section or troubleshooting section and you want to find what they recommend for maintenance and for service and they may even tell you what kind of tools or parts you most likely will need if something goes wrong. So what you want to do is you want to put that in something like a to-do list or a calendar. So let's say that I go into my manual and I see Dometic fridge and it says that I'm supposed to go in and blow out the panel and make sure that it's free of dust and let's say spider webs every month. That will go on my monthly list. I also make a quick note about tools I might need like a can of air and the 800 number and the website address for Dometic in case I need to call them because sometimes that works a lot better than calling a shop. So you get the idea. Not too hard. After you get through the first couple of manuals your eyeball is going to go right to the timeline. So what you're looking for is how often you have to do something, what it is that you have to do, if you need anything special, and a Gochi phone number. So let me get my spectacles on here. I'm going to give you guys a basic list of what you have to do for your chassis and coach maintenance and I want to give a shout out to my friend Carol at Boldly Go RV who helped me compile this list. We didn't just get it from one source. We looked at lots of different sources to get this list for you and these are the basics. If you want to put something else on your list or if I'm missing anything please do put it in the comments below. Let's all help each other out. But these are the kind of things that you want to look for when you're creating your list for your basic chassis maintenance and your basic house maintenance. Okay in the chassis, which is just your car, you want to change your oil, air, and fuel filters as needed or as required in the manual. Take a look at your fan belts and check them for tightness and also cracks. You want to check your heater and radiator hoses. It would stink to go down the road and have one of those go out right? And of course check your fluid levels, your wiper blades, your lights, your battery, and most importantly you guys you have to check your tires. When I did the driving safety video with the truckers that I'll link below so you guys can see that, one of the biggest things that they recommended was that we check our tire pressure. They do every time they go out because a blowout is inevitable. It's going to happen or you're going to run over a nail or something like that. So you want to make sure that your tires are inflated to the proper pressure that's listed in your manual and some of us have duallys and it's kind of hard to get to that back gauge. There are tools that can help you do that but if you're like me and you want to make it easy just pop into a Goodyear tire or a Walmart or something like that because they will check your tire pressure for free and also they know what they're looking for. You know it's hard for me to crawl under my RV and look at the tread pattern on the inside tire but they can because they put it up over a bay and they look at it and then you're a lot less likely to have any problems when you're going down the road. Okay you guys now let's get to the house. This is your coach maintenance. Again the reason that you do this stuff is to make sure that you're less likely to spend more money in the future, spend time off the road, or hit an emergency. There might be some stuff in here you do regularly and there might be some stuff you haven't thought of and there might be some stuff you find in your manual that I'm not mentioning but here's a good basic list. You want to clean all your vents for your air conditioning and your furnace. If dust gets in there at all or some spider webs or something they're a lot less effective and you're putting a lot more strain on your system. You want to test your propane, smoke, and LP alarms. Super critical you guys. If you're unsure that your alarms that are inside your house are working properly, the ones that are hardwired in, get a little mobile one. I did because I was having problems with my LP alarm and so I have a secondary backup one just to make sure it's safe in there. Now you guys might actually be wondering where I am right now. I'm clearly not in my RV. You know why? Because my RV is in the shop right now because I'm having a battery issue like I mentioned in my Moab video. Sorry I'm going a little bit out of order here. My batteries right now are not keeping a charge. I have lead acid batteries, not sealed batteries, so if you have batteries like me you have to check the water fluid inside of that battery. Now I was checking mine every quarter. Water level was fine. Last time I checked the water level was low. I did an oil change maintenance video where I actually show a shot of how to check the water in the battery, so I'll also link that below, but that's critical you guys if you have a lead acid battery and you want to make sure you keep it going. Take it from me. If you have an onboard generator, you want to be checking the oil level in your generator. There's also some other maintenance that has to be done in there that you're going to need some parts and tools for, so when you get in your maintenance manual, just list that out. And like I said, you want to lube all moving parts. Now a reason to do this is I met a guy once who actually, I think he broke his ankle. He was stepping out of his RV and he had one of those automatic slides that come out and he hadn't lubed the step and it caught and he stepped out onto the ground and really got hurt. This is one of the reasons you want to do this stuff. You also want to lube up, you know, the windows where they might stick or crack. You want to protect that rubber. Also, a lot of people hate their slides because they can go wrong. You want to lube your slides and, you know, if you see that something else is going on, like you've got dirt caked in that slide or that gear, you want to get in there with a brush and clean it out. And if you have a tow car, of course, you want to be checking the tow bar, the lights, and the plates. So you guys, this is just a basic list of what you might want to put on your scheduled maintenance that you're going to do. Now look, you might have the time and the knowledge and the tools to do all of this yourself, or you might want to learn how to do all of it yourself, or it might not be in your budget for somebody else to do it. If that's the case and you want to know how to do any of this but you don't know how, you can read your manual to make that list. But don't worry if you don't know how to do it yourself because there are a ton of resources out there. Let's say that you want to check the oil in your generator, for example. You can always go to a YouTube video and put in the make and model of your generator and watch somebody do it. Now you guys know there are good YouTube videos and there are bad YouTube videos, and sometimes that can be a little frustrating because you're just looking for one thing and you have to watch five videos to find it. So you can do that. I've scored on some YouTube videos and found some really good stuff there, so that's a good way to go. But another thing that I recommend is joining a Facebook forum for your type of RV. So I joined the Leisure Travel Van Facebook forum when I was first on the road. They were great. I was able to ask basic questions and people jump right on there and answer the questions. But I'm going to give you guys a link for a website down below that gives you access to all kinds of different forums and chat rooms that you can go into for all kinds of things. And there's a search function so you can search for whatever problem you're having and see if it's been listed in there before. Free resource, really great. The link is below. And look, a lot of people on the road are really handy and really friendly. So if you're around some other campers that have a good knowledge base and you feel comfortable, and let's say you're having a problem with an electrical fuse or something like that, you might be able to go up and ask them for help. I've done that a couple of times and I've actually made friends doing that. So, you know, if you feel comfortable with the people that you're camping around, ask them. You'll be surprised at how great people can really be. If you are going to be doing your own maintenance, you need to have the tools to do that. So Carol from Boldy Go RV and I have put together a list of tools, basic tools, a lot of them that you're going to need. Now I'm going to put the links for all those basic tools below. Just scan that list. There might be things that you have or you don't have or you've never thought of. Some of these things might come in a regular toolbox and some of them you're not going to know you need until you actually get in and start doing the maintenance. You might need a certain size wrench or something to pop off, a spark plug or something that you don't have, and it's not going to say it in your manual and you're not going to know until you get in there and do the preventative maintenance or the scheduled maintenance. So this is just a basic list. Take a look at it. If you want to save money in the long run, getting these tools and doing a good part of the maintenance yourself is a good way to go. But let's say you don't want to do any of this. You don't have the time. You don't want to learn it. You don't have the tools. You can just do the preventative maintenance, like eyeball your RV when you get in and out of it. Look at the tires, loop up the moving parts, blow air out of the panels. That kind of thing is super easy. We can all do that. But this other scheduled maintenance, you can hire someone to do that. If you go into Google and you Google RV maintenance packages or RV maintenance bundles, you're going to see all kinds of packages out there. Now, I have found that if you look in the fall or the spring, there are always deals on these packages because a lot of other people are taking their rigs on and off the road. But here's the thing. When I looked online at all kinds of different vendors, I was seeing a range of prices from $500 for really basic stuff like getting up on the roof, which you should do every year and check your seals, tires, generator oil, stuff like that, all the way up to like $2,000, $4,000 if you want them to do every little thing. So you can do that. It's up to you and your budget. And if you could do some of the minor stuff yourself. Now, the last type of service that I mentioned was emergency service. If you're solo or a boondocker or just in a state park, you might be wondering what you do if you have an emergency. And so I'm going to give you guys a couple of resources that you should have handy. You know, have some 800 numbers written, have an app saved on your phone. Because, you know, if you have an emergency situation, you don't want to be searching for a resource at that point. You want to have it ready to go. The first thing I would say is look into some roadside assistance. Now, a lot of people like to use like Good Sam or AAA or, you know, some other kind of roadside assistance that's made for RVs. These can be a few hundred dollars or higher. They're good to have around because they'll call a local person that can come out and help you. But I do want to let you guys know when you're doing that search that if you have regular RV insurance, and I'll also link my RV insurance 101 video below for you guys, if you have that, you're going to see a coverage called J coverage or towing coverage. But that covers all roadside assistance, usually. So look at your actual policy because I don't want to misspeak here. But if you run out of gas, lock your keys in your car, you need to jump, something like that, these people will come out and it's covered. There's no deductible. You might need a little more coverage. You know, cars typically have $100 in coverage. RV policies can go up to, let's say, $500 in coverage per occurrence. That's how that works. So that they can actually tow your RV to the local shop and take you to like a hotel. So just know that you can get that on your regular RV insurance policy. If you want to go the Good Sam, AAA route, just look them up. If you have a newer RV, you might have roadside assistance built in for the first year. So also check your manual for that. But if you're in the middle of nowhere and you need help, check out mobile RV repair services. I have used a couple of these services and I'll tell you they were just lifesavers, but experience will vary widely with these services. So if you're going to spend a lot of time in one area, like Colorado, New Mexico, something like that, if you want to be prepared, you might check out some mobile RV services online. Look at the Google reviews. Look at the Yelp reviews. What you want to look for is, did they come out in a timely manner? Were they trying to get you to pay a lot for a simple little item? You want to find somebody that's reputable so they can help you. And I'll tell you, when I spent my 86 days in the shop, I actually ended up spending 53 days of that in the shop for something that I didn't need to be in the shop for, that the shop couldn't figure out. And my mobile RV repair guy did. I talked to him for five minutes. He did an hour of research and found out what my problem was. And someday I'll do a video on that to walk you through it. But having a mobile guy ready that you can call is great. I have seen them go from $40 to come out and assess your situation to $250. So they're there if you need them. Most of them have an 800 number or some way through an app to contact them. A lot of them are 24 hours a day. So if you're concerned about needing emergency service, have one of these guys handy. Also, if you're going to go somewhere where you don't have a cell signal, make sure it's a place that you can find your way out of at night, that you can hike out to the road if you need to, where you can get a cell signal. You guys, this is just part of being an RV owner, especially if you're going to be a full-time nomad. Again, it takes a couple days of work to get this information together, but you're going to feel a lot better when you have it there. All of the resources and the links you need are below. If this is the first video you've seen in this series, I've also linked the very first one, so you can go through and see all the information you need on where to get water and how to find boondocking and power and everything else that's in this series. If you want to add something to the conversation and I missed anything, or you want to give a tip to everybody else, please do add it in the comments below. Share this with your friends if they can use it. Everybody have happy travels out there, and be free!