Getting Ready To Travel

Rantoul, IL.

52 deg. mostly cloudy, N. wind @ 10 mph.

Forecast = Overcast in the morning, then mostly cloudy. High of 68F. Breezy. Winds from the NNW at 15 to 20 mph with higher gusts.


Yesterday morning, Jim decided that it was time to start getting me ready to travel. The first thing on the agenda was to service my batteries. Over the last year, Jim has determined that they need to be serviced about every 2 to 3 months, because at that time, he still doesn't have to add excessive amounts of distilled water to the batteries, and so far, there hasn't been a big corrosion problem.

Now in my case, being that I have a residential refrigerator and most everything else inside of me is electric and operates off of a pretty big inverter, I have six 6 volt batteries to power my coach and two 12 volt batteries to start my engine and run the chassis part of me.

So,  ,  ,  ,  ,  servicing all those batteries in not a chore that is done very quickly.

The first thing that Jim does is to add distilled water to any of the battery cells that are low. Then he cleans any terminals that have corrosion on them, taking them apart if necessary. After that, he sprays some yellow stuff on the batteries that turns pink if it contacts any trace of acid. After leaving that stuff sit on the batteries for awhile to neutralize the acid, he hoses them off with water, checks all the connections for remaining corrosion, re-applies the yellow stuff to make sure there is no more acid on the outside of the batteries, and then hoses them off again.

After letting the batteries dry, he sprays some red stuff on the terminals to help stop new corrosion.

Oh, and while he was servicing my batteries, he was also servicing CLT's (Cute Little Truck's), battery.

By the time he was finished and had everything put away, about 2 1/2 hours had passed, so he came inside of me and relaxed for awhile.

After lunch, he went back outside, checked all my fluid levels, topped off any that were low and then came back inside and took a little nap. : )

While he was working on my batteries and all that other stuff, Linda was inside of me, doing laundry and looking up more information about ancestors for her family tree program.

We had a line of thunder storms come through the area last night. Nothing serious, but there was a cold front behind it and now on TV they're forecasting the low temperatures tonight to get down into the 30's!!! 

I'm thinking it's probably a good idea to be leaving here soon. I think that because of the very high temperatures around here all summer, there may be an early winter on the way. : (

Did you know that on this date in 1941 a little boy was born in a little house on Wood Street in the little town of Peotone, IL?

His mother and father named him James.