Headed to Red Bay

There is this little town in Alabama called Red Bay. There isn’t much to the town, but the reason we are headed to Red Bay is simple, Tiffins are built there. We’ve had issue after issue with our RV Sleipnir, and finally decided to just make the trek here to get as much fixed as we can by people who deal with Tiffins, and specifically older Tiffins, all the time.

We will have to get towed there as there is something wrong with the fuel getting to the engine. I’m not 100% sure what it is, but it might be something as simple as the carburetor needing adjustment or cleaning, or it might be the fuel pump. I’m hoping its just the fuel filter in the carburetor though as that would be an easy and fast fix. We are still planning on replacing the carburetor with a rebuilt unit this summer which should also help a lot, but for now, we can deal with a cleaning and adjusting.

So what else can we do in Red Bay? Well I’m not sure. We’ll be getting there on a Sunday night with almost no money, so we’ll be hanging out in the RV most likely. Maybe we’ll go for a walk around town, but it all depends on how late it is when we get there. I’m also not sure how close the shop we are getting work done is to the Tiffin factory, but maybe we can go see that as well.

Our appointment is for Monday morning at 9am. Since we will want to be there while they are working on it, we can’t go on the Tiffin factory tour. I’m sure there will be other Tiffin owners around so we might be able to chat with some, but for this trip at least, we are sticking to getting Sleipnir running again and that’s about it. I hope they can get it all fixed for us tomorrow and we can come back to our campground before dark. If not, I guess we’ll have to stay in the parking lot for a second night, but that is unlikely.

The mechanic knows we need our exhaust replaced and the emissions filters bypassed. I assume that since we originally had an appointment for over a week ago, they have had time to either make or acquire the replacement parts. Its a big job, but its needed. The carburetor, if it just needs to be cleaned out, should not take long either. I’m hoping we can be done by noon and back on the road.

Tomorrow I am hoping to get some money in our account, but I’m not banking on it. If we do, then we can buy some food stuffs, but we also have an order from Brandless.com that should be here Tuesday. That will hold us over until next month. Plus, next week Saturday we’ll be heading back Florida for a few weeks and we have food that we ordered waiting there for us.

In the future, we need to do a much better job of taking care of our finances. This month we had a few unexpected expenses, such as staying here an extra week, as well as having to buy the stuff to unclog the black tank. That issue has partially been resolved, I was able to get it about half empty, but we also have some tissue digester arriving Tuesday or Wednesday that should help as well. We need to reign in our spending though, but really, we don’t spend much on stuff we don’t really need. I’m trying to find ways to make some extra money to pad our income a little bit, but its slow going at best. I’ve tried surveys, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and now signed up for a transcription service, all for the simple goal of making a few hundred a month extra. After we’ve done that for a few months, I’ll post about the results and what has worked and what hasn’t.

So on to Red Bay. Because it is where the Tiffin factory is and because its nearing springtime, there are going to be a lot of Tiffins there, most of them well out of our price range. We’ve never had a bad experience with a fellow Tiffin owner though, all of them have told us they love to see an older Allegro on the road and in such great condition as ours is. I wish the mechanical issues were taken care of so we could truly enjoy it, but well, things will progress as they will.

I need to try and stay more positive. The past few days I’ve been anxious and depressed having to deal with all this. Getting the black tank unclogged gave me a bit of a boost, but I feel like there is still so much that needs to be done and so little money to make it happen. If we can increase our income a little bit, then maybe we can start to begin moving forward with the remodel and Smart Home on Wheels project and make this a fully functional, fully connected, and enjoyable home. We’ve dealt with a lot of trials these past few months and I am hoping this is nearing the end of it.

While in Red Bay, we are going to take photos, lots and lots of photos. We have an Instagram set up, but I’ve barely used it. To get more readers to this blog, I think I need to expand our presence there, as well as on Pinterest. If we can build up a following there, then hopefully we can also increase our traffic to Bubba On The Road even more and start making some real income. We also have a Patreon setup, with a total of 0 patrons. If we could get a couple, it would help a lot and probably result in more people backing us when they see others are already doing it. Even $1/month would be helpful if you can afford it.

So in an hour or so, I’ll be calling AAA to setup our tow and hopefully we can get out of here before sunset. We had to call a tow company a week ago when the RV died to pull us back into our campsite after our engine died and they seemed nice and friendly. I’m assuming it will be the same company coming to tow us, it might even be the same driver, and then we can be on our way to Red Bay. Tonight might be a struggle since we won’t have electric hookups, but at least we can use the generator and its not supposed to be too cold out with a whopping low of 59°F. Tomorrow it is supposed to be in the 70s but raining all day.

There it is. Our trip to Red Bay starts with us getting towed there. I hope we leave under our own power and get back to traveling again.