The Real Cost of RV Maintenance | Ep. 55

Whether you’re new to RVing or have been towing for years, one thing’s for certain—RV ownership comes with its fair share of wear and tear. From the routine to the unexpected, maintenance and repairs are simply part of the journey. In Episode 55 of the RV Canucks Podcast, we’re pulling back the curtain on what it really costs to keep your rig road-ready, sharing our experiences from 10+ years of RV travel, and revealing how you can stay ahead of the curve.

What We’ve Learned After 10+ Years With Our Rig

We’ve taken our trailer coast to coast—across the Rockies, into the southern U.S., and soon to Atlantic Canada. Along the way, we’ve racked up not only memories but also maintenance bills, surprise breakdowns, and plenty of lessons.

The good news? With a little foresight and relationship-building with your local dealer, you can save money, avoid panic repairs, and enjoy your RV more.

Here are a few of our key takeaways:

💸 RV Repairs: What They Actually Cost

We’ve had everything from flat tires and worn-out bearings to water leaks and broken electric jacks. Here are a few real-life examples:

• New trailer tires (x4): $700 CAD
• Electric brake adjustment: $120 (first time), free with tire replacement
• Bearing service: $500
• Water pump replacement: $165 (back in 2016)
• Electric jack failure: DIY install, about 1 hour
• Propane regulator & leak test: ~$255 total
• Slide-out seal lube: $20 spray can (DIY)
• Deep-cycle battery: ~$170

Plus, a few things we got done for free, thanks to a great relationship with our dealer—including a door lock repair and help diagnosing a water leak before a big trip.

🔧 Dealer vs. DIY: There’s No “One Right Way”

Let’s put this out there: there’s no shame in letting a dealer handle your repairs. Whether it’s winterizing, redoing seals, or replacing a water pump, you get to choose what’s worth your time (and stress). Some folks love the DIY route, and others value getting it done quickly and safely by a pro.

The goal is simple: make sure your RV is safe and ready when you are. No gatekeeping here.

🧠 Build a Relationship With Your Dealer

This one tip has saved us more time and money than anything else:
Find a dealer who offers service, not just sales.

And more importantly, be fair and flexible with them.
Let them know your timelines.
Be kind.
Batch your service visits if you can.

This mutual respect has resulted in waived service charges, better advice, and peace of mind for our family of four.

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🗺️ What’s Next for RV Canucks in 2025?

We’re excited to announce that our Grand Tour 2025 will take us east—all the way to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia!

We’ll also be:

• Doing a shakedown trip in April
• Camping through Ontario in May & June (Inver Huron + Harvest Hosts!)
• Heading to Ottawa for a dance competition
• Spending two full weeks touring the Maritimes
• Festival camping and Highland Games in August
• Enjoying peaceful wrap-up trips in September and October

We’re even sneaking in a father-daughter boondocking and fishing trip this summer—and Melina’s finally finishing the restoration of Sally, our 1964 Glendale Glenette!

Transcript

1 (4s): Hello everyone. Welcome back to the RV Canucks podcast. Today we’re tackling a topic that every RVer has to face at some point, repair costs and maintenance. Over the past 10 years, we’ve had our fair share of wear and tear on our rig. And In this episode we’ll be breaking down the most common RV repairs, what you can expect to pay, and sharing some real numbers from our own experiences and stick around till the end because we have some exciting news about our upcoming camping plans, plus the big reveal of our RV Connects Grand Tour 2025. Let’s dive in. Episode 55 starts right now. Hi Dan. 2 (44s): Hi honey. 1 (45s): Welcome to episode 55. 2 (48s): I’m really excited for this one. Like I feel like this is a bit of a nerdy episode about repair costs and maintenance and our own experience, but I’m kind of, it’s one I wanted to do for a while and I’ve been working on it for a little while. So thank you everybody for humor and me on this, but I hope it’s really informative 1 (1m 4s): And I’m really excited for this episode because I don’t have to talk that much. Yeah, and my voice is a little straggly today. 2 (1m 10s): Yeah, so just like the last episode, I think Molina’s gonna let me fly a little solo, but I’m under close supervision. That makes me feel a bit better. So, ’cause I don’t know if that last one was my best work, but I’m still excited to do this one. So we’re gonna talk about some common repair costs and maintenance costs. And the aim here is not to give you a specific dollar value. The aim is to let you know Whether you have a two figure, a three figure, or a four figure repair. And by that I mean is it gonna cost you $50, is it gonna cost you $300 or is it gonna cost you a thousand dollars? So really this is just intended to be directionally accurate. I think I probably should just set the stage here though. Everybody’s RV’s a little bit different. 2 (1m 50s): So some things to consider if you’re, you know, listening with your partner or you’re driving down the road here, do you have one slide or do you have multiple slides or maybe you have no slides. So that’s, that’s going to be a a factor. Do you have one axle, two axles, three axles? Because that means you have two tires, four tires, six tires, you know, six sets of breaks. All of those things are important. So maybe I’m gonna give you our repair costs based on a one slide out trailer with two axles, four tires. You guys can kind of do the rough mental math in your head to figure out what that might mean for your own trailer. And then there’s some other stuff in here, solar charging, like do you have a really fancy solar panel on the top or you just have a battery on the front of the trailer? 2 (2m 36s): So those kind of things. So we’ll tell you what ours were and then you’ll just kind of have to do the, the mental gymnastics in your head to maybe make it fit for your situation. There’s probably a couple of tips here just before we dive in. Make sure that you choose a dealer who does service. So you can go and buy the cheapest trailer and they’ll deliver it really quickly, but eventually it’s going to need some service. Give some thought to a dealer who does service because their knowledge is invaluable. It’s gonna get you on the road quicker, you’re gonna feel more comfortable, it’s gonna allow for a more enjoyable RV lifestyle experience. 1 (3m 7s): What if somebody buys their RV at a dealer that is not near their home but they need to take it for service near them? So 2 (3m 15s): One thing I I’ll say is maybe think about if you’re gonna batch your service. So If you need to get new tires and you want to get your brakes adjusted and maybe you want to have the bearings done, then maybe you want to save that for the end of the season when you’re gonna get it winterized. Although I’d probably say in that particular instance bring it in at the beginning of the summer, give them lots of lead time, come in and get all of that work done at once. So to the extent that you can batch your service, that’s a good idea. And hey, I get it. If you get a flat tire, a blowing water pump, that’s not always easy. If they’re a little bit further away or maybe you’ve moved somewhere else, just be up front with the dealer. Maybe you bought your trailer used, maybe you purchased it from another dealer and you’re in this area now just build a relationship with them. 2 (3m 60s): Which kind of ties into my next point, which is be fair with the dealer. Be upfront with them. Don’t come in and say Hey, oh my god I I got a flat tire, I need my trailer next weekend. If you don’t need your trailer next weekend say hey I don’t need my trailer next weekend, my next trip’s not for two or three weeks. When do you think you could squeeze me in? If you are more accommodating to them, they’re probably gonna be have an easier time helping you and be a lot more friendly. And so I think this comes down to we’ve all been, or lots of us have been at the airport and somebody you know goes up to the counter and loses their mind ’cause their flight got canceled and the person who comes up nice and quiet and says, Hey I get it’s a tough day, you didn’t cancel the flight, help me out. That person’s probably gonna have an easier time. So If you can be flexible and fair with the dealer, that’s probably your best course of action, your best way to manage the relationship. 1 (4m 46s): I think on that point too, when you are that customer and when you are very fair with the dealer, when something pops up that is an emergency, you’re more likely to be given the grace of rapid help in in that case. Right? 2 (5m 0s): Absolutely. And I’m gonna go into a couple of things here and you’re gonna find out there’s actually some things in here we got done for free. We did our big trip to Key West and just being flexible with them, I said Listen, we’re going to Florida, we’re doing a big trip. I know everybody would feel good if you know the, you know the tires are checked, the brakes are done, bearings are just give it a good once over, we’re not leaving for three more weeks. When would you like me to bring it in? And they said, Hey, come on in, just drop it off, we’ll get to it. We’ll definitely have it done a week before your trip. And a week later they had everything done ready to go and they were like wanted to know about the trip and where we’re going. And so that was kind of where us being casual and cool about it and thinking ahead got us out the door quicker. But I’ll give a couple examples where some things were free. And then the last thing is just remember like the dealer’s gotta keep the lights on so maybe they’re gonna charge a couple extra dollars for something. 2 (5m 48s): Pick your battles right? Because If you wanna nickel and dime them over everything, they’re gonna subconsciously probably do that in return. And so just remember they’re running a business, they gotta keep their lights on. Everybody there has a family and kids and they want to have Christmas and pay their mortgage too. So let’s just be reasonable with them. And that all just goes back to picking a good dealer who does good service work. And you can kind of see that because when you go in to look at a dealer you can kind of size up how many service base do they have, how big does their service department look, those little things you can kind of size up the first time you go in. Yeah, so I guess really in no particular order, we’ll kind of dive into things here. This one’s a little bit of an odd one. So your trailer has a breakaway cable and the breakaway cable if catastrophe strikes and your trailer comes detached from the tow vehicle and the change brake, there’s a breakaway cable there and the whole idea of the breakaway cable is it snaps and it locks your trailer brakes and engages them. 2 (6m 43s): So it’s a really important piece of equipment. I bet you most people don’t even look at it. Ours was starting to get frayed, that one cost us $80. It’s not a hard repair. I probably could have looked it up on YouTube, felt more comfortable about it, but I also wouldn’t have known exactly which part to order. I would’ve had to go to the RV dealer anyway. So for $80 they got the part, they installed it And I think they kind of were checking out some other work on like I think they were sizing up some tires for us and doing a couple other small repairs. So we we kind of that in, that’s a good example of batching it in the next one. So we, there’s something we aspire to in trailer life and it’s one of those fancy key pads where you kind of punch in the numbers. We have the old school like key And we really wanted one of the fancy ones And we were like kind of excited because our door handle broke and the lock wouldn’t work when we could still get in and out and it wasn’t a super urgent thing for us to repair. 2 (7m 34s): But we kind of came in at the end of the season And I said listen, could we get one of those fancy locks? And the guy’s like, yeah, no problem. And I kind of think this was when we were having more supply chain problems with Covid And I got a phone call back and he is like, listen it’s really expensive, like it’s so expensive, I don’t even want to sell you the part. He goes, but I’ll tell you what, I went in And I took a look at your lock And I fixed it for free. So he went in, took the whole lock assembly apart while he was doing a few other things, fix the lock. We’ve not had a problem. What two or three years since you’ve he he’s done that and that’s just a good example of a good dealer relationship and not being the person who comes in with your hair on fire. Yeah. So I listen, I don’t know what the fancy new locks cost ’cause we got the old school lock and it was free. So who doesn’t like free? 2 (8m 14s): We did have a city city water leak and that one was also free. I was a little bit more concerned about that one. I guess I feel like in retrospect it probably should have dug into it a little bit deeper except I was, we hadn’t gone on the road yet. I think Molina was outta town. I was trying to get the trailer ready for a trip near Mother’s Day and there was water everywhere And I just, something didn’t feel right And I had ’em come in and take a look at it with something else. Water everywhere specify. So water came into the city water connection. So the hose is hooked up. I’m trying to flush the system for this for the summer to take out the antifreeze and and whatnot. And it got in around the water pump and underneath the under storage of the trailer where you’re gonna keep like your leveling blocks and your hitch when you’re not using it and stuff like that. 2 (9m 1s): So, 1 (9m 1s): So in the industrial areas of the trailer? 2 (9m 4s): Yeah, the industrial areas of the trailer it, when I say everywhere that includes on the driveway on my feet. Probably a time when I was admittedly like a little bit stressed out and tired and just, this is not the problem I wanted before we were supposed to go away. I know we kind of just said, listen, we’re just not gonna go away this weekend. And I think we’re both okay with it. But long story short, we, when We did go in, they checked it out, they tightened something up and it was another free repair just because we use the same place all the time. We drive probably, well I do the, I do, I take it there’s probably around 40, 45, 50 minutes to bring it in And we always get winter eyes there at the end of the season. So there’s another example of something that was fairly that was free. 2 (9m 44s): Another thing I would say and maybe people don’t always think about this is your slide out lube and seals. You can probably like, honestly this is not a hard one to do. It’s 20 to $30. You can pick the stuff up at home hardware, Canadian tire, any probably Walmart’s got it. It’s basically a spray can kind of looks just like a WD 40. You can do that one yourself, probably just do it at the, you know, couple times during the year just to check things out, make sure everything’s functioning the way it could. There’s no rips, tears, that kind of stuff. It’s 1 (10m 13s): Not. And why that’s important and a lot of people don’t do this I find or don’t know that they should do this is because the rubber, the seals on your slide out will dry out. They will crack. Yeah. They will become less pliable. Right. And this, what this does is it essentially kind of oils them and protects them. UV protects them so that they stay nice and soft. And the problem is not so much, you know, when the trailer’s used and, and the slide out’s out, but it’s, it’s what happens when the slide out is closed and you have bad weather, right? You wanna prevent those leaks when you’re not around the trailer. And 2 (10m 43s): The other part to think about is not just the seals when you’re slide out has to come in and out. There’s a mechanism, there’s like a gear assembly for it to slide in and out. And I just, by having a good relationship with the dealer, I was able to ask a couple of questions. I said I got this sound And we, I happened to be there and he’s like, you probably just need to, to lube that up a little bit just to let it come in and out. That took away the sound that we were hearing probably, you know, just one of the things you’ll learn of over the years of experience And we just wanna share with you and it’s something you can do yourself. Well 1 (11m 11s): It’s, it’s essentially a different version of the same product you would put on the seals. It’s a can that you’re spraying on your, on your slide mechanism that chains or whatever that’s that’s thrown it in and out to protect it. Yeah. 2 (11m 23s): And each one of those cans is like what, 15 $20? Yeah. And that’s why I kind of say you got a two figure repair cost. I think the next one, I think these two are really important. So if your trailer has electric brakes, it’s a good idea to go in and get your electric brakes adjusted and and checked. And so the first time we had this done, it cost us $120. The brakes didn’t feel right. They didn’t sound right. I had ’em checked out, they did an adjustment. It was a normal maintenance cost. It same way you would get like the oil changed on your car. I’m gonna go out in a limb and say nobody ever talks about this around the campfire. Which makes me think most people probably don’t do it but it tows a lot better. You feel better about the safety and stopping. 2 (12m 6s): So it’s something that you should have done regularly And we do a lot of miles, right? So we need to have it done a little bit more frequently. We had it done this summer, it was free. It was free because we paid $700 to get new tires So we paid $700 to get new tires. So you’re like well how often do I change my tires? Well that’s a bit like how long is a piece of string right? You know, you can go on Google and they say tires should last you five to seven years for an rv. But hey that’s dependent on a lot of factors. How often do you tow? Do you rotate your tires? Like what kind of road are you on? All of those things matter. So the most important thing is like a couple of times a year go out there and check your tires And I don’t mean like make sure they’re not flat. 2 (12m 47s): Like get down, run your hand along the backside, make sure you’re not feeling anything weird on the outside. Make sure there’s no cracking. All of those kind of things to take care of your tires. Now when I say it cost us $700 for new tires, we have four tires. So If you only have two tires, I’d say like divide that by half and you’ll get a rough ballpark. But $700 for tires still feels like it’s less expensive than tires for your tow vehicle. Right? So maybe don’t dodge that cost because it’s a safety issue as well. 1 (13m 14s): Yeah. But I would say realistically, like We did keep the original tires that came with the trailer on for a little bit but we replaced them pretty darn quick with some high quality tires. And what are we on our third or fourth set? 2 (13m 27s): So, so this will be our third set of tires. So we have the tires that the trailer came with. Yeah We did a a, a replacement of tires and then we got the tires done this summer. Now keeping in mind we’ve done trip to Florida, trip to Santa Monica, Myrtle Beach, bunch of weekend trips and then a trip out to Western Canada. Yeah like in in those like three sets of tires. 1 (13m 47s): Yeah. And on this one trailer, three sets of tires like were 30,000 plus kilometers I would say. 2 (13m 53s): Yeah. So we’ve put a lot of, you know, the tires didn’t know us anything. I think probably we left the first set on a little bit too too long. But you know, you’re learning from our mistakes. I got a flat tire fortunately I literally got the flat tire in front of our house. Yeah right. We we brought the trailer home to pack it up and the tire went flat. So that was an easy fix. It wasn’t done at the side of the road. So you know, but again, If you take care of your tires there’s less of a chance you’re gonna get flats or blow it. It’s not guaranteed. But you’re also gonna notice that the trailer tows a lot better. Yeah. The other thing I think probably people don’t often think about getting done, I know people probably do this a little bit more often, they probably do it a little bit more often than getting their electric brakes done is get your bearings serviced. 2 (14m 36s): So have somebody go in, inspect the bearings, repack them with grease, make sure that they’re properly lubricated. And why this is important is like you’ve got your bearing and you’ve got your electric brakes and you’ve got your tire and those kind of three things all work together and you need to maintain them because If you don’t maintain your bearing you could blow a bearing and then you’ve got a much more serious problem at the side of the highway and it’s probably not something that you know, CAA or roadside assistance is gonna be able to easily handle. So we got all of that done. Bearings cost us $500. That’s because we had four tires. A lot of people do this themselves. I’ve kind of looked into it now, I’d probably feel a little bit more comfortable doing it myself now that I’ve kind of been in there and taken things apart and I’ll kind of get to that story. 2 (15m 21s): But if you’ve never done it, you’re crunched on time. It’s the beginning of the season. This is a perfect like batched up thing where if you’re listening to this in March, phone your dealer and say hey I’m, I’m gonna get my trailer outta storage and I’m gonna have it for May. Is there a time you can come in, take a look at my tires, adjust my brakes and do my bearings all in one shot? They’ll get it done. You go and you pick it up and you hit the road running. When I picked up the trailer from new tires, brakes adjusted and the bearings done like it noticeably towed a lot better and it was nice to have it towing a lot better. Now you’re wondering why do I feel like I can change the bearings myself now? Well during our trip when we came back from Key West, we got home, there’s a loud ground grinding side sound, something isn’t right. 2 (16m 3s): Lo and behold we’ve blown a bearing. So I had to go to the place where we store the trailer. It wasn’t safe to tow so I couldn’t even take it 50 kilometers just to like have a warranty job done. So I phoned the service technician, said like this is the problem. He is like, you know, jack up the tire, how much movement is in it? And I’m like dude, I can’t tow this. And he is like, okay If you take it off I will give you a new hub all packed with grease. You can put it on yourself, tighten up your, your tire, bring it in, we’ll get the, we lug nuts torqued and you’ll be fine. In the process of me doing all that and it only probably took of like actual maintenance time of taking this stuff off like an hour or two, not a lot of time is my point. 2 (16m 45s): I’ve handled it enough that I feel comfortable, I comfortable that I could do this myself. 1 (16m 49s): What Dan is failing to mention is that that grinding sound is pretty distinctive and when I suggested that it could possibly be the bearing, I 2 (16m 57s): Thought it was maybe the brakes. Yeah 1 (16m 59s): It was. No, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not the bearing. That’s not the bearing. Lo and behold we get outta the trailer and the sound was like we were back in Ontario when the sound started And we had a cursory look at the trailer but I think you were looking more towards a brake issue rather than a bearing issue. So it did get driven on a little bit. So we were a little bit worried that some damage had been done. Luckily, And I touch wood here, like reasonably speaking, that might’ve been an example where we would’ve had to stop on the road and find another solution. 2 (17m 30s): Yeah. Like if it had been two or three days earlier, it would’ve been a Sunday. We would’ve been like trying to find a hotel, get a tow truck would’ve been different. Yeah. Am I happy that we had had the bearings done And we had the problem? No it didn’t cost me extra money to have that done because they did it all under warranty. Of course I had to do the work because for obvious reasons is we couldn’t tow the trailer. But point being, hey had a good relationship with the dealer. They didn’t gimme a hard time. They gave me advice over the phone, I feel more comfortable about it ’cause we’ve talked about this a couple times. Yeah you get your com your, your confidence through adversity. So yeah. Hey If you walk away from nothing from nothing from this, just learn from our mistakes. 2 (18m 13s): Right? So we, we we’re new at this, we just want you to have that information. Yeah. One of our first repairs was the water pump. So we were in a campground for the weekend. You know, we had some friends with us. I think the girls were in a dance competition. Yeah. Were just in a provincial park and there’s water running out water all over the place kind of in the utility areas. Certainly was a big letdown but it didn’t spoil our weekend. We kind of just, we have a jug that we have for water anyways So we kind of improvised, had a good weekend all the same but we had to get the water pump done. This cost is a bit dated. I pulled the receipt, it cost us $165. 1 (18m 52s): That was a number of 2 (18m 52s): Years ago though, but that’s like 10 years ago, maybe nine years ago. I think 2016. So obviously a number of years ago. So maybe the price has gone up a little bit. But here’s the good takeaway. We haven’t had a problem since. Right. Again, knock on wood, knock on wood knock, knock on wood. Let’s hope we’re not here in September. Me telling you we got our next water pump. Yeah that one I, I’m happy to have ’em change the water pump. Could I probably do it? Yeah, but it means like I gotta like lay on my belly on top of the bed and do some gymnastics to get the whole thing in there. So all things being equal, I was happy to have them do that. 1 (19m 25s): Can we talk about this for a minute? Because you have said three times And I think it’s really, really important. I probably could have done it myself, but we just paid to have it done. I probably could have done it myself. Like and winterization is one of them. Like we pay to have our trailer winterized. But I think it’s important, like everybody says that with like this asterisk of shame where it’s, it’s perfectly okay even as a seasoned RVR to get the dealership to do maintenance on your trailer. Like, you know, it’s, it’s there’s this, there’s always this constant like undertone And I see it a lot on like Facebook groups and you know trailer forums where it’s like oh well If you don’t do every aspect of every part of trailer maintenance yourself, you’re not a real rvr. And I just wanna say right now it is perfectly fine to pay for the dealer to have you know, things done to your trailer. 1 (20m 8s): It is perfectly fine to do them yourselves. You know, if somebody can’t crawl up on the roof, it’s okay. Get somebody to come and redo all of your roof seals. Like there is no right way to rv And we say this a lot but I think it needs to be said from a maintenance perspective because there’s always this like thread of like, oh you’re lesser than If you do certain things. Totally not the case. Do what you are comfortable with, do what makes you happy. And there is no wrong answer. At the end of the day it’s all about making sure that your rig is safe and secure and available when you want to use that. 2 (20m 36s): Yeah And I think what I would like people to get is just be confident to have an educated conversation. You’re not gonna change the pump on your truck or your minivan so why would you maybe necessarily be expected to do it here? But like let’s have an educated conversation so you can ask some questions. So hey, if it does happen to you in the campground in the middle of the weekend, what do I do? Well you just shut off the water pump and you, you mop up the mess. Right? In that particular instance but just enough to have an educated conversation with somebody about the problem. I’ve had to do this one a couple of times. So we had a, a popup camper. The propane hose started leaking. I repaired that one myself. That was so long ago. 2 (21m 17s): I don’t even remember what it cost the last time we had to have the propane fixed on the trailer. What had happened is, I, funny enough, it seems to be in the summer when this happens or the spring when we’re getting ready for the summer, I was getting the trailer ready summarizing it really. And I could smell propane and I’m like oh this is not good. So you know, you know you take the cover off, you disconnect everything, you turn the tanks off, you let it air out. Maybe I didn’t have something connected, right. Hooked it all back. Oh this is bad. So we like, we very clearly had a propane leak, you could smell it. So I went in, it cost us $80 for the propane regulator. A hundred and dollars, pardon me, $110 for a leak test. It costs $65 to have it installed. 2 (21m 57s): I think this is a good one. Like go get somebody to do this. Especially of a much more complicated trailer because you don’t want to be messing around with propane and something combustible and have it inadvertently ’cause you didn’t know what you were doing. Yeah, right. And so I was happy to do it. Pardon me. I was happy to have them do it because you know, keeping the marriage together is priceless. Right. Because I’m sure you are more comfortable knowing that like a proper service technician did it not, not me kind of jimmying something together telling you to be okay. 1 (22m 26s): Yeah, well you know, especially when you want to go to bed and wake up the next morning. 2 (22m 31s): Yeah. So listen, there’s, there’s another one and, and then I, last couple of ones here. This one, this price is gonna be all over the place. So the deep cycle battery, we have one battery on our trailer, that’s it. We have a standard bottom of the line Canadian tire deep cycle battery that’s been in there for a couple of years. It does the job. We take it out every winter. We keep it charged up, we take care of it. It will not last forever. The price right now on Canadian tire is about $170 for that. And the price goes up because there are people that have like really, really fancy batteries. We do not. But you know that your, your starting point is gonna be like $170 plus tax and maybe some environmental fees. 2 (23m 11s): So that one’s pretty straightforward. You probably can do that one yourself. You can take your battery into Canadian tire or an auto parts place and they’ll test it. But that just gives you an idea. And then the last thing we’ve had done is a electric RV jack. That one went on us in drum heller, right? Yeah. We kind of, there was some grinding and it wasn’t sounding right. I actually thought it was a battery to be honest with you. We eventually reached the point where like it ConEd out and it seized up. Seized up And I, I don’t recall. I think we got it off the truck but we didn’t level perfectly because we knew we had to get it back onto the trucks. 1 (23m 48s): Yeah. And to get it onto the truck we had to get the kids and myself I think to stand on the bumper to like lower the back end of the truck enough just to fit it underneath just 2 (24m 0s): A hair. Just like a 1 (24m 1s): Yeah where the jack was because it had fully seized like we were manually turn turning the jack but it just, it would not go anymore. Yeah. So it would go down but it wouldn’t go up anymore. 2 (24m 11s): Yeah. So your, your jack probably has a manual override. Even our manual override ConEd out. We were in drum heller, we were in a campsite. We were there, we were there for two or three days. So another example of like hey it didn’t kill our trip to drum heller. It took a few hours out when we finally did get the repair done but felt like it could be catastrophe but it wasn’t 1 (24m 31s): Funny enough, nobody in drum drum Heller stalks them if If you care, We did call a mobile RV tech. He was not available. Told us a couple of stores in town to try. So we went to like the NAPA or whatever like the auto parts store And I don’t even think there’s a Canadian tire there. We went to a couple of places maybe there is a Canadian tire. Yeah I can’t remember. We went to two places. None of them had it So we managed to jimmy it together and drive to Calgary. 2 (24m 57s): Yeah we drove, we drove to Calgary, we got it fixed. The RV tech was great. He still gave us a little bit of information. We phoned ahead to a dealer because by this point like we’re on the road, he’s like I cannot put this thing in for you. Like I do not have time. I have one but like I do not have a technician but you’re more than welcome to do it yourself in the parking lot. So interestingly I timed myself. I didn’t tell anybody that I was timing myself ’cause I didn’t want, you know, I didn’t need pressure from the backseat from the minute we pulled into their parking lot till we walked outta their parking lot. It was an hour to do the whole thing. That included taking the bikes off the bike rack, just the way that we have our bikes set up on the trailer. So really it’s only like two or three wires, three bolts. 2 (25m 38s): We got it done And we were out. Felt like that’s the kind of thing where you think maybe catastrophe could strike but it took like what, a couple hours out of our day? 1 (25m 47s): Yeah, the only, the only negative there. I think it was 10 degrees that day. So it was a little chilly. 2 (25m 51s): Yeah it was a little chilly. It was windy. I think maybe the rain was rolling in like, but all things being equal. Like I know this isn’t everything that could break in your trailer but like that’s what 10 years of experience and what it cost us. Keep in mind like I’ve given you the pricing Canadian dollars, I’ve given you the price in parts. Your dealer’s probably gonna have like a shop rate to if they’re gonna do an installation, remember I talked about having a good relationship with them. As much as you can batch things up. Like If you got a flat tire, there’s nothing you can do about it. But if there’s like an upgrade or some routine maintenance, put it in the spring. Put it in the fall, that’ll help keep your costs down. A lot of these things don’t take a lot of time to do. 2 (26m 31s): Especially if they know what they’re doing. And then like Melina quite rightly points out it’s okay to have them do the work. Right. I just would say manage your expectations and their expectations about when you really need the work done. Like if you’re really going away on that big like once in a lifetime vacation and something happened like unexpectedly, then that’s one thing. But if you’re not going away for two or three weeks and just tell ’em you’re not going away for two or three weeks and don’t put them under pressure. They’ll squeeze you in when they can get you in around a bunch of other jobs because you know, I have a little bit of experience on another part of my life working with with RV dealerships and there are times where they’re really busy, they gotta prep trailers for delivery. 2 (27m 13s): Those things can take, you know, upwards of six hours. So sometimes they can kind of just put you into a, a little hole in their day and make it work a little bit easier. So I think that’s everything. 1 (27m 23s): No you, there’s one more thing that’s broken and Dan hasn’t mentioned it ’cause we actually haven’t fixed it. And that is the rope lights that are on our awning. They went probably two years ago, three years ago And we just haven’t fixed them because I mean they’re a nice to have but the awning works, it’s an electric fine, but do we really need the ritzy lights? Like eh, well it’s one of those like we’ll get to it when we get to it. We just haven’t got to it. 2 (27m 45s): I feel like the solution’s gonna be like some indoor outdoor patio lights So we can kind of like string up like Christmas lights with an extension cord and yeah, maybe it’ll look a little Griswold, but you are right. I I do mean to like do that all the time and it never seems to get done. It’s fine. 1 (28m 1s): It’s 2 (28m 2s): Like, but 1 (28m 2s): If we’re counting over 10 years, like what has actually broken? Like that’s, that’s probably the extent of it And I would, I think I would probably take this minute to to say there’s a lot of things that haven’t broken because we’ve maintained them. Right. Like so like do not neglect cleaning your roof. Don’t neglect doing your roof seals and your window seals and, and all of the caulking along or the, the lap sealant all over the rest of all of the seams of your trailer. Just 2 (28m 27s): Keep it clean. Really? Yeah like I think what happens is when you go in and you clean your trailer, whether it’s inside or outside, that forces you to get into the nooks and crannies and see if there’s something wrong there or something like that. Like every once in a while I unscrew the vents for the heater and just kind of vacuum them out and take the crud out and 1 (28m 44s): You know like air conditioner filters and things like that. Yeah. But I think the point is it’s really easy to like ignore the fact that you might have one or two skylights on your roof until they start leaking Right. And go oh yeah like we were supposed to redo those seals at the top. Right. 2 (28m 56s): Yeah. Yeah. There’s probably some wise ounce of prevention saves you something I can’t remember but 1 (29m 2s): Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Yeah, I we got 2 (29m 6s): It. Throw it in the comments. So did you wanna talk about like what the 2025 season looks for us? 1 (29m 13s): Yeah, I’m super excited. So it’s not gonna sound like a lot of trips but it’s a lot of nights. So we, we’ve got our regular round of camping, we’ve got our regular round of just, you know, RV connect summer season and then we’ve got our 2025 grand tour, which you know, last year was Key West the way year before that was Banff. 2 (29m 31s): Yep. We’ve done Myrtle Beach, we’ve done 1 (29m 33s): Yeah Route 66. So we have decided for obvious reasons to stay within Canada this year And we are very, very excited that we are going to be going out to PEI and Nova Scotia. We’d love to include, you know, Newfoundland I guess we’re traversing through New Brunswick so does that count? I don’t know. Well we are staying overnight in New Brunswick so that should count but unfortunately we won’t get out to Newfoundland this time just because of the timeline that we have. But Ila has a dance competition in Ottawa and then we are are kind of booking it right from Ottawa straight out east. So we are very excited to do that. That is going to be in the month of July. We are starting off with a shakedown trip in April to be determined where we are going. 1 (30m 15s): But April is when we usually do our, our yearly shakedown trip in May. We are up to Inver Huron in June. Dan has a race that he’s looking at a foot race that he is looking at it doing. So we might do a trip with that. And then we are also going to be doing some Harvest hosts this year. So I think June we’ll probably see at least one or two of those on a weekend just to kind of go out and see some cool things. I can’t actually see that list over there. What else have we got Dan? 2 (30m 41s): Well so in July we’re gonna have the grand tour that Yep. So we we’re gonna be in Ottawa not necessarily using the trailer but we’ll bring the trailer with us. If you’re not from like Ontario or you’re not familiar with the geography, it’s what five s? No, it’s like with the trailer it’s gonna be six or seven hours to get to Ottawa. Yeah, so what we’re trying to avoid is going to Ottawa coming back here and then going right back down the same road that we just traveled on. So we’ll kind of work and do some stuff in Ottawa with the dance competition and then we’ll we’ll head on out to the Maritimes Atlantic Canada. So that’s, that’s probably gonna chew up most of July to be honest with you. It’s probably at least a two week trip for us. And then August we’ve got some festival camping, the Ling games and other dance competition. 2 (31m 23s): That’s always a fun one. You just, so last year We did not get the best campsite. That’s my fault. Sorry everybody. 1 (31m 29s): I think we all forgot that camping opened up. 2 (31m 32s): Well we all forgot the camping opened up And we had to take what we could get except when I finally did take what we could get, I neglected to see that there was no water hookup. Yeah, 1 (31m 41s): Which 2 (31m 41s): Was fine. Just power actually. There was no power either. 1 (31m 44s): No, there was no power, no water. But it’s, it’s a weekend and to be quite honest it’s, this particular festival is very, very close to our home. So we can go home if we need to and at the end of August Labor Day we will be doing Labor Day on Lake Huron. One of these, one of these nice provincial parks. Where are we over here? If you can, if you’re looking on video, I’m pointing to our map of the Ontario Provincial Parks. So one of those ones we don’t, we’re not exactly sure but it’s, I should say Labor Day weekend. It’s not, it’s like the week heading up to Labor Day weekend because Labor Day weekend is so, so busy. So we prefer to take one or two days throughout the week just to end the summer And I think everybody finds that really relaxing in September. We are doing some camping with some good friends just up in Allison and that Allison Ontario and then October we will do our wrap up trip usually around Thanksgiving if not Thanksgiving weekend. 2 (32m 36s): Yeah we try to fit that one in, you know Fiona works and So we try to do something where she can still go to work but spend time with the family. So we’ll kind of play that one by ear when we get to it. But like it’s a lot of nights I think just not as many trips or different parks but I’m really excited to try out the Harvest host. Yeah. And get out to the Maritimes in Atlantic Canada and 1 (32m 56s): Dan and the girls. I think we’re looking at taking a boondocking trip this summer. 2 (32m 59s): Ooh. Yeah so there’s been some chatter amongst me and the kids. I think we’re probably gonna head up to the Tomy area. I’ve done a little bit of scouting, I got this big fancy map, I kind of know where I want to go, do a little bit of fishing, have a little bit of fun just like literally on crown land camping with the trailer. So I’m excited to do that. We’ll just, we’ll fit that one in based on like school schedule and you know how good the fish are biting really, really it’s about catching fish. Like let’s be honest with ourselves 1 (33m 27s): And I will be staying back to do what I did last time you went up and did a trip was work on Sally and If you are new to us, you have no idea who Sally is or what Sally is because it’s been a long time. Sally is our 1964 Glendale Glen debt. Kind of a canned ham trailer. It’s a passion project of ours that’s been going on since Covid. I am bound and determined that Sally is going to get finished this year. I would say Sally’s probably 50%, 55% done right now. But the last time Dan went away I went at it all weekend And I got a lot done. So most of the framing is done and hopefully by the time Dan gets back from this trip this summer, it will be at least have some, some sheathing and some insulation that would be helpful. 1 (34m 9s): Yep. Oh no, you gotta run the wires. I’ll get, oh I’ll get some stuff done on. 2 (34m 14s): We’re gonna, she’s gonna get the hard, hardest part done. Yeah. And we’re still gonna be married at the end of it so that’s a bonus. Which 1 (34m 19s): Is fair. Sometimes we have found out Sally is a solo project 2 (34m 23s): And sometimes it’s a Pariss project. You learn all the time don’t you? Yep. So I, I kind, I think that kind of wraps everything up. Nope. Yep, 1 (34m 29s): Yep. And I think we are going to be entering a couple of episodes starting in a couple of weeks where we are going to start comparing some of our favorite Ontario provincial parks and it’s kind of like a a, a battle of the parks of versus you know, this park versus that park and, and our verdict verdict on the end. ’cause there are some that are really close together, really similar in tone and in nature. So I’m, we’re looking forward to 2 (34m 53s): That. Yeah, it’s like this is the last nerdy one for a while and we’ll get into like Battle of the Parks. I mean we’ll get into some cool fun stuff I think. Yep. 1 (34m 60s): Sounds great. 2 (35m 0s): Alright, thank you everybody. It’s been great chatting and hopefully this gives you a little bit more information. 1 (35m 5s): Okay, talk to you soon. Bye-Bye.