Got back from our latest RV trip. The only real projects completed for this one were the TPMS, going through the bays to get a lot of junk out of there, and the heated seats/new coolant hoses. The temperatures weren't quite cold enough to need heat, so those last two items didn't get used. But there were still some good insights.
One of the more time consuming items in my "preflight" of the bus was always checking tire pressures. The TPMS has cut that out, which is nice. Additionally, having our bays more organized helps all of the setup/take down of the site. Given how much we tend to move around and how we don't spend more than a few days in any given spot (a week at South Padre Island was the longest we've spent anywhere), anything that saves time with setup and getting going helps. Those were noticeable successes. I know
@MIFlyer told us over a year ago to get rid of anything we hadn't used after the first two camping trips, and he was (mostly) right. But, other projects got in the way and we were still learning how to use the RV. Mostly, there were a lot of things the previous owners had that we thought might be useful, and now we understand which ones are, which ones aren't, and which ones would be if needed but aren't worth carrying around because the probability of using them is very low.
One thing with the new heater hoses was that I (for now) have bypassed the auxiliary heater in the bedroom, which is fed by engine coolant. It was immediately noticeable how much cooler the bedroom was after a long drive vs. previous, as that rear heater had no shut-off. When I put the new heater in, it will have an electric solenoid to only let coolant flow when the heater is on. That will help us more in the 3-season months than winter of course, but it's definitely a noticeable improvement.
Before our next trip I plan to do the electric fan conversion, and hopefully also add in the remote mount oil cooler. Put in the new bedroom heater with hoses, probably some other minor maintenance items.
The electric fan conversion I've decided to do a new take on. After finding a really good deal on an electric fan setup for a 2005-2007 Suburban and considering the system as a whole, I decided I would start off by trying this setup out. If it doesn't work for this, it's cheap enough I can apply it to something else instead. But I think that with divorcing the transmission cooler, adding an extra oil cooler (which the engine needs), and also cleaning out/improving the clearly blocked intercooler and radiator, that the airflow needs of a Suburban/Escalade with a 6.0 LS engine that has to cool the engine, AC, oil, transmission, and power steering fluid is probably going to be sufficient overall. And I have some additional tricks to add cooling capacity if need be. But this will be a lot cheaper and simpler to start out with, so I'll give it a shot. Going into the cooler months I'll be able to see how well it seems to work. On this trip, even in 80+ degree OATs, the bus was running almost entirely at or below the 190F thermostat temperature rating. Cat engineers have said that 200F is the design point for the engine to run most efficiently, and the thermostats also don't fully open until something around 205F.
