Just bring your clothes and imagine how much money that could save you!  (In this economy, who doesn’t want to save cash?)

Interior is in good condition except for about two spots that had some water damage. The leaks were repaired and there is no water getting into the coach, but there is a stain on the ceiling around the TV antenna and some slight damage on the passenger side “A” pillar.

This motorhome has been stored outside (in El Cajon, CA) for most of its life but now resides in Arizona and the finish is oxidized. It needs some elbow grease to bring the finish back up to a shine. The chrome is all good, and the decals are mostly intact with some minor peeling. There is minimal rust underneath Aside from the external finish, this coach needs very little work to be considered very good.

Check out the pictures below.

Detailed Specs:

• 1990 Fleetwood Bounder 34C
• Self-contained Class A motorhome
• Date of manufacture: Feb 1990
• 36,550 actual miles since new
• Drives very nice
• Cruises easily at maximum legal speeds, even on moderate upgrades
• Chevrolet 454 engine, runs great
• K&N air filter
• Maintenance records
• 8 cu. ft. gas/elec. refrigerator
• 6 gal. gas/elec water heater with DSI
• 6.5 KW Onan generator
• 2 roof air conditioners
• 2000W inverter
• 2-6v house batteries (need replacement)
• Electric step
• Hydraulic leveling jacks (4 point frame mounted)
• 4 tires on rear axle brand new 12/31/09
• Front tires new Dec 2006 (less than 3,000 miles)
• Leaf spring rear suspension with air bag ride levelers
• Coil spring front suspension with air bag ride levelers
• 15,000 lbs. GVWR
• 19,000 lbs. GCWR
• Class 3 receiver hitch
• Bicycle rack for 2 bikes included (hitch mount)
• 4 tire covers included
• Sleeps up to 6
• Twin beds in rear bedroom
• Couch and dinette make down into beds
• Undercounter coffeemaker
• 4 burner propane cooktop
• 16″ propane oven
• Microwave oven
• 30A shore power hookup

UPDATE: Thanks or everybody’s interest – this RV sold!  If you are interested in selling your RV, click here and post it in our forum.

If you’ve ever hit the asphalt ocean for any period of time you know how hard it is to keep up with the paper mail while you’re gone. Unfortunately you can’t hitch up your mailman and bring your mail along with you. More often than not the first “welcome” you receive after arriving back at home is a big tub of mail from your local post office.

Of course, the problem with this is that inevitably there’s always a few critical, time sensitive pieces of mail that have been molding away while you were gone along with overdue bills! What to do?

Here’s your answer: Earth Class Mail – RV Mail

Earth Class Mail is a service that, in a nutshell, does the following for you:

1. Receives your paper mail at their secure facility
2. Let’s you know via email when you receive your mail
3. Allows you to scan, shred, recycle, or forward your mail

All through an easy to use web browser interface.

As we’ve found, you rarely need actual paper copies of your mail. We were pretty surprised by this. It’s a very freeing experience. If you do need a copy of a certain piece of mail you can have it forwarded to you on a case by case basis.

We found a great review to share with you of one person’s experience with Earth Class Mail

I’ve been using Earth Class Mail since the beginning of August 2007 for all my business mail and some of our personal mail. At first glance this service seems awesome. The premise of having all your mail go to a secure processing facility to be processed for access at anytime and from anywhere is very appealing to anyone who spends anytime working from a remote location or traveling. What’s more, I reasoned, it’s a lot cheaper than using the USPS mail forwarding service…

Full Article here

Right now Earth Class Mail is offering some great coupons
2 months FREE on 2-yr plan – plus $25 Activation Credit (use code: RV-TWOFORTWO)
or
First Month of service FREE plus Waived Activation Fee on 6 Month Membership! (use code: RV-GLOBAL)

Let us know what you think about the service. We think it’s pretty cool and perfect for the avid RV’r as well as anyone who want to keep paper mail from filling up their mailbox.

Cleanliness Space is next to Godliness in your RV

Today I want to share with you my thoughts on our RV shower. In our case… we don’t use it… well, not in the typical sense. Some RV’ers do use their showers and some do not. We happen to be of the mind that if the place we are staying has hot water we don’t have to pay to heat up… by all means why not!! Plus there are 5 of us in this 24 ft space.. and trying to shower is beyond comprehension in here to me. It would definitely be worthy of America’s Funniest Home Videos to say the least.

When we moved into our RV, we looked at the shower, and realizing the potential of that unused space I decided to turn it into storage! You could easily go cheap, and use blocks and boards, or even a couple of empty crates turned on the side… Or you could splurge and go buy some shelving that would fit the dimensions you need.

We went half and half. We had one of those silver fake metal shelving units that go behind your toilet (in a stick house of course) with the two shelves for towels or whatever. It fits perfectly in our shower space. We have about 12 inches left on each side. Then in the middle on the floor of the enclosure, I put a big block. On top of that block I then carefully balanced my storage bins. These are regular white plastic storage bins that stack on top of each other. You can find them at your local Target or even Walmart.

They fit just right under the towel shelves. I used the block to raise them up enough so the lip of the bottom shelf was even with the shower enclosure otherwise it would block the bottom bin.  I then used one of those travel bags you can get at Walgreens, to store our hair stuff and combs and brushes and such… Its the kind you would normally hang on the back of the door, but we have it hanging on the shower rod. 

 
I also have a pretty Dallas Cowboy Blue cloth shower curtain hanging there. When we have company coming.. I can close the curtain and it makes it look all matchy with our bedspread and curtains, like we planned it to be color cordinated…(we did of course..)
  

Now I use the two top shelves for our towels.. and then we use the bins for extra clothing. My hubby had no room to put his socks or shorts into and these bins worked perfect for that! You could use them for just about anything though.

My kids tease and say we are so redneck (I think frugal is a better suited word)… but you could do so many different things with this sort of project. I like to have colors I find pleasing… but it has to be cost effective and functional (which is as inexpensive as we can get without settling for bad quality)! So now that I’ve shared my shower with you, tell me… what are you doing with your shower? =)

Picture Hanging at 60 MPH
Unlike our art work at home, a simple nail in the wall won’t do the trick as our walls in the RV are hurtling down the highway at 60mph with all the resulting bumps and swaying.  A simple trick that I’ve used successfully for many years is to secure the lower corners of the picture frames to the wall with “Museum” or “Earthquake” putty available online and at most home improvement stores. A small nail to hang the picture and support most of its weight is pushed into the luan wall.  A nail or brad 1/2″ or 3/4″ is more than enough as the putty will also adhere the frame to the wall. The broader the head the better to keep a good grip on the frame hanger.  Needless to say, these applications are for reasonably small picture frames, which scale wise are appropriate for our RVs.

Putty your pictures on the Wall
The putty comes in “sheets” and you simply pull off what you need.  It has the consistency of warm taffy, so it is easy to work with.  

 
Roll a small ball of the putty and place on the lower corners of the back of the frame.

 
Hand the picture on the nail and light press the lower portion of the frame into the wall.

If you step back to admire your work and find that the picture is crooked, simply pull the lower part of the frame away from the wall, and reposition it.

Very Putty Pictures!
The simple addition of family pictures or artwork from your travels is a rich addition to making your home on wheels truly “yours” and unique.  If you decide to remove the pictures for resale, Museum putty is non staining and a small bit of filler will restore your wall to its original condition.

   Now you’re probably saying: “Well that’s all well and good, but I don’t have a central vacuum system!”  Well, neither did I, so I went low tech (read cheap) and built one.  I started looking around at garage sales and scored an Oreck Portable vacuum for $5.  Basically, any brand of portable vacuum will do, so long as it has a hose attachment.

Installing the Central Vac
Knowing that there is a lot of wasted space behind drawers in most RV kitchens, I pulled a large drawer out below my oven and found a void that was about 10″ deep.  The hardest part of this project was finding power for the vacuum and this was accomplished by tapping into a 120v line that was running nearby. (Note:  If you are uncomfortable with working with electricity contact a licensed electrician to put in an outlet.  But there goes the “cheap” part of the project!)  There may be an outlet in your basement that your converter plugs into that could be used.  After wiring in an outlet, it was just a matter of cutting out a place in the baseboard for the Vac Pan assembly, securing the vacuum and connecting the two.  To wire the vacuum to the VacPan, I simply removed the on/off switch on the vacuum and connected a set of wires to the VacPan.  I used heat shrink on these connections.  I used zip ties to secure the vacuum in place.
 

Pros & Cons
The only downside to this arrangement is changing bags.  We’ve been using the system for over a year now, and haven’t needed to empty it yet, but since we are not fulltimers yet, we can’t judge how often it will be necessary.  The plus side is that it does not take up precious basement storage like conventional central vac systems.  And since it is so easy to use, you will find yourself using it more often than dragging out the broom/dustpan combination.  The kids like it so much, you may have to limit how often they sweep the floor!

The manual and parts list covers these 1984 Models:

• Pioneer Series
  • Redwood
  • Columbia
  • Newport
  • Cape Cod
  • Jamestown Limited
• Americana Series
  • Colonial
  • Sun Valley
  • Royale
  • Shenadoah
  • Sequoia
  • Williamsburg

Download the Owners Manual: Click Here

Download the Parts list: Click Here

On the mechanical items I need I will prolly shop at Auto Zone and Auto Parts Warehouse.

I determined that this Recreational Vehicle could use these inside updates:

• New flooring ( the carpet was nasty – and for camping, I would rather have something easy to clean than high pile carpet)
• Minor cosmetic fixes to cabinet corner bead
• New laminate edge strips for the dinning table and other surface edges around the coach
• A thorough detail cleaning
• A serious cushion shampooing

Outside:

• There were minor cracks in portions of the outside walls. This can be repaired with JB Weld
• The access doors to the outside storage compartments could use replacing
• The awning mounts needed re-enforcing
• A complete re-caulking of seems is also in order

I will be shopping at Walmart, Camping World and Al’s RV for all of my RV replacement parts and materials.

I know what you are thinking at this point. How much did you pay for this?? Well, I picked up this motorhome for about $3,000. I figure I will put about $400 into it for the updates I listed above. All in all, my family is really going to enjoy this.

I am in the process of writing a series of step by step articles (with pictures!) about my restoration process. The first article will be about painting the popup. If you would like to be notified about that series, please click here.

Here is the photo album for you to enjoy. If you have any questions or comments, post them here!