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Monday, January 18, 2016

"Enough to ruin your whole day" video -- fifth wheel hangs up in narrow turn

If you're into nail-biting, gut-wrenching action, with an RV twist, here's a 14-minute video that will make you squirm.

The tale picks up after the fifth-wheel owner either doesn't see, or chooses to ignore the "No RVs Beyond This Point" sign, and now pays some serious consequences. It's enough to make you want to run out and invest in the Mountain Pass Directory.

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Beginners Guide to RVing: Why travel by RV?

Gary Bunzer, the RV Doctor, interviews RVtravel.com editor Chuck Woodbury about the reasons someone would choose to travel with an RV. Woodbury explains the many ways people use their RVs, from weekend camping to traveling with them full time, sometimes pausing along the way to help support their travels. This video was produced for the Seattle RV Show, coming to Seattle's CenturyLink Field Event Center, Feb. 11-14, 2016.

Monday, December 14, 2015

Chevrolet cabover truck becomes marvelous motorhome

In the 1940s, Chevrolet produced "pickup" trucks with a cab-over-engine (COE) design. In the U.S. today, COE designs are pretty much limited to semi-trucks. But there is a COE still running around today that isn't hauling freight. Thanks to the brilliant design work of Russ Moen, a 1954 Chevrolet COE is a tricked out custom motorhome, with a strong resemblance to the Bowlus Road Chief rigs of the 1930s.



The original COE suspension system just didn't have the beef Moen needed, so the structural framing was originally a GMC chassis, stolen out from underneath a 1985 Elite motorhome. For motive power, the original power plant was replaced by a Cummins diesel, "built up" by a custom shop, and linked to a custom manufactured transmission.

And then to the living area. Moen found others who'd help him out with the actual RV construction. A boat repair shop undertook fenders. The rig overlay is 3/16" cut aluminum sheeting.

Yeah, a lot of different stuff went into this wonder wagon. Kinda reminds us of that old Johnny Cash tune, "One Piece at a Time."

"Well, It's a '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56, '57, '58' 59' automobile . . ."

Thursday, December 10, 2015

"See-through" semi truck reduces the hazards of passing

As RVers, half the fun of the lifestyle is the traveling. When we can, many of us eschew the nation's interstates in favor of the less traveled, more scenic, but sadly, narrower stretches of roadway. One of the drawbacks of the backroads – getting stuck behind a slow-moving semi-truck. On a stretch of two-lane blacktop, passing a truck can become a test suited best for those with intestinal fortitude. Can you pull out far enough to see if there's something coming at you without getting clobbered?

In Argentina, where most of the roadways are narrow, single-lane in one direction, it's understandable that 80% of fatality accidents happen when somebody tries to pass – and fails. Enter Samsung, the electronic manufacturing behemoth. Samsung has a large presence in Argentina, and somebody in the company thought safety, and also thought of what the company is famous for – electronics – and put the two together. The result? The Samsung Safety Truck.



In a pilot project in Argentina, Samsung equipped a semi-truck with a forward-facing video camera on the rig's nose, and a huge, four-panel monitor mounted on the back of the trailer. Result – the driver following the rig can "see through" the rig to determine if the roadway is clear for passing. The test rig proved the idea worked, now the company is working with governments to work out protocols for possible roll-out in the real world.