Temp Fix

We keep our Wildcat at a storage facility a few miles from our house. During the winter months I drive out once a week to check and make sure everything is OK. Today, as I was pulling up to the trailer I could see a little access door laying on the ground next to our Wildcat.

I was hoping the door was from our neighbors trailer but no, it was the little door on the Wildcat for accessing the shower plumbing. NUTS!!! With the cold weather and the hustle and bustle of the season, this repair will have to wait until after the New Year. Since we empty the trailer when we store it for the winter, I had to drive back home to get a ladder and some duct tape to seal the opening.

This temporary repair will have to be good enough until I can find the time to get it fixed. One more thing for me to keep an eye on when I take my weekly trip to the trailer.

That's a new one. Any idea why it came off?

John

What happened was the door warped outward in the middle which pulled the locking latch away from the frame allowing the door to open. For some reason, in extremely cold temps that little door warps. Once the door opened, with the very strong winds we had in the area last week the plastic door hinge snapped.

Richard,

When you have the door off again in the spring I'd recommend packing some insulation around the exposed piping. That plastic door will do nothing to stop the cold from freezing those lines and cracking the plastic H & C shower valves.

Even if you don't do cold weather camping, you never know when you might be out in the late fall and hit a spell of freezing weather.

That's an excellent idea Schrowang. I've put that on my things to do list so I don't forget.

Mike,
You keep telling us to stuff some insulation in the shower access door, but we haven't done it yet.
Scruffy says he is going to do that before we go out again in a few weeks. Probably sometime this weekend. We've been lucky so far.
Thanks for all your great winterizing suggestions.

Tater

You might want to go easy with that duct tape and remove some of it now before it becomes too difficult to remove cleanly (especially over the Wildcat decal).

Scruffy and Tater wrote:Mike,
You keep telling us to stuff some insulation in the shower access door, but we haven't done it yet.
Scruffy says he is going to do that before we go out again in a few weeks. Probably sometime this weekend. We've been lucky so far.
Thanks for all your great winterizing suggestions.

Tater

Tater,

I think that the two most important insulation fixes that we can do on our Wildcats are the area behind the shower door and the "Ts" for the hot and cold low drains. The "Ts" are just above the belly liner on my 29RLBS and were very poorly insulated. I found this out when the hot "T" froze one night. Took me awhile to track it down, but finally did. I sure packed that pupply full of insulation. Never had a problem after that.

Kim wrote:You might want to go easy with that duct tape and remove some of it now before it becomes too difficult to remove cleanly (especially over the Wildcat decal).

I agree, we had some friends who lost a window one weekend while camping. They used cardboard and duct tape as a temp fix. They never got all of the duct tape residue off of that Grand Junction.

Scruffy insulated the shower access compartment yesterday. Still has a couple more places he wants to insulate with foam.

WD40 does a good job of removing sticky stuff - it might be bad for the decals though.

Tater