Happy New Owners of 3023 in Illinois

[jbeletti]

Hi all,

On Wednesday, November 10, I traveled to Coloma, WI to Danny's Campers to pick up our new 3023. Dan Lange (owner of Danny's) drove to TN to pick up our unit a couple days prior. Trailmanor was working furiously to clear their order books at the end of the year and cranked out our 3023 in 30 days.

Back to the delivery, the travel to and from Coloma from the Chicago area was pretty treacherous (rain and snow). With as bad as it was on the way back (rainy, snowy, slick and cars in the ditch), the Equal-i-zer (600#/6000#) helped me feel a lot more comfortable.

Never once passing or being passed, did I feel any sway or sense of being pushed around. Having no experience with any style of WD hitch, so far, I am very happy with the Equal-i-zer. It's easy to put on and easy to adjust (if needed, depending on load).

Once home, I setup the TM in the driveway, turned on the furnace and had my wife pick up dinner on her way home from work. We had dinner and toasted with a glass of wine, in our new TM in our driveway on delivery day.

Since I'm a bit of a technology nut, I plugged my wireless network camera into an AC outlet near the TM stove and webcast our dinner and visit with friends that came over to check it out. As it turned out, our daughter was online from her college dorm and we were able to chat with her online and were able to see each other live (she had her webcam on). It was pretty cool.

I spent a few hours in the TM over the next few days, getting familiar with everything, taking measurements for future mods etc. I did have a couple issues I'd like to ask this board about:

1. On the second day that I went to use the furnace, it would not turn on. Had plenty of power (was on shore power) and the gas was full and on. I pulled the fuse and it looked good. As I put the fuse back in, the furnace came on. Sort of scary. I am thinking it may be a loose wire at the fuse panel but have not looked further. Anyone ever had this happen?

2. Also regarding the furnace, I think the thermostat is way off. I think it's reading the room temperature from 10 to 20 degrees low. The thermostat will turn the furnace off if I set it low enough to correspond with the temperature it thinks the air is at. Is there a way to fine-tune/calibrate the Suburban thermostat?

3. From full up and on, I was able to take my TM down, jacks up and ready to hitch in 15 minutes. For my first time, I was pretty happy with this. I am sure I can shave another 5 minutes off this. The next day, it took another 15 minutes to put on the WD hitch and get the TM fully hitched and ready to tow. My issue is with one of the 4 corner buckles. The passenger side front buckle is a bit angled, vertically. The buckle face of the others are very vertical (90 degrees to the ground). It seems like the arm on this section may be a bit off in some way. It was not hard to put the TM down, but maybe the mechanism needs a bit of adjustment. I'll take a look in the spring before we take it on it's first trip, but if anyone has a thought on this, I'd love to hear it.

Finally, I ordered this 2004 model with the 2" bike rack receiver hitch. I'll take pictures of this later, but I just wanted to pass on to others that this is a very well done option. It's welded to the frame rails and reinforced at the ends. While it's rated for 150# max, the frame should not have any problem supporting that sort of weight long-term.

Thanks everyone for all the information and encouragement while we were deciding to go with a TM. Maybe see you on the road in 2004!

Jim

[Bill]

2. Also regarding the furnace, I think the thermostat is way off. I think it's reading the room temperature from 10 to 20 degrees low. The thermostat will turn the furnace off if I set it low enough to correspond with the temperature it thinks the air is at. Is there a way to fine-tune/calibrate the Suburban thermostat?

Don't know if this is the same problem or not, but check the thread at
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/yabb...sg6568#msg6568

Bill

Welcome to our club as a new owner. We've found that the furnace takes a bit of time to get used to, but you can get it adjusted to provide the right amount of heat. Also, it will often take awhile to start, perhaps as much as a minute and a half. I don't know what causes that, but it always comes on, and always warms us up quite nicely.

I would echo Texas CAmper's comments about time. It often takes us longer than 15 minutes, though we're quite experienced, and that's because when we have the rear shell locked, we take out the brush and brush off the leaves and other debris that collected on that half, which takes time. Also, to make sure our kids are involved (and keep them from underfoot) we have one go around the trailer checking that all the windows and curtains are closed. then the other will go around the trailer closing all the corner latches and putting pins in them. It might seem silly, but each of them has found a window or curtain open, or a corner latch that my wife or I missed. All in all, 15 minutes is pretty short for any kind of unit. and something we're quite content with.

Now, setting up the unit is a different story....

Regarding the thermostat, my disappointment is that in our TrailManor as well as our current TT, they are "manual" devices. My wife is the early riser, so she would turn on the thermostat if needed. However, since we are retired, my reasoning was, "why should anyone have to get up to turn on the heat... it should be automatic." So, in our present trailer, I installed a Hunter electronic thermostat that is controlled by a clock. We can set it to turn on the heater anytime we want it on and it will turn it off too. It was about a $25-30 expense and one I could add to the system myself (only 2 wires).

You may want to consider this as a mod for your trailer, too.

Happy traveling.