Mods

Modifications to our R-Pod

Most modifications are for convenience, but some are necessary or nearly so. These are what we did before leaving on our first trip.

CPAP machine

I have Sleep Apnea and a CPAP(Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine was prescribed for me. Basically, I breath air at higher pressure through my nose while I sleep. The machine I use while traveling is about half the size of a shoe box and runs on either 110V AC or 12V DC. The R-Pod has a 110V AC outlet by the bed but there was no 12V DC outlet in the trailer, despite all the lights, the vent fan, furnace, refrigerator, radio, etc. all being 12V DC. So, I needed two things, a place to put the machine and a 12V DC outlet, near the bed. I put a small shelf on the sidewall where it wouldn't be in the way while sleeping. Ideally the 12V DC outlet would be on or near the shelf, but I wanted to conceal the wiring and would have needed to get into the space under the bed. I didn't have time to do that, so I put the outlet on the cabinetry under the refrigerator. The wire runs from an unused circuit on the electrical panel through the cabinetry( cupboards and drawers ) to the mounting location. It required drilling a number of holes through partitions. I might have routed the new wire along the existing wiring in the back of the cabinets, but I couldn't see a way to do it at the time.

Towing requirements

Towing safely is a requirement so we had the dealer provide us with an equalizing hitch(referred to as a Weight Distributing Hitch or WDH) and an electric brake controller. Our tow vehicle(TV) is about 4500 lbs with a little over 6000 lb GVWR. It's rated to tow 5000 lbs. The R-Pod is almost 2500 lbs(empty) with a 900 lb additional weight capacity. It's not as if we only wanted to tow the trailer a couple hundred miles at a time. We were planning to visit Alaska! And, I didn't want to experience the kind of problem that towing a heavy trailer behind a relatively light vehicle might impose. So we got a WDH.
Trailer brakes are important too. The dealer suggested that Michigan doesn't require brakes on trailers under 3000 lbs. I told him I had experience towing over hills/mountains and I wanted to have brakes. The trailer has brakes on the axle, and the GVWR for the trailer is over 3000 lbs, so I don't know why we had that discussion. The brake controller installation wasn't without issues that have more to do with the TV than the trailer, so I'll talk about that elsewhere.

The WDH is an Equal-i-zer; I believe it is the 400/4000 lb model. It requires installation paying attention to the trailer and TV. It was noisy, but lubrication on the friction surfaces improved that. They sell a special lubricant for the purpose, but I used automotive grease. The sockets were overly tight as delivered but much better after I understood they are supposed to be only 45 ft-lbs. I raised the equalizing bars and it seemed to be better. I still want to raise the hitch ball to see if that improves it more, but the bolts are supposed to be tightened much more than the capacity of my torque wrench, so I haven't yet done it.

The brake controller is a Tekonsha Voyager 9030. It has a manual actuator switch, but using it proved to create problems with the TV, so I didn't use it at all after the second day of our 6 week trip. I made several 'adjustments' to it for a while, but it seemed to work very well. It actually locked up the trailer brakes on two occasions when I tried to brake very hard. One was on encountering a deer on the road!

Second Propane tank

The trailer comes with one tank. It seems to me that having the furnace shut off in the middle of the night and having to manually switch the propane from one bottle to the other isn't so bad. Running out and being without for a day or so isn't acceptable. Two are really required and the dealer set it up to use a second bottle that I already had. We did empty one bottle during the trip, which surprised me because I didn't think we were using that much.

Two more initial purchases

We bought two more items before leaving the dealer, a screen for the two vents from the furnace, and a tube to assist filling the water tank. The screen keeps bugs and critters out of the vents. Recalling the mess from having mice in the furnace of our motor home made the screen an easy sale. And knowing that filling the fresh water tank with clean water is important, the tube that attaches to the hose and is inserted into the tank was needed too.