Three More Days

There are only three more days until I no longer have a job. I'm still pretty excited about it.

The motorhome project continues on, at a snail's pace. There's only a handful of things left to do before I fill it back up with fluids and give it a go. Pretty important things that I don't want to mess up. Later this week I will have plenty of time to work on it.

Today, I only have my normal one day off. Around noon I'm headed over to my sister's house to put new brakes on her vehicle. I don't think that should take me too long.

The closer I get to leaving my current job, the more my thinking starts to be focused on self-employment and where I'm going from here. I finally feel like it's all lining up again and this will all happen, and more importantly that I'm really excited about it. For the longest time I wasn't excited about it anymore, which is why I just got 'normal' jobs and didn't try to force anything. I've got good ideas for the new projects I'll be working on and just out of the blue, my old projects that are between 7 and 10 years old have started taking off again within the last week. Right after I put in my notice. Almost as if the universe is trying to tell me something, no?

You have five dollars, Quit Your Job!

 

 

This five dollar bill came through work today. A customer paid with it. I wonder what the person that did it meant. I like to think that they meant that hey, you've got five dollars. That's enough for an adventure. So quit your job and go experience life.

 



Ironically, I did quit my job this week. At least, I put in my two and a half week notice. As previously mentioned I have no concrete plans. I'm still a little nervous about it, but not really. The way things have gone since I put in my notice have really shown me that I made the right decision.

Number one priority after my last day at work is to finish cleaning up my life. Clean out the rest of my storage unit, get rid of junk vehicles, my old travel trailer. Everything must go, pretty much. After that the motorhome should be ready to roll and I will have a clear calendar and clear mind to pursue not only adventures, but I'm definitely ready to make self-employment a reality again. Just like it used to be. The clear mind and space issue is huge for me on that front. I will be able to focus on becoming financially independent again, with no distractions.

Unrelated note, the new engine is in the motorhome. The transmission is back in place also. I have a lot of things left to do before I can start it up, but things are looking very good. Maybe with a tad bit of luck, I'll be able to start it up on Monday? Still in no hurry, as I want to make sure I did everything right.

A delay and possible changes

The new engine was supposed to go in between Sunday and Monday, but it did not. It should be closer to being ready to go in, but it's not. I ended up having to buy a few more parts, one of which (vibration damper) I had to get from the internet and won't be here until tomorrow. Without that part installed I can't put the new engine in anyway. I could, but it'd be way harder to put on with the engine installed.

I only have this next Monday off but with any luck I'll be able to get the new engine put together (oil pump, pan, timing cover, vibration damper, etc) and into the motorhome. I don't plan on getting everything hooked back up but as long as I get the main engine block installed I'd be really happy. Bonus points for getting the transmission back in place too. Everything else after that can be done with a little time here and there.

I want to take my time and make sure I'm doing it all properly too. I'm really anxious about trying to start it up for the first time and the break in period to follow.


Possible changes on the work front. After two and a half years, and from starting as delivery driver to now being assistant manager. I fully intended to stick it out through the end of September. That was my great new plan as of a few months ago. However, things continue to go down hill, and the speed in which it's happening is increasing. The way it's looking right now, I might just be putting in my two week notice next week. I have nothing planned. No back up. All I have is my vacation pay that would be paid to me, and my 401k that I would cash out.

From there, who knows. Hopefully the motorhome would be in tip top shape. Might shift all of my focus for a while on making YouTube videos, and blogging here, and a few other travelish related business ideas. I know of one place, one job, where I'd probably always be welcomed back if I really had to.

Engine and Turtle

I'm pretty sure this is only the second turtle I've ever seen here at this house where I grew up. I went outside after the rain cleared up and saw something down at the end of the driveway but brushed it off for about 10 minutes until I noticed it was on the edge of the road. I went to investigate. By the time I got there he was in the middle of a lane and a car was coming. Impulsively, and perhaps foolishly, I quickly went out to grab him out of the way. (The car was really close at this point) Very pretty Eastern Box Turtle. I took a few pictures and then brought him to the other side of the road.

As mentioned, it rained. I didn't expect to get any work done on the motorhome once the rain came but it cleared up and I went to work.

 

 

The above picture is actually from yesterday, after I got the transmission disconnected and out of the way, but before I stripped down the engine. In my mind, the transmission was going to be the hardest part of this project because it was the only thing that hadn't been disconnected within the last year.

 

 

 

 

This was today's project. This is after I had to resupport the engine from inside to remove the jack from the underside so that I could take the front tire off and jack up the passenger side in order to get the legs of the cherry picker where they needed to be. Also after I removed the door.

 

 

Typically these engines would come out the front, and that is their intended way. However, that requires dismantling the entire front of the motorhome and that sounds like a ton of work. I had done enough research online to know that it was possible to take it out the passenger side door.

 

 

This involved a lot of going an inch here and an inch there. Overall it would have been easier had I removed the fan before I started, but I didn't. My dad was right again. My boss stopped by right about at the same time that the above picture was taken. I texted him 15-20 minutes after he left with the below picture of the engine outside of the vehicle. He told me he had to admit that he was skeptical it was going to work. Hahaha.

 

 

 

 

There she hangs! Completely outside of the cab and ready to be lowered. I still need to strip the essentials off to put on the new engine. I need to figure out what all I'm going to replace while I've got the extra space and easy access to things. Back to work tomorrow so it won't be until late next weekend when engine stuff resumes. 





Yes, New Engine.

There's the new engine! Fresh in its shipping container and sitting in the back of my van. Unfortunately it looks like I'll probably be driving around with this thing in the back for a couple days.

In the end the company I bought it through "wasn't allowed" to ship engines to my work. Some sort of agreements dealing with competition and whatnot. So I changed the ship-to address to my house, but in the end it worked out and I just picked it up from the freight companies hub. Which, by all means of luck, just happened to be a couple miles down the road from my work anyway. It couldn't have worked out better.

The new work schedule was out yesterday and for some reason I now have Sunday and Monday off, when I was only planning on having Monday off originally. I might get to start tearing into this project this weekend. Hopefully all will go relatively easily, but I'm getting a little anxious about the upcoming challenge.

New Engine?

I've never quite been satisfied with the way the motorhome runs. Don't get me wrong, it fires right up, every time, the first time. But I don't like the way it smokes, or the way it idles until it's fully warmed up, or the way it smells. I realize it's a beast from the late 70's with less strict emissions controls, but still.

So, now I'm leaning heavily towards, and almost ready to take the plunge, ordering a new engine. It's not complete, I will have to take a number of things off of my old one. However, the main guts that I should have had rebuilt last year while I had the heads off will all be redone. I can only hope that after such a purchase I would have a smooth running machine once it's all tuned up.

I look at other motorhomes and whatnot. To be able to get anything that I would feel confident in I'd be spending $5000+. So for less than $2000, and me doing all the labor, I should be able to have a pretty nice running motorhome with a ton of new parts that's pretty easy to work on. Plus I've already customized the inside a lot, I've already added my solar panels, and a ton of other stuff. It's impossible to know what you're getting in a used motorhome too. The engines are put through tremendous stress. Run hard, and then parked for years, and then run hard again.

I feel like throwing a couple thousand at it and a handful of hours will be well worth it at this point. Aside from the looming anxiety of finally making the leap to motorhome life, my main hesitation to doing so is the engine. And the smoke and the smell. I don't want to drive around leaving a cloud of smoke and exhaust stink. Even if a part of me feels like it adds a million points to ramblin' man status. The worse it runs, the more cool you are, right?

My main concern now is where to have it shipped to. I can probably have it shipped to work, which is by far the easiest option. I feel like they'd be a little annoyed by having a competitors engine shipped there. Even though it's the same brand we sell, but I can get a way better price through someone else. It is what it is. I'll probably push for an answer tomorrow on whether or not I can have it shipped to work. If I get the okay, I might even put the order through tomorrow too.

Loving Decluttering

As it turns out, I'm really starting to enjoy decluttering my life. So much, in fact, that my mind starts to wander to business opportunities related to it. Haha. I doubt I'll be cleaning out other people's clutter any time soon though. I have other ideas I'd rather persue first, once I get all of this clutter out of my life and mind.

I find it so, so liberating to open a box in storage, and see that it's all papers that were once considered oh-so-important. When I see that, I can quickly leaf through them and throw the entire box away. These are papers from a very stressful time of my life. Bills and responsibilites through the roof. Throw them in the back of the van and later release them to the dump. Good-bye stress and 'important' responsibilities.

The goal for getting that thing cleared out by the end of July is starting to seem incredibly doable. For some reason I just realized 'end of July' really means July 25th. After that date I'd have to pay for another full month anyway.

I'm beginning to be very thankful that my storage company keeps raising my rates. As of the first of the year they started forcing me to pay a $9/month insurance fee. Which brought my bill up to $97/month. If that wasn't enough, in March they raised my rate $5 to a nice $102/month. I realize this is actually pretty cheap compared to a lot of areas across the country. However, to finally hit that $100 mark really got my brain thinking and realizing how ridiculous it is to keep paying that, and keeping JUNK that I never even look at. When I first started renting my unit I was paying $83/month. Even that is insane if you think logically, but it was reasonable in my mind at the time.

Just looking through it all, I'm shocked I've only been paying $102 since March. It seems like I've been paying that much for longer. It makes me feel even better about myself that I got motivated fairly quickly and said enough is enough.

I just paid my unit up through June 25th. I'm curious to see if that will be the last time I pay that bill, or if I'll have to break down and pay for one more month.