Motorhome Maintenance With Mike (Pt. 1)

What's Beeping?

In the 70's and 80's I was a service and parts director for an RV dealer in Houston and we carried Blue Bird Wanderlodge among other motorhomes. The owner of my company, Sam White, had friends from Rockport TX. who had bought a Bird from us and I had become good friends with them through servicing their coach. Jim and Elsie were in their 60's but very active and full of life. They didn't sit still for long.

I would have reasons to periodically visit the Wanderlodge plant in Ft. Valley Ga. and on one of those occasions Jim and Elsie were there staying in the customer campground in their Bird. Jim saw me outside and hollered for me to come in his coach. I went in and he said for me to sit on the sofa. I did. 

We just sat there till I started to say something and Jim went "SSSSSHHHH, listen." After a bit I hear a beep. He said "Did you hear that?" I replied that, yes I did. He asked me what it was and where was it coming from? I knew that I had heard that beep before but just couldn't place it and I told him that. So we sat there and waited for it to beep again. Jim said that we would have to wait for 5 minutes. We waited and waited and sure enough in 5 minutes there it was again! It wasn't a very long beep so it was not possible to locate the source. I still couldn't place where I had heard it before so we waited again and then again. We had been doing this for probably a half an hour and I was getting antsy and bored. 

Elsie had gone to the back of the coach to start getting dressed for dinner in town and I sat there looking around when I noticed that their kitchen smoke detector was gone off the wall. I asked Jim where it was. He hollered at Elsie and asked her where it was and she said she had taken it down. I said "yea, but where did you put it?" She was real quiet for a couple of minutes then said "in the drawer under the sofa" and started laughing and so did I. 

Jim was like "WHAT?" I pulled the drawer open, retrieved the detector from among blankets and pillows and sat it on the table beside him. After a bit, it went" Beep" and of course it was telling us that it's battery was low!
Jim told me that they had been there at the plant for 5 days getting work done and the tech's had looked for that beep every day.
I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned from this but I'm darned if I know what it is. I just thought it was a funny story.

Mike Martinkus
Motorhomes of Texas