Our Barth made her maiden journey home last week. It wasn't without a few mishaps.

I spent 4 months in Lake Havasu moving my parents into their new home. I found our Barth during my stay. I spent most of March working on her and all seemed well. My wife flew into Mesa Gateway Airport on April 19th and I picked her up with the Barth towing my 1988 Kawi KZ1000 police bike. The Barth made that trip without a problem. We went up to McDowell Mountain State park to stay until my brother's wedding on the 23rd. Great campground there. Clean restrooms, showers worked good. Had 30 amp electric and water at the sites.

Wedding was great and we took my parents back to Havasu on the 24th. The Barth rolled the 173 miles back without a hiccup. My parents house has a full hookup so we'll be visiting there often I'm sure. We planned on leaving on Monday the 26th. The only thing I hadn't checked was the fuel filter so I got that done and off we went on Monday afternoon. We didn't get 30 miles away when the motorhome started bogging down. I stopped to check to see if I put the filter in backwards....nope. We limped our baby back to Havasu and found a shop to check it out.

We went to Chuck's Carb Shop in LHC. This guy knows his stuff. He pulled the q-jet off and r&r-ed it in 3 hours for $375. He said it was nothing short of devine intervention we made the round trip to Scottsdale and back. The float levels were way off and the secondary pickup tubes had dropped out. No matter, we were up and running for Tuesday.

We left again and planned a stop in Kingman, AZ. We stayed overnite at Fort Beale RV Park, nice, clean park. We were up early and on the road when the engine temp started rising. I replaced the t-stat and fan clutch so what next, water pump, radiator? We found Holden's Auto and Truck Repair. They said they couldn't get us in until the next day. An hour later Greg (owner) says pull it around to the rear bay. He said the fact the motorhome only gets hot at highway speed points to a plugged radiator. He was correct. The Rad shop said the radiator was 80% plugged and couldn't be rodded out, re-core was the only option. We waited for 2 days for the cores to come in. Holden's let us plug in behind the shop and we jacked internet from the RV park across the street. I rolled the Kawi off the trailer and my wife and I cruised Kingman for a few days. On Friday at 5pm we were back together and $950 poorer but rolling again. It would have been done a day sooner but there was a big dust storm and UPS lost our cores.

We stopped off in Flagstaff since it started snowing. We hit Black Barts RV Park, not so great. The pull-thrus needed grading. We didn't care since we just pulled in and slept and left early. At 6am the temp was 25F. The Barth ran so cool we almost needed a winter front. Trans temps stayed at 190F on the flats, 210F on those 4% grades. I'm happy.

We rolled until we hit Dalhart, TX and stopped at the Corral RV Park. This place is well kept with pull-thrus and nice full hookups. Took it easy this morning since I knew we wouldn't make home in time for my wife to work on Monday. The Regal25 is running sweet, cool and getting about 7.5 mpg.

We rolled through Kansas City and an hour north I pulled into a rest area for some winks. This was our last overnite stop for the trip. We rolled Monday through IA into IL and got into Sycamore about 6pm.

The Barth used 2 qts of oil. Average mpg was 7.8, lowest was 6.2 in Flagstaff, high was 9.3 going through IA with a 30 mph tailwind. Gotta love them tailwinds.

Oh yeah, Chuck at the carb shop chewed me out for over-tightening the fuel filter cap on the carb. Said I almost split the case and also crushed the plastic washer that I didn't remove when replacing the filter. He also didn't like the filter I used with the check valve so he replaced it. Shadetree mechanics...what can you do with em?

Here are a few pix from the road.

Great report and super pictures. I sure hope that someday I get to camp in the desert south west.

Thanks. I like to see other barths on the road.

quote:

Originally posted by dustyjeeper:
Thanks. I like to see other barths on the road.

Thanks for the images, we love looking at members enjoying their coach.

Enjoyed the pics and story, thanks! Nice looking Barth.