Oh wow. I guess I wasn't as up to date on this as I thought I was. Time flies with the haunted house, taking it down, then the Christmas parade, then Christmas vacation and getting caught up from the craziness of the last few months, those months have flown by. Time to get caught up!
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The days leading up to the opening of the haunted house, I requested and gotten some special vacation days in regards to doing volunteer work for the haunted house. Because we tend to work late on it (say finishing around 11pm or later wasn't uncommon) and I wanted to get early starts, I used the trailer to camp on site for 3 of the 4 nights leading up to the 31st, including the opening on Saturday the 28th.
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I actually used my hot water and water tank to be able to take showers right there on site. The Webasto was used every night, no lie. So nice after passing many hours working in a cold and damp environment, to crawl into a nice warm, dry bed. The added benefit was that I could dry off my clothes and even my towel that I used from showering. In those conditions, it never would of dried otherwise. It got down to +1*C on the night of the 27th, and I was warm and comfortable, even sleeping with the windows open just a crack
One night however, we had some very high winds. We were very happy to have a solid, professionally installed tent to keep our haunted house safe, cause similar storms in the previous years, we'll say it tended to not fair to well, and we spend a lot of time trying to weatherproof our scenes being outside, exposed to whatever mother nature decides to throw at us; rain, snow, winds, and in any combination. Those winds were interesting because they would literally suck the heat out of the tent, even with all the windows closed. I'll have to see if closing all the flaps would help, or look into a cover similar to the Tepui WeatherHood, if not that one. I did put my covers over the heat exhaust which helped almost too much, cause would find it too hot. I could of turned down the heat, but was too stubborn and wanted to really see the capacity of the heater and the tent. Historical data lists that night wind speeds averaging around 35km/h for the entire night, and had peaked at 44km/h at 2am.
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Once the haunted house was a success with over 2500 people coming by. Once that was done, the trailer came home and I had parked it in the backyard with the intention of trying out the tent and the heater in colder weather. Sadly, it just never worked out. Come the weekend it ironically went up above 0, or we were too busy and had some activities that conflicted with those plans. I also had to get the yard cleaned up before winter hit, and before it got either too cold to work outside, or covered everything in ice and snow.
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And I lucked out, only a few days after I got the back yard sorted out (working by heat of a fire) and purchasing a snow blower, we got DUMPED by snow, which I found to be very abnormal for end of November, even for Québec, but have only lived here for several years. I used my newly acquired snow blower to make me a path and had to pack up the trailer and get it out of the back yard. The plan was to bring it to the mother-in-laws as I did last year, so I moved it to the road until I could get time to head that way, which is about just under an hour away.
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Free time? What's that? With no time for a break, it was time to get started on the Christmas parade float for the haunted house. The Xterra now only towing the trailer, but also with the large help (of them finally listening to me) and using almost all LED lights, was in charge of powering all the lights as well. We did have a generator as a backup, but the point was to eliminate the sound of a generator so that our music wouldn't get drowned out. The Xterra did a wonderful job, but needed a little help with a tie wrap around the stop for the throttle body to get my idle up just enough for the alternator to keep up. I love traditional throttle bodies! Part of the design of the float, I decided to jump ahead on my plans for the truck and order in a single-row light bar for the rear. I had to add some supports on my roof basket for a place to mount it. Although I'd say a good excuse to get more lights on the truck, this bar would light up the large 9ft Pierrot face that would be on the front of the float.
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And the float itself, with the truck decorated, and 100% Xterra-powered
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I'm not going to lie to say that me and my girlfriend did way more work on the float when we should of. I'm even the one who made the structure and started the form for the large face while 3 of them we're standing around trying to figure out what to do. I have no clue, I've never made a 9ft tall face out of wood and chicken wire, and never worked with chicken wire before either. These are perfect projects to learn on anyway... What was funny, is what I'm told by the person who was the "Sandman" leading our float, that people would recognise it just because they saw the yellow Xterra coming up. I really can't have anything other then a yellow Xterra from here on in it seems.
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With the craziness of 2017, the truck has been lacking in the TLC department. With the process of looking for a house, buying a house, the pre-move renovations, the move, the post-move renovations (which aren't done yet, but say 80% there), going down to Ontario on vacation and to get some of my stuff from my parents place, the haunted house constructions and take down, the Christmas parade float, those 10 months we're pretty insane. I was too busy and I needed the truck too much to be able to properly maintain her. I was looking around for a few months cause I saw this problem and with no end in sight, so I started looking for a cheap commuter, but something fun too. Long term, because it's cheaper and I really like my truck, I want to stick with the gen1 Xterra and in a few years or when I deem necessary, get a rust-free one and transfer my parts over in a few years, but the big issue coming up is my girlfriend's 2008 Avenger. While not a horrible car, always reinforces why I hate Chrysler products, and is sad on why a car that's almost 10 years old is on the verge of being sent to the scrappers. It's in her best interest that I try to salvage her car. While it's still reliable after doing a lot of work on it about 2 years ago, rust has spread pretty bad in the last few winters. The rockers are bad, the drivers side is pretty bad, as well as the rear fenders. While I'm no pro on body work, I know with time, I could do a good job to repair it, but it's a long job, and I would need to take her car off the road for a few weeks to cut, patch and paint her car. With this, I'll introduce the newest addition to the fleet, my 2011 Mazda2 GS Yozora Edition fully loaded and 75'000kms young. It's a manual 5-speed, and the girlfriend is doing quite well in learning stick. I just can't do auto, especially in suck a small, low powered car as that. I wouldn't call it underpowered, and it is very fun to drive, but I think my Xterra is ironically faster. The nice thing is that she pays for herself in my fuel savings using it as a daily driver instead of the truck. I'm looking forward to spring to get some stuff done on the Xterra. My garage isn't heated or insulated, and hitting regularly -20*C, it's a tad cold out.
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Funny enough, I need to learn that the Mazda2 isn't as tall as the truck, and is quite light that gives it issues with traction in deep snow, so I had to even winch my own car, with my own truck, in my own driveway. It makes me laugh.
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But we have been getting a lot of snow, but nothing the Xterra can't handle. I love it, just pop her in 4x4 and drive through anything.
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And well the trailer, she never made it to the mother-in-laws. I tucked her in my garage before leaving for Christmas and has been there since. I haven't had time to worry, and the way the time goes by, looks like spring will come fast anyway, and I do plan to take her out in March, or maybe February, to try to get some more cold temperature Webasto tests; the tests that I wanted to do back in fall.
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Since Christmas is done and over, I've been taking advantage of having free time (Yay!) to getting back to being social and hanging out with friends and family, while slowly getting back into finishing those renovations started in the summer. I've also been working on my Webasto installation video. Video I took during the install back in August...I'll have a part 2 of the functionality of the heater to follow, but before I do, I want to put out a french version of that video for my Quebec overlanding friends. I will admit, I have a hard time listing to myself recorded, and that part requires me to sit down and redub my video. Another reason why there's limited pictures of the Webasto installation. I want to think that in video format, it might be easier to explain and follow. Part of it as well was when I was looking for details about the function and installation of a Webasto, they were limited and didn't go into the detail that I wanted. Hopefully this helps out many people, and any feedback on the video, positive or negative, is greatly encouraged
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnKtN_rrkkU
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