Service Parking?

Hey Folks,

Has anyone ever found a place around Las Vegas in their travels that would allow a RV owner to work on their rig?
I need to replace my water pump and while at it, do the whole radiator removal, cleaning etc but I am not sure that any campground would allow that level of disassembly on their premises. Having this work performed at a shop is just way too cost prohibitive for me and since I can certainly do the labor myself, I would prefer to save the thousands involved.

Bernie

You may need to just find a good place to boon dock for a day or two. 

a vacant business or a factory...they're everywhere.  You could go out on BLM land and do it, you have to move every 14 days.

You might check out Craigslist moving and storage or post in the wanted section for a place to park.


While camped on BLM land Ive installed a bank of solar panels, fabricated and re rigged an atv trailer, scraped out and cut up a dirt bike for parts.  Just keep everything picked  up and neat. Put a blue tarp on the ground and a bunch of old cardboard or oil dry so nothing gets on the ground.  I'd get a feel for the place first but with what you see going on at some of these places you should be fine.

For that sort of thing, look for the crummiest campground you can find, one with old beat up rigs and junk laying around.

For the past 8 years, myself and often with help of a friend have done tons of work on my rig in nicer campgrounds.

We do it in small batches. We keep things neat and tidy and often hide things under table cloths or tarps but only briefly, keep the work moving and put away as much as possible when done for the day. We've used the picnic table to hide things under too.

If anyone asks "it's an emergency" but typically we don't tell anyone what we are up to and pick RV sites that aren't on front and center display to the office.

We have even painted bits of the rig on the outside, small batches at a time. When we took down the cabinet faces to paint outside, we only did a few at a time. We used a portable pop-up shower to hide most of our work in progress. Matter of fact it made a great spray painting booth!

Portable pop up shower:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=as_li_ss_tl?url=search-alias=sporting&field-keywords=pop+up+shower

While we mostly use hand tools, if you are going to use a noisy tool, do it in the middle of the day not at sun up and not at happy hour.

It's the folks that disassemble their entire RV leaving a huge mess scattered around for weeks that cause the problems. So do your work in small batches and keep tidying things up. Sure it's extra work when a 3 day job is consumed with being vigilante on tidiness, but it seems to lessen the chance of complaints.

A few times I needed a tall ladder and even asked to borrow the park's maintenance ladder "for an emergency" and no one had a problem with that.

Last winter, I watched with interest as my neighbors refitted their entire RV on the inside. Since they were allowed one tent, they bought a huge one to hide their work in progress. They were very careful to keep things neat, tidy and hidden away for the most part.

If it were me I would head out to Boulder Beach campground on Lake Mead. Plenty of spots where no one would see you or question you. Like Miss Mermaid says, it's an emergency.