6 Easy RV Mods

If you bought a new RV or have an RV sitting in the driveway that is stock from the dealer, there are 6 easy mods for your RV to make travel more enjoyable. I place these mods in three categories:

• Comfort
• Convenience
• Preventive

All are relatively simple to add to your RV and costs start under $10 and go higher for the quality comfort items. Let’s start with number 1 on the list.

RV Mod #1 – Replace the brick hard RV mattress

This is definitely a comfort item. With 8 years of heavy RV travel, Joan and I fought that factory installed mattress for years. We tried all the budget items with pillow toppers, then a gel topper, moving on to the adding layers of foam trying to improve our sleep experience. I suspect that most readers of this blog will agree – nothing worked. We just could not make that hard, uncomfortable mattress better and we wasted money in our attempts.

The fix ended up being easy. We purchased a Brooklyn Bedding RV mattress from rvmattress.com. There were four styles to choose from and we selected the Brooklyn Signature Hybrid. The improvement in sleep was felt immediately. Ordering from the site is simple. We picked the style, size and firmness, and a few weeks later it was shipped free to our door. Installation took minutes and we were able to sleep on our new Brooklyn Bedding mattress that night. Our only regret – we wish we would have replaced our mattress as soon as we purchased our RV.

If you are considering a new RV mattress, visit rvmattress.com and use code “ilovervlife” at checkout to save 20% on your purchase.

RV Mod #2 – Adding an RV screen door cross bar

This is a convenience item. Adding the screen door cross bar provides a sturdy feel to your door making it easy to open and close with the added benefit of providing support for those with mobility issue when walking up and down the RV entry door stairs.

The Screen Door Bar Handle fits most RV screen doors and adjusts from 20” to 28”. Installation is simple requiring a drill and screw driver and all hardware is included. The installation took me less than 30 minutes. For $20, this is a simple convenience item that you’ll wonder why it’s not part of all RV screen doors from the factory.

RV Mod #3 – Adding a magnetic door catch to the RV entrance door

We enjoy opening the door and closing the screen allowing fresh air into the RV. Most of the new RVs have a friction hinge system to hold the door open. Older RVs had a latch to hold the door open. The problem with the newer RVs is a simple breeze will close the door.

It takes very little force to keep the door RV door open and I installed a set of magnetic door catches as a simple fix. A couple of screws, lining up the latches to insure a positive magnetic connection and now the RV door stays open in the strongest breeze. For less than $10 and another 30 minute effort, we can now enjoy fresh air in our RV without the breezes constantly closing the door.

RV Mod #4 – Adding RV furnace vent insect screens

I suggest doing this mod as soon as your purchase your new RV. The opening for the furnace vent is quite large and in the warmer months when the furnace isn’t in use, wasps and small rodents can enter clogging the vent with nests. If this happens, the furnace will not operate properly and can even be a fire hazard. Adding a screen RV furnace vent cover takes a couple minutes. This mod cost us $12 and took 5 minutes to install with the provided tool.

RV Mod #5 – Installing a blind in our Thin Shade ready RV door

Many of the new RVs are now shipped with a tinted entry door window that is prepped for a Thin Shade. In our previous 5th wheel, we replaced our failed RV entry door window with a new Thin Shade. See our blog and video here – https://www.ilovervlife.com/thin-shade-rv-door-window-upgrade/.

Our new Montana 5th wheel came with a Thin Shade ready RV door. This was an inexpensive RV mod at $35 and the installation was very simple taking less than 5 minutes inserting the new Thin Shade in the window and closing the latches. One tip as shown in the video below, make sure the top and bottom of the shade is pushed firmly into the bezel before closing the latches to ensure a good connection. Now we have the security of closing the blind in the evenings, closing the blind when facing bright sun, and opening the blind when we want more light inside the RV.

RV Mod #6 – Streaming TV with the Roku Streambar

We use cellular Internet in our RV travels for both work and entertainment. If we have reasonable Internet speeds, we stream our video entertainment using a Roku Streambar. We are fans of this Roku player with its ability to control the TV and Streambar from a single remote. This required the Roku Streambar to be connected the TV’s HDMI ARC port. Most TV’s that are less than 10 years old will have at least one HDMI ARC connection. Installation takes minutes with a simple set up. The Roku steps you though the process from account creation to TV interface.

The Roku sound experience is amazing with rich tones for sports viewing and more so during moving night with dynamic sound for those action and music scenes. The Roku supports all the popular streaming services and offers apps for each. We’re big fans of the Plex app and have the ability to connect to our Plex home server to watch our large ripped DVD library along with local off-air programming using the connected HDHomeRun device by Silicondust. Adding to our programming are the hundreds of free channels offered from the Roku Channel. The Roku Streambar costs $129 from the website, but sales can be found from time to time.

These are 6 simple mods to make RV travel more convenience, comfortable along with the extra mod to protect your RV. In the video below we cover the step by step installation for each. We’ve also provide helpful links below the video for each product mention in the blog.

If you are considering a new RV mattress, visit rvmattress.com and use code “ilovervlife” at checkout to save 20% on your purchase.

RV Screen Door Bar

Magnetic RV Door Catch

RV Furnace Insect Screen

Thin Shade Ready RV Door Shade

Roku Streambar

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