 This little plastic part has been the bane of my existence in my RV for the last two weeks It broke and I need to find a way to secure it and then replace it But the problem is first of all, it's like impossible to find I'm in the middle of nowhere And I don't want to take time off the road to go to a dealership and try and have it fixed The good news is that I have a secret weapon for finding hard to find parts. I'm going to share it with you today Happy Sunday, everybody. It's Robin with creativity RV And as you can see I am back camping in my truck camper, which has been great But I'm having growing pains like I'm new on the road I keep bumping into things and I have to constantly be reorganizing and I've had some things break You may have noticed last week. I did not put out a video That's because I have power problems. I am now on my third solar controller in two years That's on the way. So next week those issues to be totally resolved, but with no power There's no router, which means no Wi-Fi I also had problems with my water and my hot water and I had some other little things around here break No big deal. I could figure it out and find the part But with that little plastic knob that goes on the skylight above my bed There was not an easy solution So now I'm going to tell you how I normally find parts and then my secret weapon for finding a little part like this That isn't possible to find as you can see here I have a skylight escape hatch Above my camper bed, which is really common This skylight is it a whole bunch of different models of RV But my RV is a 2008 so as they get older the parts of course are harder to find Well, there's two little pieces of plastic on each side of this knob as you can see and one finally gave up While I was moving out of the fifth wheel I ordered a new mattress for the truck camper because my other one was an air mattress and every time I changed Elevation it would deflate and it drove me crazy I had the brand new mattress in here with some folded bedding on top of it And I closed the skylight and I went back over to the fifth wheel and for a couple of days It was just raining buckets and I looked over and the skylight was totally open So I ran over and of course my brand new mattress was totally drenched Luckily the bedding that was on top caught a lot of it But that was when I really realized that that little knob was a serious problem There was no serial number There was no make-and-model and I couldn't find anything on the entire skylight either So the first thing I did was I went into some forums for Lance truck campers to see what other people did when they broke their skylight Well, it turns out that this little knob breaking is a very Common problem and nobody was able to find a part or even knew what the part was there were people in the forums that were hanging water jugs off the bar or went to welders to have new parts manufactured because If you don't fix the knob what happens is while you're going down the road the skylight bounces It can break it'll crack the entire casing that it's in and one person said that it destroyed the membrane on the top of their roof Well, I didn't want to buy a whole new skylight just because I needed this knob So then I went through the normal process that I go through I tried e trailer, which is my number one source I love them because you can call and talk to somebody there I did that they didn't know what the part was They only knew what the entire skylight part was and if I wanted to move to a skylight that didn't open So, you know, I couldn't have a breeze and there was no escape hatch. They were about eight hundred dollars So I kept on searching then I tried Amazon. I tried Lance. I Tried eBay and I couldn't find anything. So that's when I got out my secret weapon Now it occurs to me that a lot of people out there probably don't know this hack I only learned it a couple of years ago and I use it all the time If you go to your phone and it looks like mine Here's a screenshot where you have your Google search bar You're going to see on the right-hand side a little camera You can take a picture of anything and Google will search for it so in this case I took the part and I took a little picture of it and Immediately it came up with a bunch of parts that were kind of like this But it wasn't what I was looking for so then I went up into the search and I added the word RV and that didn't come up with What I needed? Finally, I went up and I put in the word skylight and Google found these top two listings for the actual knob that I needed and the spring and I was so excited But there was a problem. The problem is Both of these vendors are outside of the US One was in the UK and one was in Australia and neither one of them would ship to the US But because I done that Google search, I now had a part number So then I went to Dometic and they told me I had to go to a dealer So I called bishes RV and Cheyenne. I spoke with AJ. He was really great And he tried to find that actual part and he did kind of his warehouse Found it and they put it on a list that they could add to a shipment on special order But they would not know if my knob was in that shipment for eight weeks until the rest of the Dometic products Came now in eight weeks if it's in that shipment great Bishes is going to send it to me But then I reached back out to Lance. There is not a way that they can just get the part Dometic will not send it to them. They can only sell the entire skylight and look here's a screenshot of What Lance sent me if I want to replace the entire thing? It's $1,400 but because then I had the part number for the whole skylight I was able to email someone that they gave me at Dometic and It turns out that my knob is discontinued So look I know this is a lot of work just to get a little knob But the knob itself is 20 bucks and the skylight is 1,400 and it seems like such a waste to have to get an entire new skylight in here With a little plastic knob that will probably break again So I kept on searching and then on eBay because I had the part number from the Google search in the UK I found this little orange bar lock That works on the Dometic skylight now. This is not the knob I would be getting rid of the knob totally but this little orange piece You can see goes on the side of the bar that you push up in the skylight And it holds it in place so people can't break in and I think that will work while I'm going down the road And the thing is this company that I got this little orange log from is not even an RV company or an RV parts company They're a 3d printing company. That's how hard I had to look for a solution Now that's pretty extreme and that part does not come until October I have to find a way to secure it along the way and look I Tried everything because of the way that the skylight is shaped I couldn't use a wedge or zip ties or bungee cords or tape or anything like that But I did MacGyver a solution. I Recreated the little plastic piece on the side So that the knob went back in there and stays there And that's why I'm not holding it to show you guys because it's up there right now And I don't want to mess with it. I wanted to last until October So next week, I'm going to show you guys my DIY on-the-fly Repair tub of stuff not only my maintenance stuff and regular tools But I've curated a whole bunch of little items that I use To fix things along the way or fix things just long enough for me to get apart So that I can keep it moving and stay on the road until then have happy travels and be free