Well that’s not good…

When we settled in at Canyon Lake, I began to search in earnest for solutions to our check engine light and error code. The conclusion was to replace the (very expensive) fuel pressure sensor. I ordered the part and hoped for the best.

Before the part arrived we had to move to a different site and when I tried to start the RV it took several tries before it would start. Blowing smoke, the whole way from our old site to our new one was a bit unnerving. We were looking forward to getting the part and hoping it would solve our issues.

When the part arrived, I installed it and made sure to torque it down to the required 52ftlbs. Then I tried to start the RV, and it started right away. Hoping this solved everything I started it and let it run a while and didn’t see any black smoke but also knew it wasn’t under load I started it another time and it started right away. Success? Maybe, maybe not…

The next day I tried to start it again and after several tries it wouldn’t start. Why it started the day before was puzzling. So I called up Good Sam's Roadside Service(reluctantly) to see where they would tow it to get serviced. I told them we were scheduled to leave the park on a Friday so they could come on Thursday leaving a just in case day since we were dealing with Good Sam's.

They scheduled a wrecker to come get me by 10 am Thursday and about an hour after they verified the service that morning, they called to say that they had to change wrecker companies. Hours later they called to say a wreaker would be at our site within 300 minutes. I guess they say minutes because it sounds better than hours.

A wrecker finally showed up and after having difficult disconnecting our drive train our RV was on its way to San Antonio.An hour later we pulled into Cummins Sales and Service and checked in for our Friday morning appointment. This was June 31st. Knowing full well we were headed into a long holiday weekend we went to our son’s house to stay while waiting for the repair.

We find out later that nothing got done Friday since they spent several hours trying to reassemble the drive shaft that the tow truck driver messed up. With no work done on the RV until several days later it took a nearly a week to determine the problem…bad fuel injectors.

They performed the very expensive work, and the RV was ready for us to leave on July 11th. We were very fortunate to have a place to stay with family while waiting for our RV. Hopefully this troublesome time is now behind us… 

What every RV’er dreads happening (Part 2)…

The next morning we started up the RV, pulled in the slides and headed down the road. Well we only got 3 miles out of town and the engine died AGAIN! Sigh. I somehow limped over to the side of the road. I got it started again so we decided it would be best to just to go back the three miles to the RV park and stay until we could have a tech check out the RV.

Here’s where it got interesting… As we started a U-turn to head back to Iraan the RV died again straddled across both lanes of the road. Fortunately this road was lightly traveled but still a few cars had to wait until I could start it again several times to inch our way back off the road.

The only solution now was to be towed to a service center. We contacted Good Sams Roadside Service and after about a four hour wait we had a tow truck hooking up the RV for the long haul (about 92 miles) to the Odessa Texas Cummins Service Center. Having your RV towed as a full timer is a very disheartening thing to have to do.

While waiting for the tow truck I found an Air BnB in nearby Midland which we booked for two nights assuming nothing would get done the day of our RV towing to Cummins since it would arrive near closing time. After watching the RV arrive and plugged in for power to the fridge we headed to Midland to spend a few nights hoping for the best.

The next morning we were informed that the lift pump had failed which was one of the cheaper options. That made us happy. What made us sad was they had to try and find the part since they didn’t have one in stock. A few hours passed and we were told they located a new fuel lift pump and hoped it would arrive the next day. Sigh…

Well the fuel pump did get to Cummins and they were able to assure us that they would have it installed by closing time so we checked out of our Air BnB. While we were waiting for word of the part’s arrival we made backup plans to spend a night in a hotel should it not be finished in time for us to make our way down the road to a suitable RV park.

We found a disc golf course in Odessa to play a round of disc golf while we waited. Happily Cummins called to say the part arrived and they were working on our RV. After our round of disc golf we started looking for nearby RV parks to stay at for when the RV was ready. We picked several parks at varying distances away.

They were able to get the repairs done by 5 PM, their closing time. With little daylight left we drove about 90 miles down the road and stayed at Water Valley town park in  Water Valley Texas. It was a nice little park and we were the only one in it. When morning arrived we hoped our problems were behind us and luckily they were as we made it a few hundred miles further down the road into Fredericksburg Texas.

Whew, what an ordeal but such is life On the Road of Retirement…

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays this year!

NOTE: We are currently in TX for the holidays…

What every RV’er dreads happening (Part 1)…

We left Deming NM and planned for a long drive into Texas because we were still trying to avoid a cold snap headed our direction. The drive down Interstate 10 was mostly uneventful as we pulled into our planned stop in Van Horn Texas.

We often stop in this unremarkable town as it is a great resting place on that long stretch of I10 through west Texas. Also there has always been at least one Passport America Park making it a cheap overnight stop.

As we pulled into Oasis RV Park in Van Horn I stayed in the RV while Sharon went inside to register. As she was inside the RV engine stopped running. Perplexed, I cranked it back up only for it to run about 30 seconds and die again. Well, this was not a good situation.

When Sharon returned I told her what happened, cranked it up again and it started running. However as I was driving over to our site, it died again. Well after starting it and stopping it a lot we were able to crawl into a full hookup site.

After extensively researching what was going on I concluded we were having a fuel delivery problem. This meant it could be the fuel filters, the lift pump, the fuel injector pump or somehow the fuel injectors themselves were fouling out. Well the cheapest solution was to change out the fuel filters. Our RV has two of them.

So I crawled under the RV to take a photo of the filter I needed. I had a spare of the the smallest filter and luckily the NAPA in town had the replacement for the largest one. Not sure if I had all the tools we found a local roadside service who agreed to come by the next morning to remove and replace the fuel filters. After he finished I cranked up the engine and all seemed well as I let it idle for about 10 minutes.

After pulling in all the slides we were off once again for our next stop in Iraan Texas some 200+ miles further east. Fortunately the drive went well and we pulled into The Landing RV Park which was a nice little park. Pleased that the filter repair must have fixed the problem… or did it?

NOTE: We are currently in TX for the holidays…

Having the RV towed… Yikes!

Monday morning came and it was time to move from our Carthage, NC location north to the Raleigh Fairgrounds for a weeklong stay. SO we went through our normal moving day routine… breakfast and coffee followed by the necessary litany of things to be tied down and secured for the travel day. After all was secured we pulled in the slides and retracted the levelers and were ready to go…. or were we?

I noticed the check engine light seemed to stay on but thought that as the motorhome warmed up a bit it would go out. So I backed out of our site and attached our CRV to our roadmaster hitch. I fired up the motorhome once more and the check engine remained on as did the shut engine off light… SIGHHHHHH! Looks like we are in for a delay. A call to the Help Freightliner 1-800 line confirmed my worries… we were going to have to get Abbey towed into a dealer who could diagnose the failed engine code which only read “01”.

We have always depended on our insurance coverage with roadside assistance to take care of any of our roadside issues… that is until we had the the tire issue when we were in South Carolina. It was then and there that I decided a little additional coverage wouldn’t hurt and we signed up for a year of Roadside Coverage with Good Sam’s. Serendipity at its best… A call to Good Sam’s roadside assistance and we were assured that a tow truck would be at our location in about two hours. Remember we are down a very narrow dirt road in the boonies of NC.

Well the two hour wait turned into a 4.5 hour wait as the tow truck driver became lost and couldn’t find the park. Can you believe that this day and age that a tow truck driver doesn’t have a GPS???? Well this one didn’t but he lifted our front wheels up and detached our drive shaft (required for towing a FRED) and we were off for a 50 mile jaunt to H&H Trucking in Hope Mills, NC just south of Fayetteville, NC.\

It was a little sketchy getting down the dirt road but this driver was a trooper and did an excellent job of avoiding any unnecessary damage to Abbey as she followed in tow. But then what does the driver do? Turn out the wrong direction of course… SO we passed him and had him follow us to the road where we knew a good spot to turn around this 75 foot long unit! Once we were on the black top and pointed the right direction we both breathed a sigh of relief.

Following your motorhome down the road while it is being towed is a bit disconcerting especially when you are watching your driver get the tires over the white line into oncoming traffic or very, very close to the edge of the road and the grass along the side… Sigh… After what seemed to be an eternity we arrived at the freightliner shop around 6:30 some 7 hours after we first made our call to Good Sam’s. Probably longer than it should have taken but not Good Sam’s fault.

H&H is open till midnight but they didn’t think they would be able to check out Abbey’s fault code till the morning so fortunately for us we were only an hour’s drive from our daughter’s apartment. We stayed at her place where we hoped we didn’t impose too much on her roomies and planned to return to H&H that next morning. A call to H&H around 10:30 yielded little info as they hadn’t gotten to Abbey yet. A later call yielded unwanted information as the only thing they knew was that it was a coolant issue and that all five gallons of it were gone! Where could it have gone? We just had it pressure checked and topped off at Gaffney, SC! Hmmmm, it makes one wonder if someone dropped the ball there and didn’t top it off don't you think???

Anyway H&H said they needed more time to check it out. They pressurized the coolant system and found no leaks, they removed the EGR and verified that it functioned properly, check the oil and transmission for any unwanted water in the system. The conclusion after 4.5 hours of shop labor… they have no idea where the coolant went and they felt pretty sure there is no leak in our system.  . So after the drive down to Hope Mills to pay the bill and take Abbey to Raleigh we are certainly hopeful the coolant doesn’t “disappear” again!

H&H did remove the mandatory $90 initial shop fee and took off 1.5 hours of labor since they were unable to solve this dilemma however they did warn us to be vigilant and watch our coolant levels closely. The big lesson learned from this experience for us was, when getting our annual maintenance, even at a highly respected facility, we will ALWAYS check all our fluid levels before leaving. We still don’t know what really happened and can only hope it doesn’t happen again…

So for now we are settled into our site at the Raleigh Fairgrounds and at least we didn’t lose any coolant on the trip up here…