It was 10 AM and my partner Irene Gordon and I were working on preparing to our next destination, Pearland Texas to visit our good friends Dave and Brenda Blair and then on to Camp Bee, in Marshall, Texas. We'd finished all the paperwork and all of the other Sojourners had already left for their next destination. Only Larry and Linda Shelton were left. They'd decided a couple of days R & R were in order before heading to their next Sojourn in Angleton, TX.
As we buttoned up our rig and hooked up our tow, Irene and I had no idea of the Sandy Koufax sized curve-ball about to come our way. Our ride to Pearland was a simple 4 hour jaunt straight up Texas Highway 35. Child's play! It was totally uneventful other than a CEL (Check Engine Light) that beeped a couple of times along the way. We parked Trekker at the Pearland Church of Christ building and they came to pick us up so we wouldn't have to unhook our tow.
Our visit with the Blairs was terrific - a dinner with one of their sons, his wife and their daughter and then then a couple of games of Arkansas Rummy (also called "Progressive Rummy" by some, I guess). I got thumped in both of them. Did I mention, I don't like to play games?
The next morning we headed for Camp Bee 235 miles away. It would be where we spent our 1st of 4 nights on the road heading back to Indiana to get the house ready for putting on the market. Drat that CEL light is spuriously chirping every once in a while for about a second at a time. No big deal, just a minor nuisance. We are over 2/3 of the way there just 90 miles to go. Just north of Nacogdoches, TX. We are heading up and out of downtown when suddenly the Trekker doesn't have any pick-up - It's get up and go done got up and went! I played it cool with Irene. She didn't seem to notice so I pressed on. Going level wasn't a problem and going down hill was great. It was those up hills that got us down to 35 mph. Then just north of a "dot on the map town" called Appleby, TX 71 miles from Marshall, TX and Camp Bee the MIL light and CEL light lit up continuously. THIS CAN'T BE GOOD!
I eased to the side of the road. I called Tiffin Service and spoke with Ricky in the chassis department. He asked me to pull the diagnostic codes and walked me through the process. "The code means your #1 manifold has low compression," Ricky told me. You'll have to call CoachNet and have them tow you back to Lufkin, TX (35 miles back toward Pearland). We've done this before. At least it's only 35 miles this time.
We were told by CoachNet they had a tow truck and it would be there in 1 1/2 hours. It was actually coming up from Lufkin. But had another call to finish first. We waited. The sunny skies started to cloud over. We looked at our Weather Channel apps on the phone. "Hope they get here before the rain." They did... barely... GET THERE before the rain. But they didn't get hooked up before the rain. Rain nothing - God, didn't you tell us you wouldn't wipe us out using water again? This was a gullet-washer, a deluge, a very intense line of thunderstorms.
1 1/2 hours later we are ready to be towed. Irene and I are in the Flex driving behind Trekker. Along the way to the Tow Truck's lot (it was too late to take us to Rush Peterbilt since now its 6:30 at night) we had to dodge trees 4 times that had been blown over and into the roadway by the storm that was still occurring. It was pretty intense.
Finding a room in a motel was a nightmare - because of the intensity of the storm hundreds had stopped for the night in Lufkin. There were already 2 conventions in town so there weren't many rooms available anyway, but the storm made so many stop that there were no rooms left in town. Even in the part of town where the power was knocked out.
We were hungry. There was a Panda Express right next to the Courtyard by Marriott that we had HOPED to stay in (to no avail). Hungry enough even Panda Express tastes yummy!!!
We had to drive 26 mile back to Nacogdoches to find a room - a SMOKING ROOM (gag, wheeze) - at the Econ-o-Lodge for the night.
The next morning we went directly to Rush Peterbilt to tell them our rig was coming in. The Service Manager was a believer so we hit it off pretty well. Soon the tow truck driver arrived with the Trekker. Irene and I went to Denny's to grab some breakfast and then went to Office Depot to pick up something (I'm old, OK, I forget what it was now). When we got back to Rush Trucking at about 12:30 the door on the rig was open so I knew some one was taking a look at it.
I went over to talk to him and he had me start the engine. It was fixed. The fix was simple. The hose had been blown off of one end of the EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculator) that goes through a cleaner, then a chiller and then a turbo that injects it back into manifold #1. They had fixed it and we were ready to go.
We continued to have problems however:
The Valid air leveling system had a continuous blinking TRAVEL light and chirps incessantly
At some point in each of the last 5 days it has had a message on the LCD screen which says:
ABS COMM ERROR
Then, even AFTER working on it Saturday we still got spurious CEL light which would last at MOST 1 second. I looked a couple of time but their were no ECM codes BUT Mobileeye went to "ER 20" after Every CEL light blink.
We stopped to get fuel (so we turned off engine). After that we still had spurious CEL light with no codes BUT the Mobileeye went to ER 20 and stayed there.
We Stopped at rest stop for lunch. Upon restart the MIL light was on Amber and continuously and we began getting spurious STOP lights - never longer than one second long. I pulled codes and got:
Code ECM : SPN 638 FMI 9
We kept driving since there was no falloff in engine performance.
We stopped for the night and I pulled codes again. It had changed (the other one was gone) to:
ECM SPN 1081 FMI 9
We checked online and saw that these both had an HHP code of 3 (keep driving and get them fixed at the next Preventive Maintenance) so we just kept driving.
We stopped to refuel and upon startup we had no MIL light and no codes after that.
To be honest, I've been in electronics long enough to know that this looks a WHOLE LOT like a ground problem.
While we were driving on Friday it sounded like an aviary in Trekker. The VALID leveling was chirping because of the TRAVEL light staying on, The CEL light was chirping everytime it lit up (averaged 1 time every 3 minutes or so) and everytime it lit it reset the MOBILEYE and it would chirp.
The Story you have just read is true, no names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Dum-de-dum, dum-de-dum-de-dum, Dum-de-dum, dum-de-dum-de-dum, Dum-de-dum, dum-de-dum-de-dum
THIS HAS BEEN A
MARK VII
PRODUCTION
So another typical RV venture then :-)
ReplyDeleteWe don't do generic, baby. We do GORDON-sized ventures. :-) Nothing worth doing isn't worth doing REALLY well. If your gonna break down: Do it with style and élan, that's our motto.
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