February 22, 2005 - Lakehills, TX, near San Antonio
The trip here was not without incident. We left Yuma and went to Tucson to share dinner with the widow of a good friend and fellow SOWER. Bonnie and Gene had been on our very first project in Phoenix, and we all miss them. Bonnie seems to be doing as well as could be expected, and maybe even better.
When we left Yuma, we needed to buy fuel, but deferred until we got to Texas because of the considerable difference in price. $2.18 verses $1.91. When buying 135 gallons or so at a whack, that adds up to something like a $36.45 difference. So even though we don't much like it getting below 1/4 of a tank, we pressed on. And shortly after we got started, I felt the rig jerk. Sort of like an ugly downshifting, only it didn't downshift. Now, on the way down to San Felipe I noticed the voltage from the alternator had dropped as low as 9.8 volts, when it's usually something in the high 13's. And at about the same time, I noticed the transmission was locked in 4th gear. Not nice. The Foretravel (and many other coaches) have a boost switch, that will connect the house batteries with the engine starting batteries, and I turned that on quickly. The voltage now went up to 11.5 volts or so. Even started the generator so we'd have all we could get. Still not where it belonged, but enough to get the transmission to operate normally. Leaving Mexico I drove with the boost switch on again, and when we got back to Yuma, I called James at Foretravel. James, and his side kick Danny, are high level technicians that can answer any question a Foretravel owner may have. If they don't have the answer in their head, they have all the books ever used by Foretravel, and even copies of the build specs for individual coaches. And if the question isn't there, they will go to the engineers and call us back with the answer. Anyway, James told me it was probably the alternator, but I could limp along with the boost switch if I wanted to. Not the best thing to do, but doable anyway. Since we have an appointment at the factory for April and a 3 week SOWER project between now and the appointment, I figured I'd let the factory fix the problem.
But the jerking kept on happening, and as I stopped at a traffic light just before pulling into the fuel station, the engine died. And I broke out in a sweat. What a place to die! And a line of traffic piling up behind us! But the engine started right up again, and we filled up with fuel. For the next hour or so, we'd have the intermittent problem crop up, but then it quit for the rest of the 497 mile trip to Ft. Stockton, Texas. We'd stopped at the Wal-Mart for the night a couple of years ago, and there were over 20 RV's in the lot. And it was pretty much the same thing this time. Popular stopover for us destination drivers. The next morning, we left and didn't anticipate any more trouble, assuming that we'd either got some "junk" in the fuel from close to the bottom, or somehow the problem had resolved itself. But shortly all that evaporated as the problem returned with a vengeance. The voltage would fluctuate from 12 volts to 11.3 volts, but nothing was consistent. And then we got the error message: "ALARM: ECM FAILURE GET SERVICE SOON" Well, sure, we'll just pull over here on I-10 somewhere east of Ft. Stockton in the middle of nowhere and get service. So, with a prayer on our lips we just proceeded. And eventually we got here, but the jerking was real bad by now.
And to add insult to injury, the wipers wouldn't work on any position but "pulse" which was OK because it was a light rain. And the cruise control was acting up as well, quitting at random, and making us press the "resume" button to get it back on. And then as if to test our patience (and our faith!) a crack in the windshield appeared, starting from the lower edge of the drivers side. Sheese!! When it rains it pours.
There's a Foretravel Owners group on Yahoo, and I read it daily. So when I posted our problem, I got all kinds of good advice about possible culprits. So after I checked everything I could, I called James again. And again he suggested it might be the alternator and this time he gave me the name of a shop in San Antonio. And the shop gave me the name of Lonnie Bain at Big Moe. Lonnie assured me he knew about the changes Foretravel makes to their alternators and that there'd be no charge for checking it out. So we took the alternator in to Big Moe's , and sure enough it was bad. Whew! $265 for a rebuild, and now we get 13.6 volts. And I suspect all the other problems will go away now as well. Well, maybe not the crack in the windshield. James told me that the Allison transmission likes a full 12 volts, and now it'll get them.
So, on with the catch-up work.
One day Thea and Barb wanted to hit the thrift shops in and around Palm Springs, so Henk and I went to the Air Museum. While it was fun looking at all the old war birds, they weren't as impressive to me as their library was. Magazines about flying clear back to the '30's! What fun! Lots of WWII stuff as you can imagine.
We left the Thousand Trails park in Palm Desert and moved to Indian Waters in Indio, a ROD facility, and John and Frank and Susie moved over there too. While Frank and Susie didn't stay too long, they did happen to park right across the street from us, and I got to take some pictures of their coach. It's a Monaco Dynasty, and impeccably maintained and upgraded. Of all the Monaco Dynasty coaches we've seen, this one is the cleanest. Since they're selling it, I took a bunch of pictures of it and have included them on the page I set aside for them. You can see their Monaco Dynasty here, and read about it as well. There's 16 pictures, and you've probably never seen a better looking 1997 Monaco Dynasty.
One day friend John said, "Let's do some 4-wheeling", so off we went to visit Joshua Tree National Park. Besides, I needed to get my "passport" stamped. The national parks have a neat program whereby people like us can keep track of where they were when. And of course, Barb has her camera and is taking pictures of something neat.
OK, she'd taken the shot of these little pods on that bush, and then hunkered down to take a shot of this little purple bush, and that's when I caught her above.
And the date today is March 12. WOW!! Is this a great lifestyle or what? So much fun, so little time.
And meanwhile, back in Joshua Tree, John and I took pictures of each other taking pictures of each other. You'd think with all the pictures we each have, we really didn't need another one. But you see, he was taking shots of the bush with it's yellow flowers and seed pods as well, and I felt left out. See that thing in the next shot? It appears to be the remains of a tank that somehow had filled with dirt that got real hard, and when the tank rusted away, it left the dirt behind. It's a different texture and color from the surrounding soil, and we weren't sure what the deal was.
Then the road got "interesting" and while I was having a ball, Barb thought she'd better take some pictures in case the survivors (heirs) wanted to know what happened. John just got quiet.
Here we are in the middle of a desert, and we have to contend with mud. There was a three-way split when we voted on how best to go around this little puddle, and I'll admit we did go off the road for a little, trying to see how to get around it, but in the end we just drove through it. Piece of cake.
Some kind of mining operation it looked like to us, but none of the three of us were too sure. And the funny thing is, we'd avoided the Brooklyn Mine Jeep Road in favor of the "milder" Old Dale Road.
And at about this point in the trip, when I got out to check clearances, Barb had given up worrying about it, and found some pretty flowers to include here. John was just holding his breath. But when it was over, we all decided it was worth it. And John actually mentioned he'd like to go again. Wow! No accounting for my friends, is there. I told him the next time he was going to have to take his own Jeep and get some practice so he wouldn't have to depend on anybody else. And as you'll see, he did just that.