On the Road Again - Gallup, NM

It has been a pretty hectic and stressful few days. We spent Sunday night in the parking lot at the Cummins/Onan Coach Care facility for scheduled generator service. The generator had been smoking heavily on start and there was an engine knock. There was also an oil leak. This facility is an Onan dealership and a Country Coach partner facility. We wouldn't find another facility as qualified as this one anywhere else nearby, and since we are dependent on our generator for battery charging and A/C, we decided we needed to bite the bullet and get it serviced.

The mechanic fixed the oil leak pretty quickly. The leak was due to a cross-threaded fuel filter. The smoking and knocking was likely caused by at least one fouled fuel injector. When the mechanic saw how the generator was mounted in the coach, he had some unkind remarks towards the Country Coach engineer who designed the installation. In order to service the injectors, the generator, which is mounted in the front of the coach, must be removed by dropping it out the bottom. This involved jacking up the coach, cutting a steel cross member, removing a number of other obstructions and then dropping the generator. Of course this process would have to be reversed to re-install the unit after service. Most units, including those in most other models by Country Coach, slide out on rails for easy access for service. What should have been a one hour injector service took 8 hours of mechanic time. It turns out that all three fuel injectors were extremely fouled, likely due to low usage by the previous owner. These units run best when run often and at full load. We spent Monday night at the Onan facility in their "campground", which consisted of four RV spaces at the back of their parking lot with water and electrical hookups. I'm not knocking it. With daytime temps over 100' it was good to be hooked to shore power. We also took advantage of their water and dump station and did three loads of laundry.

Work was finished about about 3:00 on Tuesday. It runs like a top now. We just beat the rush hour traffic out of Albuquerque. As we left town on I-40 west, our outside thermometer read 108'. Still, it felt more comfortable than NC at 85' and 85% humidity.

We seem to have also solved the problem with the EvenBrake in the Honda. As you may recall from a previous post, my original EvenBrake had failed. The manufacturer shipped me a new unit and it, too, was not operating properly. Subsequently I talked with the designer of the unit. It turns out the the unit, which operates using compressed air, had never been tested at elevations above about 7000'. I was at 8400' and, in this thin air, the air tank could not be pressurized before the compressor timed out. The designer promised to pull a new unit, make sure the compressor was a sound one and reprogram the processor to allow the compressor to run longer before shutting down. He essentially is customizing a unit for me adapted to for high elevations. We will talk again in about a week, and he will ship me the unit when we are laid up for a few days. In the meantime, when I re-installed the replacement unit before leaving Albuquerque (5300') it worked like a charm.

We have stopped in Gallup NM for dinner and some grocery shopping. We will drive a little further tonight and sleep somewhere in Arizona. We are starting to look more closely at where we want to go and have realized that we must make some decisions. We had wanted to go to most of the national parks in southern Utah, but if we go everyplace on our list, we will drive ourselves to death. Even though we have over 4 weeks before we need to be in Kalispell, MT, we can't do it all. I think it is better to go to fewer places, but stay longer and enjoy them. We are at a critical point, however, and need to either continue west or turn north. We are also coming up on the week of the 4th of July. We either need to make some reservations somewhere pronto (it's probably already too late for reservations) or plan to go someplace not very popular.