Broken Down Again!!! Or Not???

Sunday, while driving from Duluth to Chippewa Falls, I noticed some hesitation, bucking and loss of power while accelerating. The coach seemed to have difficulty getting up to highway speed, particularly working its way up through 2nd, 3rd and 4th gears. Once in top gear, it appeared to be OK. This problem seemed somewhat similar to the problem my friend George had with his identical Allure. It took George most of a year and many trips to the Allison and Cummins service centers before the cause was discovered. Ultimately it was determined that an incorrect engine algorithm had been installed in George's coach. I was afraid we may have the same problem. We arrived safely at O'Neil Creek Campground and slept on it. After our brewery tour on Monday, we departed Chippewa Falls about 2:00 PM and continued south towards Illinois. Immediately the problem reappeared and began to grow worse the further we went. Soon I began having trouble keeping the engine in 6th gear. Normally the tranny attains 6th gear at about 55 mph and 1500 rpm. Now it was downshifting into 5th gear, even as I ran at over 65 mph. Not good. By now we were starting to see engine fault codes appear on the Silverleaf VMS, our on-board engine monitoring system. Dorcas got onto the web and located a Cummins service center in Normal IL, about two hours away, but directly on our route. As we limped on, we talked to Cummins service advisor Chris and read him the list of fault codes displayed on the Silverleaf. The codes all related to fuel delivery pressures at various points in the system. Chris checked his database for troubleshooting steps for these codes. Causes ranged from clogged fuel filters, blocked fuel line, excessive fuel tank vacuum, fuel pump failure, fuel injector failure and worse. A best-case scenario was fuel filter clogging. There are two separate fuel filters on the coach, and I had both spare filters on board. I considered pulling over and changing the filters on the side of the road, but decided it was better to keep going as long as we could. If we stopped and changed the filters, there was a risk that we could not get the new filters primed and could not re-start the coach. We really didn't want to spend the night on the side of the road again and really, really didn't want to get towed again. We limped on to Normal and arrived at the Cummins service center about 9:00 PM, three hours before they closed at midnight. Rather than put the coach in a bay and let the mechanics go at it, we parked in one of their overnight RV spaces and hooked up to the power. I replaced the two fuel filters myself using my own parts. After about an hour the job was finished, and we took her out to see if the problem was solved. AMAZING! The coach ran like a top, and all the fault codes had cleared. Apparently clogged fuel filters was the cause of the problem. We may have dodged the bullet again. By now it was almost midnight, and we spent the night at the Cummins facility.

On Tuesday morning I bought replacement spare fuel filters from Cummins, just in case there was still some gunk in the tank and the problem reoccurred. We left the Cummins service center and Normal IL headed towards Thousand Trail Indian Lakes, Batesville IN, about 250 miles east. The coach ran great, and we arrived at the Thousand Trails without further incident. We have never been to this park before and no one else we have talked to at other Thousand Trails parks had ever been here, so we didn't know quite what to expect. We were pleasantly surprised to find a very nice park. It is very large, encompassing 544 acres. The camping is clustered in four areas, one area with full hook-ups, two with water and electric only and one for seasonal renters. There are vast open areas for Matilda to run, and it all surrounds a central lake. It looks as though it could have been a county or regional park at some point in the past. We scored a nice full hook-up site (water, sewer and 50A electric). We are about 40 miles from Cincinnati and can receive over 20 digital TV stations. Sweet. We plan to stay here about 5-6 days.