Monthly Archives: June 2009
Swans a swimming, geese a…walking!
Today was really grueling.
We had to drive a whole 43 miles to our new park in Hardeeville, SC.
But before we headed out, we walked down to the lake near our site to get a closeup look at the swans and geese we had seen from a distance.
Swans a swimming!
Geese a....walking
We left out a little before noon and pulled into our new site about 1pm. It’s in a fairly heavily wooded area with a lot of nice trees and looks like this –
Hardeeville RV Park
And two good things to report: My starter repair from yesterday is still holding up, and the new AC belt I put on about two weeks ago is still working.
After getting everything set up and settling in, we drove over to Savannah, about 10 miles away.
This was our first vist back to Savannah since we lived near here in 1970. One of the places we wanted to revisit was our favorite restaurant here in Savannah, The Pirate’s House, so we decided to have a late lunch there.
The Pirate’s House building has been a pub, a bar, an inn, or a restaurant of some kind, since 1753. Now that’s a lot of history.
The Pirate's House
We got there in time for their lunch buffet, which was just as good as we remembered.
After lunch we drove by Oglethorpe Mall where we used to shop, just to see if it was still there. It was, and it looks great. It also looks like it has been completely rebuilt since we were there, so maybe that’s why it looks great.
After that we headed home. On the way I make a quick stop at a Cummins Diesel dealer that we passed to see if they had a replacemnt plastic coolant overflow tank for my coach. While I was working on my non-starting problem yesterday, I discovered that my coolant overflow tank had a crack in it. No big problem, but I want to get it fixed.
As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say “It’s always something!”
Tomorrow we’re going to drive over to Beaufort, SC where we lived from November 1969 to September 1970 when I worked for the Department of Defense as a contractor at the Marine Corp Air Station.
Old Home Week.
Pizza and Solenoids…
Well, we left the park in St. Augustine about 10:30 am heading north. We had planned to stop for lunch north of Jacksonville and then head another 100 miles further north to overnight at a KOA park just south of Savannah.
The stopping for lunch part went just fine. We stopped at Boston’s Pizza, a chain that we first discovered in Dawson Creek, BC, Canada. Later on, we found them in Whitehorse, YK, Canada, and Fairbanks, AK.
We ate at the one in Fairbanks regularly when we were there for 5 months last year. They have great pizza, probably our favorite.
As I said, the stopping for lunch part went just fine. However, the heading further north part didn’t go so well.
When we got ready to leave the restaurant, the coach wouldn’t start. Or rather, it wouldn’t crank. Everything seemed to be fine, otherwise. No error messages or warning lights.
I even tried the Aux Start system, in case the engine batteries had run down for some reason.
Our coach has 6 batteries. 2 12 volts batteries provide the starting and engine power just like the single 12 volt battery in your car. (big diesels require more starting power than your car).
Our coach also has 4 big 6 volt batteries that power the coach when we are not plugged into shore power. Normally these two battery systems are completely separate. However the Aux Start button lets you use the coach batteries to start the engine in case the engine batteries are dead.
With no luck.
I then checked the voltage at the engine batteries while Jan tried to start the engine. The voltage did not change. This told me that the starter was not pulling any current.
Normally when you start your car, the battery voltage will drop significantly while the engine is cranking.
After taking to Cummins Diesel to confirm that I hadn’t missed anything obvious, I started checking out the starter system.
First, I had Jan try to start the coach while I listened back by the engine. I heard fuel and lift pumps starting up, and other noises, but no starter or bendix noises.
Luckily we were in a large shopping center parking lot, and not by the side of the road. And since we had been parked for an hour, both the engine and the pavement underneath were cool.
Next I crawled under the engine and checked the voltage at the starter while using a walkie-talkie to tell Jan to try to start the engine.
No voltage. This told me that the starter wasn’t getting any power. It also meant that the starter itself probably was OK.
Next I checked the voltage at the starter solenoid that controls the power to the starter itself. Again, no voltage.
I then tried to check the two smaller wires that feed the signal from the key switch to the starter solenoid. One of the wires was on top of the solenoid that I couldn’t easily reach, but when I touched the one that I could reach, it came off in my hand.
The ring terminal that was used to the connect the wire to the screw terminal was broken.
A ring terminal looks like this.
ring terminal
KOA
