Monthly Archives: August 2012
Family . . .
We pulled out of Hinton RV Park in Sikeston, MO about 9:30 this morning making a quick detour to get diesel before heading out for the 185 mile run to Vandalia, IL where we’ll spend the night at Timber Trails Campground, a very nice Passport America Park. We always stay here when we visit Jan’s sister and her family.
It was really nice to have the generator working again so we could run the AC’s on the trip. Replacing the fuel filter seems to have done the trick. Made it all worthwhile crawling around under the rig. In hindsight, next time I’ll take the access door off its hinges to make it much easier to get to the filter.
We got into the RV park a little after 1:30, and after getting set up, headed over to Jan’s sister Debbie and her family.
Her kids, Tanna, Christina, and Jason, were there, as well as Jason’s wife Laura and their two kids, Avery and Ella Jane. Tanna’s daughter Gwen had already left with her father so we’ll see her in November when we come back thru here.
As is turns out Laura has the exact same coughing crud that I do. Apparently it’s not contagious because no one else in the family has it. It was nice to have someone to commiserate with about how bad we feel. And Laura’s pregnant with their 3rd child so I can imagine how much worse it makes her feel.
And as far as feeling bad, I’m going to wrap this up since we have to be up early tomorrow. We’re meeting Debbie and her family at the Denny’s on the way out of town as we head to Celina. We got a 322 mile trip so we want to get an early start. But at least we’ll be cool.
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Thought for the Day:
"The safest road to Hell is the gradual one." Screwtape (C.S. Lewis)
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Eureka!
We pulled out of Tom Sawyer RV Park a little after 9am this morning for a short 134 mile trip north on I-55 to Sikeston, MO.
And once again we had a repeat performance of the hard-starting and stalling that has occurred the previous two mornings. And once again, when we got moving we had no more problems.
And after a smooth, uneventful trip, we pulled into the Hinton RV Park in Sikeston, MO about noon. Normally we would have stayed at the Passport America park up the road, but the reviews in RV Park Reviews said Hinton RV Park was really good, and the Passport America park was really, really bad. So here we are.
One thing I noticed coming into Sikeston was. being at the conjunction of two Interstates, (I-55 and I-57) there were a lot of truck dealerships in town, so once we got parked, I made some phone calls and found there was a local Cummins dealer and they had a generator fuel filter in stock.
So as soon as we got settled in, I headed down the road to the Cummins dealer to pick up the filter, and while I was there I also got a new engine fuel filter as well.
Getting back to the rig we decided to eat before I tackled the generator fuel filter changeout. And of course, where else to eat in Sikeston, MO, but Lambert’s Throwed Rolls.
After having our usual great meal of Fried Chicken, veggies, hot ‘throwed rolls’, and of course, the great ‘pass-arounds’, we came back to the rig. I then decided to take a nap and let the temps cool off before I tackled the generator.
Finally, about 6pm I headed outside to crawl under the rig and have at it. And as usual in these things, it took longer to get to the filter than it did to actually change it out. To make matters worse, you can’t get to the filter access door with the generator extended, but when you have the generator retracted, it’s hard to get under the rig to get the filter out.
And to make things worse, the filter is not a standard spin-on type, but a rectangular metal box with flare fittings making the fuel connections.
And of course, they couldn’t allow enough slack to make it easier to disconnect the lines.
But finally, after about an hour, I had the filter installed and everything buttoned back up. Now for the ‘smoke test’.
Well, actually, I hope it doesn’t smoke. First I primed the generator for about a minute, per the manual, and then hit the start button. After cranking it over twice for about 5 seconds, the third time was the charm, and the generator fired up and ran smoothly. I let it run for about 20 minutes, and had no problems.
At this point I shut it down and considered it a job well done. And we’ll have AC on the road tomorrow. Jan says “YEA!”
I still think this problem, and my engine problem was caused by the Diesel Kleen cleaning out the build-up in my fuel lines. Although it could have possibly been a tank of bad fuel that we took on in Whitsett when I also added the Diesel Kleen, it seems to me that if it were bad diesel it would have continue to clog the engine filter until the rig engine no longer ran either.
So now I’ll change out the engine filter while we’re at Celina, and for a while I’ll use less Diesel Kleen when I fill up.
Tomorrow we’ll travel about 185 miles to Vernon, IL to visit Jan’s sister and her family before heading on to Celina to meet up with Nick and Terry on Sunday.
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Thought for the Day:
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. — Mark Twain
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