On to Gulf Shores . . .
Well, if the Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise, we’ll be on our way again down to Gulf Shores.
When we left Northgate RV Travel Park about 8:30 Monday morning, we were first headed about a mile and a half down the road to fill up with diesel at a Texaco station. Unfortunately we only made it about a mile before our coach diesel just up and quit. Just like I’d turned the key off.
Luckily I was able to pull off the road and into a long turn lane leading into an apartment complex.
Even though my Silverleaf said I still had about 40 gallons left, due to my problems a couple of months ago with a clogged fuel tank vent tube, and the resulting vacuum crushing in part of my fuel tank, I thought I might actually be out of diesel.
So, using my 5 gallon can, I put in 15 gallons of diesel (the amount Cummins says to use if you run out) and ran the priming sequence that Cummins recommends.
With no luck.
So after talking with Spartan, I checked the 4 fuses for the Engine ECU and the Fuel Pump.
Again with no luck.
So finally it was time to call Coach-Net Emergency Road Service to get us towed in to a service center. It almost two hours for them to locate a wrecker heavy enough to tow us, and then almost an hour to get us ready to tow.
But finally we were on the road following the tow truck in our toad, heading over to Bankston Motorhomes in Huntsville. We finally got parked and checked in there about 2:30, but it was about 3pm before a tech started looking at our rig.
But since the shop closed at 4:30 he only had time to run through some basic checks and tests before time ran out. But after trying to prime and crank several times, we still had no luck, and that was it for the day.
We had planned to stay in the rig since we had power available from the shop, but around 9:30 our power suddenly went off. So after thinking it over we headed over to a nearby Holiday Inn Express. We had been invited to stay with my Aunt and Uncle in Athens, if we needed, but as late as it was, and since we wanted to be back at the shop before 8:30am, we decided to stay local.
However it was about 9:30 before the tech got back on the job. The delay was caused by the fact that he wanted to use the computerized scanner and it was in use on another coach.
And when he finally got to use it, it didn’t really help. There were no codes and everything seemed to be working fine.
It still just seemed like fuel wasn’t getting to the engine. So the tech decided to try to just “brute-force” it.
Fill both filters with diesel and just crank it until it starts. Of course you can only crank it for about a minute at a time to keep the starter from overheating. And since we had been cranking off and on for a good while, our batteries, even using the AUX START switch, were getting too weak to do much more cranking.
So the tech went and got the Start Cart, a heavy duty wagon with 8 12volt batteries in it. The tech was also going to use a little ether. This is normally not a good idea because the intake air pre-heater can ignite the ether and cause things to go BOOM! But we pulled the fuse for the pre-heater to eliminate that problem.
This first time we tried this, the engine cranked for about 15 seconds and then caught. But it only ran for about 5 seconds and then died. So after letting it cool off for about 30 seconds, we tried it again.
This time it ran for about a minute and then died. And the third time was the charm. The engine caught the first thing and just ran. And ran. And ran.
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I immediately ran to the office to pay so we could get on the road. But it still took about 20 minutes before we were pulling out.
Since it was really too late to head toward Gulf Shores, we just headed back to the RV park in Athens. On the way we stopped off at Kroger’s and took on about 90 gallons of diesel at $3.75 a gallon.
The rig ran fine all the way back to Athens, and restarted with no problems after fueling up.
Tomorrow we’ll try again for Gulf Shores.
Stay tuned.
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Thought for the Day:
"Sometimes paranoia is just having all the facts." – William S. Burroughs
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