Our RV Adventures

Even if Jan wasn’t quite as impressed.

After lunch I went out to the truck to take a look at the dead AC blower I discovered yesterday. First up was to check all the fuses that might affect the system, so anything to do with the AC, heater, blower, etc.

But  unfortunately, it wasn’t one of these easy fixes. So next  up was to take a look at the blower itself under the passenger-side dash. After some struggle, I finally got the connector apart so I could check the readings.

First I used the Ohms function on my meter to check the continuity of the blower motor. I was really hoping that the blower itself was OK since I had just replace it last September. Check it out here – Fixed

And I got a reading of about 2 ohms which meant the motor was probably good. So next I scrunched around where I could now measure the voltage coming into the other side of connector.

And I had 12 volts. Huh?

So I plugged the two ends back together and now the blower worked. Huh?

So maybe a dirty contact?

But as I tucked the wiring back in the place, the blower quit again. Huh?

So I wiggled the connector some more, but no luck. Still dead.

So next I wiggled the only other wires in the area, the ones hanging down from the  blower resistor pack.

And when I did the blower started working again. Aha!

I was able to wiggle it around until it stayed working. But if I moved it enough it would quit again.

Now that I know what the problem is, I’ll come out  tomorrow? and use my socket set to pull it out and take a look at it. But it should work for today.

About 4pm Jan and I headed into Sealy for a dinner and Wal-Mart run. We had decided to try Jin’s Asian Café, which had 4 Stars on Yelp with 22 Reviews. Turned out to be in a strip mall but very nice inside.

First up we ordered a couple of Shrimp Spring Rolls, which turned out to be very good. In fact so good, they didn’t last long enough for a photo.

Next us was a bowl of Hot & Sour Soup which I thought was decent, not King Food in Webster good, but pretty good. We’ve certainly had much worse.

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Then we ordered the Chicken in Garlic Sauce

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and the Combination Fried Rice.

As the Yelp reviews mentioned, the portions were large, and after eating our fill, we still had more than half to bring home.

As I said, I thought it was pretty good, although not very spicy. We had asked for Extra Spicy, and also to add Jalapeno’s, but got neither. Maybe lost in translation?

On the other hand, Jan thought it was just ‘OK’, but not OK enough to go back.

So there.

After our trip to Wal-Mart we got home about 6pm and got everything put away. Then it was up on the roof to prep for my AC coil cleaning tomorrow.

I took all the screws out so it will be quick to get started tomorrow morning.

First thing I’ll have to do is to mask off and cover the air return hold and then spray it down with cleaner, using a brush to get as much gunk out as possible. Then I’ll use the hose spray nozzle that I also pulled up to flush it all out.

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Hopefully that will finish the job.

It’s taken me 49 years to get her from ‘Ruined’ to somewhere between ‘Wait’ and ‘What are you doing?’

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It turns out that there are a lot of ‘closet’ Murdoch Mysteries fans out there. I’m just  disappointed that it took Jan and I so long to discover it.

It’s a really fun show and we’re happy to see that we’re only watching Season 4 right now, while they’re presently filming Season 10. So we’ve got a while to go.

I’ve penciled in tomorrow evening around 7:30 to do the initial prep work for my AC evaporator coil cleaning on the roof unit. I’m going to remove the 4 bolts that hold down the shroud, and the 4 remaining screws holding the evaporator sheet metal on. Only 4 here because didn’t put all the rest back in before.

I’ll also pull the hose and spray nozzle up there so all I to do Wednesday morning is uncover the AC, mask off the air return opening and then start spraying and cleaning the coil. Then I’ll use the spray hose to rinse it all off.

I plan to do all this Wednesday morning before it gets too hot, as it still should be in the high 70’s – low 80’s then so not too bad.

I hope.

We had originally planned to go to the Fayette County Country Music Opry up in La Grange, after eating at the nearby Whataburger. But Jan was a little under weather this afternoon, so we didn’t do the Opry. But just because she was a little sickish, didn’t mean she didn’t still want Whataburger.

So around 4:30 I drove into Columbus to pick up dinner at that one. And this time they actually got the order correct. Delicious as usual.

But as I was leaving the park, I discovered I have another AC problem, this time in the truck. The AC blower is dead.

Hopefully it’s just a fuse, since I replaced both the control resistor pack and the blower motor last year. I guess it could possibly be the control knob itself, but if that were the case, probably only one speed would be affected, not all.

So I’ll check it out tomorrow.

Wrapping up for today, I thought I’d post this amazing long-exposure shot of the recent SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch to the International Space Station.

The straight line on the left is the rocket launch itself, disappearing through the clouds. I haven’t been able to find out what the bright spot near the top is.

The Falcon 9 doesn’t do a post Max-Q throttle up like the Shuttle did, and I think it’s too early for the MECO (Main Engine Cut Off) and 2nd stage ignition. So I don’t know and Google hasn’t helped.

At the very top, to the right of the main track, you will see a couple of small streaks. That is the Re-entry Burn of the 1st stage as it moves out of the way of the 2nd stage engines and sets up its return as it now heads back to Earth for landing.

The 1st stage free-falls for 6 to 8 minutes, depending on launch angle,  and then the landing burn initiates, which is where the burn restarts in the photo, all the way down to a soft landing.

Previously I’ve posted a video of the Falcon 9 1st stage soft landing on a barge out in the Atlantic. The barge landings will be necessary depending on the launch angle needed to reach the correct orbit. Under some conditions, the 1st stage won’t have enough fuel to reach the land-based touchdown point. So then they’ll use the barge.

One other neat thing about the 1st stage is that it uses 9 (Yes, 9! ) Merlin 1D engines. And these are powerful enough so that even if two engines fail along the way, the rocket can still make orbit and complete its mission. You gotta love redundancy.

Thought for the Day:

“For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;” – Rudyard Kipling

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