Our RV Adventures

After yesterday’s 91°, today’s 75 and partly cloudy was a nice relief, especially since we didn’t get the also-promised rain showers this morning.

Today we thought we drive up north to Deadwood, so after a quiet morning we left the rig about 1pm. Getting into Deadwood about  30 minutes later,our first stop was the Visitor’s Center to pick up some brochures and make a restroom stop.

Then it was on to a recommended place for lunch, Harry’s Spaghetti Western Restaurant

We each got one of their dinners, starting with a salad.

After that, Jan got the Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken, while I got the Spaghetti with Meat Sauce and Meatballs.

For dessert I had  the Spumoni Ice Cream that came with the meal,

while Jan upgraded to the Tiramisu Cake.

And after a very good meal, we drove up the hill to the Mt. Moriah Cemetery, where both Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are buried . . . as well as over 3,600 other unlucky people. The place is enormous

We would have walked around a bit, but as you can tell it’s pretty steep and hilly, and since my knee has been acting up, we took a pass.

Coming back down the hill, we drove down Deadwood’s Historic Main Street.

Hence the sign ‘Historic Main Street’.

Leave it to me to sniff out a model train layout, and there was one right on Deadwood’s Historic Main Street.

The layout of the Northern Hills Railway Society is in the basement of a gift shop, and admission is free, though it costs $1 to run the trains for 10 minutes.

The layout is 80 feet by 16 feet with over 1200 feet of track, 54  engines and 400 cars.

One thing I liked is all the small details and dioramas.

Note the yellow biplane flying under the bridge below.

Coming back up to street level we were just in time for one of the scheduled gunfights.

When I saw the poker table set up I thought that they were reenacting the shooting of Wild Bill Hickok, but it was some other famous gunfight.

As it was the whole thing took place right in front of the saloon where Wild Bill Hickok was shot August 2, 1876.

Playing Five Card Draw, the hand Hickok was holding consisted of black aces and black eights, now known as a “Dead Man’s Hand”. He had discarded the fifth card, and supposedly the replacement had not been dealt. At least that’s the way the story goes.

Heading home about 4:30 we drove on into RC for a quick stop at the Harbor Freight for a couple of things. Then it was back to the rig with a stop at the office to re-up until Saturday.

Tomorrow, the Dinosaur Museum and Mt. Rushmore.

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Or, Led Down the Wrong Path.

Well, we finally hit the 90’s today with a high of 91°, but tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 75. So a little let up in the temps.

And along with the heat came afternoon thunderstorms, which meant I was dodging lightning while I was outside working on installing the new starter. And as I figured it was a lot harder to get the starter back on with the solenoid already attached.

According to the manual I should be doing all this with the generator out of the rig and the bottom panel off. Which is why it takes me so long to accomplish this repair.

In fact it took over an hour and a half of fooling with the starter, getting the two bolts started and finally tightened down. Then it was just a matter of connecting up all the wires and then reconnecting the 300amp fuse in the battery bay to put 12 volts back on the generator.

So now it was just a matter of pressing the Start button and listening to it crank, right?

Wrong!

Dead silence.

So now it was back to basics. So I rechecked the wiring that I had reconnected and checked for the high amperage 12 volts at the back of the solenoid.

All OK.

So my next check was for the 12 volt control signal coming from the Start button to the back of the solenoid. Because of the way the wiring harness was routed before I removed the starter, I couldn’t get to this connection before to check it. But getting the wire loose from the back of the solenoid, I put one lead of the voltmeter on it and the other on a ground connection, and pressed the Start button.

No 12 volts.

So next I made up a jumper wire with a spade lug on one end and bare on the other end.  And after plugging it into the back of the solenoid, I touched the bare end to the high amperage 12 volt lug on the back of the solenoid.

And after several tries, the generator cranked up and ran.

So I had just learned a $166 lesson, buying a new starter that I probably didn’t need.

But as I said, before I couldn’t get to the wire anyway. So now I needed to find out why the signal wasn’t getting to the solenoid. So I went back to the copy of the service manual that I had downloaded. And all it told me was the signal from the Start button went into the Controller box and came out to the solenoid. Not a lot of help.

Next I got on the phone to Cummins/Onan for some tech help. I was trying to figure which connector on the controller fed into the wire harness and then out to the solenoid. But as happens, what I was seeing on the generator itself did not match up with what the manual said.

But the tech help wasn’t much help. In fact, since my generator was18 years old, they didn’t have any service data on it, not even a copy of the service manual that I had found online. So I was on my own.

I did try several things to trace the wire with no luck. Then finally I was chased back inside by another thunderstorm rumbling through.

But the pressure is off. I can make the generator run, even if I have to run a a separate wire from the solenoid to inside the rig. But however, we will have the house AC’s running while we’re on our way back to Texas in the next few weeks.

But at least now I have a spare starter.

Tomorrow if it doesn’t rain we’re going up to Deadwood to take a look around.

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