They Say It Always Come In Threes . . .
At Least I Hope It’s Only Three!
Well, I guess I saved my client $5,000.00 today by getting Census Bureau’s 2017 Economic Census finished up and submitted online. The review process said there were no errors, so hopefully there won’t be any problems. But if government agents show up at the front door, “I Know Nu…ting.”
Now to recap our recent Florida trip:
First up, our rig’s oil leak is back. Or maybe never left. Although after the oil filter was replaced, thinking it was the problem, and an hour-long high idle and a 45 minute test drive showed no sign of a leak, when I did a walk-around at our first rest stop about 90 minute down the road, our toad was again oil-speckled.
And then toward the end of the day’s travels to Beaux Bridge, I started to notice the slight drop in oil pressure that indicates a drop in oil level. And it continued for the rest of the trip out and back. So every 300-400 miles I had to add a couple of gallons of Shell Rotella 15w-40.
Coming home from Breaux Bridge, I tried placing my Endoscope from the top of the engine to monitor the area where the leak seems to be coming from (somewhere above the oil filter), but there was just too much vibration to be able to see anything useful.
When the RV Mobile Lube guy was out here replacing the oil filter, he said there was something funny about the a tube of some sort above the oil filter, so I’m going to put one of my Wyze Cams on the end of a pole and look down in there to see what I find. Then I might try the high-idle thing again.
Second up, while we were staying in the Gulf Shores area on our way out, our 2004 Dodge Dakota toad decided our transmission no longer needed 3rd, 4th, or 5th gear. Starting off, it shifts through 1st and 2nd just fine, but when it upshifts to where 3rd should be, it just races like it’s in Neutral.
But if we drop it down to 2nd on the gearshift, if stays in 2nd and let us drive around at 40-45 with no problems. Just slow.
Luckily, while we were in Florida Nick let us borrow his Ford Explorer to get around. Making the 150 mile trip down to West Palm Beach at 40 mph would have been tedious.
So now it’s a two prong attack. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be taking the truck into Snider Transmission to let them take a look at it. A little Googling shows that this is not an unknown problem and may be something as simple as a broken bolt or a blown seal. But since the Dakota has 282,000 miles on the odometer and another 88,000 miles being towed that doesn’t register on the odometer, my plan B has me looking at new (to us) possible replacements.
Now I’m checking out www.cargurus.com and www.truecar.com, and cross referencing possibilities with the Dinghy Towing Guides found at Motorhome Magazine’s website.
And thirdly, when we got home on Monday and got set up, our desktop computer was working fine. However when we got up Tuesday morning our Acer Monitor had died. I mean, it’s only 9 years old. So what’s up with that?
So I put in an Amazon overnight delivery order for a new Acer S241HL 24-inch monitor, a step up from the 21-inch we did have. And about $90 cheaper than the 2009 model.
Besides being bigger, it’s also much sharper and brighter. Things have improved a lot since 2009.
So that’s about it for our trip. Hopefully nothing else is on the horizon for a while.
Thought for the Day:
“Why is it that when one man builds a fence, the next man immediately needs to know what’s on the other side?”
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