Our RV Adventures

I spent the morning on RV.net trying to get some more input on our rig’s oil filter problem. It’s probably been about 10 years since I’ve been on RV.net, But from the summer of 2006 until around the end of 2009, I pretty much lived on there.

During the summer of 2006 I told Jan that we didn’t really have to wait until we ‘retired’ to start RV’ing, but we could go ahead and start working toward it now. So we did.

But there was a problem. I knew pretty much nothing about RV’ing, beyond knowing we wanted a Class A motor coach. So I spent the next 18 months or so absorbing everything I could about the RV world. And then in December 2007 we bought our American Eagle and hit the road to Alaska in February 2008.

Of course that was by way of Casa Grande, Yuma, San Diego, LA, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, Colorado Springs, Billings, and Bellingham, before we entered Canada the first part of April.

All I say is that  so far, so good.

sfdg

So this is what I posted in the Tech area of RV.net:

Back in May 2018, I had RV Mobile Lube come out and service the Cummins 350 ISC engine in our 1999 American Eagle Class A, just as they’ve done every couple of years or so since we bought our coach in 2007.

About a month later we left Houston on a 2000+ mile trip up to Illinois and back down thru Alabama, and then back to Houston. we very quickly discovered we were leaking oil, about a gallon every 250 miles or so, turning our tow vehicle black. So to keep our schedule we just added oil as needed along the way.

Checking it was obvious that the leakage was coming from around the oil filter itself. But retightening it did not help. Talking with Cummins, they thought it was probably a defective filter.

So when we got back to Houston a few weeks later, I called RV Mobile Lube and they came back out and replaced the filter. After running the engine at high idle for about 45 minutes, we had no sign of any leaks. But to be sure we took the rig out a 50-mile test drive at both Interstate and side street speeds, again with no leaks.

Thinking we had the problem fixed, in October we headed down to Florida on another 2000+ mile round-trip. And we still had leaking oil.

Getting home about 3 weeks later, and talking with Cummins again, they thought it was probably burn-on residue where the oil filter gasket contacts the adapter. So I dropped the filter and cleaned the gasket seat thoroughly. And another test drive showed no leakage.

But on a 500-mile round-trip in April 2019 we still had leakage. It was starting to dawn on us that we only had leakage when we were towing our pickup truck.

Back on the phone, a Cummins tech said it had to be the gasket between the oil cooler and the oil filter adapter.

Supposedly all I had to do was to remove the filter, remove the 4 bolts holding the adapter on, clean it and replace the gasket, and then put it all back together.

Well, removing the filter and the 4 bolts went fine, but the adapter won’t come loose. And even tapping with a rubber mallet didn’t help.

Finally, I put the old filter back on and ended up rapping it with the mallet, again with no luck. It was stuck tight.

Back on the phone with Cummins, the tech went away for about 10 minutes, he came back and told that the center post was actually a bolt and needed to be removed too.

But the tech bulletin they sent me doesn’t match up with what I have.

On my adapter, the center shaft is not a bolt. So now I’m stuck.
But before I get back on the phone to Cummins I thought I throw this out to the group.
Anyone run into this before or have any ideas about how to get the adapter off.

So far I’ve gotten a couple of replies, but nothing helpful yet.

Here’s hoping, though.

We had planned to get together with Brandi and her family for her birthday tomorrow, but she’s got a business trip to San Diego coming up on Monday so she wanted to put it off until next weekend.

Ever notice how all the ‘business’ conferences are in places like San Diego, Miami, Hilton Head, or Las Vegas? And not in places like Detroit, Toledo, or Cleveland?

Why is that?

About 4pm we headed out to have dinner at our nearby favorite Los Ramirez . Jan got her usual Pechuga Rellana, a grilled chicken breast over grilled broccoli and shrimp, while I got my Beef Fajita Taco Salad with Queso, staying Keto by not eating the Taco Shell, of course.

Thought For The Day:

The Law of Unintended Consequences.

In colonial India, Delhi suffered a proliferation of cobras, which was a problem very clearly in need of a solution given the sorts of things that cobras bring, like death. To cut the number of cobras slithering through the city, the local government placed a bounty on them. This seemed like a perfectly reasonable solution. The bounty was generous enough that many people took up cobra hunting, which led exactly to the desired outcome: The cobra population decreased. And that’s where things get interesting.

As the cobra population fell and it became harder to find cobras in the wild, people became rather entrepreneurial. They started raising cobras in their homes, which they would then kill to collect the bounty as before. This led to a new problem: Local authorities realized that there were very few cobras evident in the city, but they nonetheless were still paying the bounty to the same degree as before.

City officials did a reasonable thing: They canceled the bounty. In response, the people raising cobras in their homes also did a reasonable thing: They released all of their now-valueless cobras back into the streets. Who wants a house full of cobras?

In the end, Delhi had a bigger cobra problem after the bounty ended than it had before it began.

In other words, We’re from the government and we’re here to help you.

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