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PNW Trip Stage 1: Worried in Winnemucca
May. 27th, 2015 09:59 pmI was able to get done with work and away from Fernley House at 4 PM today. Including refueling before we left Fernley and topping the tank back off at Winnemucca, we were at the hotel before 7 PM. It should have been at least 45 minutes earlier, but the minivan wouldn't start after we refueled at the Flying J in West Winnemucca.
The hard-starting problem came back, and this time it wouldn't start at all. Lisa puzzled over this for a while, and then said, "Go inside and buy a can of starting fluid." When I came back, she had the hood open and she sprayed the fluid into the air-filter intake, then rushed into the van and turned the key. It started right up just fine. Her diagnosis is that what my mechanic did to get it over the low-idle-stall must have made it not want to start up easily. If this is all that's wrong, we can manage by using the starting fluid whenever the van is sufficiently reluctant to start. Once it's running, everything is just fine, and it ran pretty well on the drive to Winnemucca. Thank goodness the problem happened while we were in a truck stop where we could buy supplies, rather than at a desolate pull-out with no services, where we briefly stopped to make sure the antennas were correctly deployed.
( Nice Evening in the High Desert )
So far I've remembered one thing that I forgot: a jacket. I don't expect to need it during the drive to Spokane or while we're there, but I really should have it by Seaside, where I'm likely to need it. It's not important enough to run back home to get, but we're going to need to see if we can pick me up a new windbreaker during our travels. We'll try Big R (there's one a short distance from the hotel) on our way out tomorrow morning as our first attempt.
I admit to being uneasy about the difficulty the van is having starting, particularly as tomorrow's leg of the trip up US-95 is one of the most desolate parts of the trip, as we drive from Winnemucca to Pendleton. It's probably just as well that there aren't many places we'll want to stop. We may want to make any restroom breaks a tag-team affair with one of us always staying with the van while it idles away, rather than risk restarts when its warm.
The hard-starting problem came back, and this time it wouldn't start at all. Lisa puzzled over this for a while, and then said, "Go inside and buy a can of starting fluid." When I came back, she had the hood open and she sprayed the fluid into the air-filter intake, then rushed into the van and turned the key. It started right up just fine. Her diagnosis is that what my mechanic did to get it over the low-idle-stall must have made it not want to start up easily. If this is all that's wrong, we can manage by using the starting fluid whenever the van is sufficiently reluctant to start. Once it's running, everything is just fine, and it ran pretty well on the drive to Winnemucca. Thank goodness the problem happened while we were in a truck stop where we could buy supplies, rather than at a desolate pull-out with no services, where we briefly stopped to make sure the antennas were correctly deployed.
( Nice Evening in the High Desert )
So far I've remembered one thing that I forgot: a jacket. I don't expect to need it during the drive to Spokane or while we're there, but I really should have it by Seaside, where I'm likely to need it. It's not important enough to run back home to get, but we're going to need to see if we can pick me up a new windbreaker during our travels. We'll try Big R (there's one a short distance from the hotel) on our way out tomorrow morning as our first attempt.
I admit to being uneasy about the difficulty the van is having starting, particularly as tomorrow's leg of the trip up US-95 is one of the most desolate parts of the trip, as we drive from Winnemucca to Pendleton. It's probably just as well that there aren't many places we'll want to stop. We may want to make any restroom breaks a tag-team affair with one of us always staying with the van while it idles away, rather than risk restarts when its warm.
