kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
Yesterday, we ordered some of the parts for the ignition system in the Rolling Stone. They arrived in Fernley this morning, and this afternoon we went to collect them.

What We Got )

The one part we need but that neither O'Reilly nor NAPA Auto Parts was able to find was the ignition condenser, but NAPA found it online and determined that it is more properly a Ford E0TZ-18832-A Radio Capacitor Assembly. NAPA doesn't stock it, but thanks to what they found for us, we found exactly one left in stock at one place online. There are other similar ones out there that might work, but Lisa would prefer to get parts that are exact matches, on the ground that they are more likely to fit and to do the right job.

When we got home, I ordered this part: $50 including shipping; however, I agree with Lisa that it's better to have the right part if you can get it rather than some half-baked thing that might do the job just to save some money.
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
Yesterday, Lisa started working on the Rolling Stone. She used "Liquid Wrench" to get the nearly-frozen screws to loosen up, and she had access to her full set of tools, which allowed her to get the fasteners loose. This meant that she could get the bracket that holds the air intake filter off, and get closer to the ignition system. She also took off the "doghouse" cover from the inside. It's still very cramped inside the RV's engine compartment.

Identifying Potential Issues )

One other possibility was that something was wrong with the fuel feeds. If that were the case, the engine would start if you sprayed ignition fluid into it, but would die shortly thereafter. Lisa tested that. She sprayed fluid and after getting clear told me to try to start it. No luck. That's actually good news, because it points in the direction of the ignition system (distributor/rotor/coil), not the fuel system.

All of the parts (Ford Motorcraft brand) are available from O'Reilly Auto Parts. We'd have to order them, but their system says that they'd be here the next day. We'll place an order once Lisa is ready to start moving on this.

Breakdown

May. 22nd, 2024 08:34 am
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
This is a continuation about which I hinted in my post yesterday about bringing the Astro home. Our luck ran out on the Rolling Stone. As I mentioned yesterday, we started the RV in Fernley and did not turn it off, as the problem had appeared to be just getting the vehicle started in the first place. Until yesterday, once the RV started, it would run just fine. Unfortunately, that would turn out to not be the case yesterday.

After collecting the Astro, we set off for home, with Lisa leading in the minivan and me driving the RV. About five miles north of Yerrington, the RV quit running. Fortunately, there was a shoulder, albeit not as flat as I would have liked. Not all of US-95 on this route has a decent place to get off the road safely. I called to Lisa on the radio, "I've lost power" and she also pulled over.

From the symptoms, Lisa had enough additional information to make an educated guess about what went wrong. But we did not have a lot of tools, other than some emergency tools in the Astro. Lisa popped the hood and removed the "doghouse" cover inside the RV and had a look.

Under the Hood )

After puzzling over this for a while, Lisa buttoned things back up again and suggested I try starting the RV again. For a wonder, it started right up. Plan B was now to (we hoped) make our way home. But she reminded me that if the vehicle quit again to immediately shift into neutral to preserve momentum, and to be constantly on the lookout for safe "landing" spaces.

We got about one mile further north before the RV quit again. However, I was ready for it, and coasted on an okay (and flatter than the first spot) space off the road.

Lisa concluded that she should do nothing more under these conditions. I called AAA, submitting a service ticket and specifying that this is an automatic transmission vehicle that has to be transported either on a flatbed (ideal) but in any event with its rear wheels off the ground.

Around an hour later a AAA flatbed dispatched from Yerrington arrived and began the process of getting us home.

Recovering the Stone )

After getting everything secured once we got home, Lisa asked me to go get us a pizza, and I was happy to oblige, driving over to collect it in the now-operating Astro.

This situation could have been much worse. It was a pleasant spring day, and was not especially hot or cold. There was no rain or other bad weather. We were able to park safely off the road. AAA was able to haul us home. I'm glad I keep my AAA membership dues paid, and that I have a AAA Plus membership, which includes up to 100 miles towing. The Astro is back with us and appears to be working well. So now it's just a case of working on the RV as our resources permit.

I, however, was worn out from the stress of yesterday, and while I slept like a rock (or should that be a rolling stone?), it was not enough, and I'm not totally steady today. An early bedtime and/or a nap are in order, time permitting.
kevin_standlee: (SMOF License)
After work today, we tried starting the Rolling Stone and it started right up, so we decided to go with Plan A and simply drive to Yerrington to collect the RV from Wild West Chevrolet without turning off the RV, then driving home.

The minivan was waiting. They did a lot of work on it, replacing the condenser (the most expensive part), which had been leaking, an AC hose assembly (second most expensive), and bunch of other parts. There was a whole lot of labor on this as well. The total cost, including some difficult to source parts and labor, was over $3400. The total cost including the work done in February: $10,300. Still cheaper than buying a new car, but also painful.

Speaking of painful, it took us a whole lot longer to get home than expected, for reasons I will explain tomorrow. However, the Astro ran just fine, and produced lots of nice cold air for the whole trip. Lisa and I talked about how much more comfortable the Winnipeg road trip would have been last year had we had working AC and didn't have a Service Engine Soon light on for the entire trip.

And We're Home )

I am too tired to write about the problems we had with the Rolling Stone, so I will save that story for tomorrow. For now, suffice it to say that I'm very glad I keep my AAA dues up to day at the AAA plus level.
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
Today I got a call from the GM dealership: after two months, they say that they've finally fixed the Astro's air conditioning. I just have to come down to Yerrington and pay them $3500. Initially, I figured that Lisa and I would take the Rolling Stone there tomorrow and convoy back, because we had an appointment in Reno today, but now it looks like the RV has other plans.

First about the errands: the key one was a dentist appointment for Lisa, and we took care of that. We also had one task before the dentist and several planned others. However, a small problem with the RV started getting worse and worse, and almost got us trapped inside a locked parking lot.

The RV has been having some difficulty starting lately. It's not the starter motor or the battery — there's plenty of power and the engine turns over just fine. However, sometimes it just won't catch. Once it catches, it runs fine. It's also not consistent. Sometimes it will start immediately, and sometimes it takes all sorts of tries with it.

After the dentist appointment, we went to Mill End Fabrics, getting there an hour before they closed at 6 PM. Their parking lot is gated and there are signs warning you that you'll get stuck if you hang around after closing. Our business in the store took only fifteen minutes. The van, which had started on the first try leaving the dentist, turned over a lot but wouldn't start. Lisa tried various things, but we weren't in a good position for troubleshooting. Just as I was about to hope that AAA could possibly get there with a vehicle that could get us out of their lot by 6 PM (unlikely), I tried one more time and the engine caught.

Of course, all other errands for today were canceled, and we headed straight for home.

Lisa has various ideas, and may try to troubleshoot it tomorrow. We even have a plan to be able to use the RV to collect the Astro, assuming we can get the RV to start once: drive to Yerrington and leave it running while I go in and pay for the minivan repairs and collect the keys, after which Lisa takes the wheel of the Astro and I the Rolling Stone and we convoy home from there. If the RV won't start, Lisa says she can take me in her little pickup truck.

So it appears that we're getting my primary vehicle back just in time, as we may need to go get parts based on Lisa's troubleshooting, or in case we have to convoy to a repair shop (again, assuming the RV will start the first time).
kevin_standlee: (Kreegah Bundalo)
No winners on our lottery tickets this time. I have $8 in winners from the previous draw. I have six months to collect them, and I'd rather wait until I'm going that way (at least somewhere in California) to cash them rather than make a special trip.

Using the Rolling Stone for errand-running is harder than it might look. The RV doesn't handle very well, even with a steering stabilizer, and it's clumsy to park. When we were dropping the recycling, I managed to back into one of the dumpsters. (No harm done, thank goodness; I was going less than 1 mph.) Parking is always an issue with the RV, and so making a bunch of different stops around town causes stress that is not always obvious. Today, I found myself feeling badly out of sorts, and have called off all further planned chores that I'd hoped to get done today. Besides, it has been snowing off and on again, albeit that nothing is sticking.

If I'm really lucky, I'll get to bed early today.
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
Yesterday afternoon, Lisa and I drove to Sparks to collect the Rolling Stone from Big O Tires. I paid $1539 for major brake repairs. To my annoyance, I discovered after I got home that they hadn't deducted the $25 discount from the coupon offer I gave them when I checked it in. You would think they could at least give me that.

Back Home Again )

Since we were in Sparks anyway, we went to WinCo Foods for grocery shopping. I wish we had not done so and had put it off until the wee hours of Saturday morning as we often do. The queues were huge. I think we spent more time queued than we did actually shopping, even after Lisa sent me to get in line while she took a second cart to get other things. We spent the queue time trading off while one or the other of us went back to get things we'd initially forgotten.

After WinCo, we went to Raley's to get some higher-quality things that we cannot get at WinCo.

We like WinCo, but it's essentially too popular to shop there during daytime hours. While standing in the queue, I told Lisa, "Next time, we'll come shopping at 2 AM Saturday," and the person in line ahead of us was astonished to learn that the store is open 24 hours a day. It only says so in big letters on the outside of the building.

Amtrak Woes

Mar. 2nd, 2024 03:21 pm
kevin_standlee: (Pointless Arrow)
Amtrak canceled trains 5/6 (the California Zephyr) west of Salt Lake City due to the severe weather conditions out here. I can see that it would have been pretty difficult for them to get through. Interstate 80 has been closed most of today, and I've not seen many trains of any sort here. Thursday was the last westbound Amtrak coming this way before the cancellations. The westbound train was running more than nine hours late, and we were following its progress on Amtrak's Track Your Train map. The train came to a halt at Darwin siding (east of Fernley), but we did not hear anything on the radio scanner to explain why. Venturing out into the howling windstorm, we could see lots of red blinking lights down the tracks. After maybe an hour, the wind had subsided a bit and Amtrak finally came through, but the blinking lights were still there, so we got in the Astro and drove down to Main Street Park (former home of the Bottlecap Gazebo). We could see lots of fire engines and a bucket truck on the opposite side of the tracks, but no obvious fire. Lisa then noticed that none of the houses in that are were showing any lights. It was too dark to take any photos, but the next morning when I ran out to get some milk, I saw what appears to explain the emergency vehicles, the lack of lights on the houses, and the extra hour of delay that afflicted Amtrak.

The Next Day )

Although the Rolling Stone is ready to be collected, we told Big O not to expect us until Monday. There's no sense trying to drive that RV in a wind storm.

Edit, March 3: There had been a bucket truck out there the night before when I couldn't take pictures, but I've had it pointed out to me that there was no bucket on the truck in this picture and it was actually a pole truck designed to hold a pole in position like this pending a proper fix.
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
For the 2 1/2 months that the minivan was in the shop, I had to use the Rolling Stone as my "runabout," a role for which it is not at all suited. On top of its horrible gas mileage (about 8.5 mpg), it has needed a brake job since before the Astro went into the shop. Now that I have the Astro back, it was time to get to work on the RV. A discount coupon from Big O that arrived in yesterday's mail may help cut the cost somewhat.

After work this afternoon, Lisa and I convoyed in to Sparks, and I turned the keys over to them. I made it clear that I assumed this would take several days, and besides, I don't want to have to come back to Reno/Sparks until the storms that are moving in tomorrow have passed.

Lisa and I did some grocery shopping in the Astro since we were in town anyway. We balked at WinCo, where the queues were huge. (There's a reason we normally only got to WinCo during the wee hours.) Raley's had enough for us to supplement what's already in our larder, so we headed for home.

We did have an annoying setback with the Astro on the way into Sparks, about which I'll write tomorrow. It looks like the repairs on the minivan aren't over yet.
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
When we had to swap in the spare tire on the Rolling Stone back when one of the tires failed, and after we replaced the four main tires, we were left with a problem. One of the carriage bolts, or rather, one of the fittings on that bolt, had failed, and we could not re-mount the spare on the bracket on the rear of the RV. It turned out to not be a simple fix. Most hardware places at which we checked didn't have the part we needed. We had to keep the spare tire inside the RV, which was highly inconvenient. It's a good thing I didn't need to use the vehicle for sleeping.

Anyway, yesterday, Lisa was finally able to put together a solution. It's not the perfect fix, but it works.

Back in Action )

The spare tire needs to be replaced. It has cracked sidewalls, just like the main tires. We should, however, be able to buy another tire from TireRack.com, and because they have a warehouse at the industrial park between Fernley and Reno, we can go pick it up from their will-call dock at a discount. We already know the small shop near our house can mount the tires without a problem. Now we just need to get around to doing it.
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
Despite my foolishly leaving the door of the Rolling Stone open, allowing snow into the RV and leaving the dome light on overnight Saturday-into-Sunday, the RV started right up today when I went to buy some milk and then go refuel the vehicle. Conveniently, the weather was pretty nice today, which also gave me an opportunity to bring in more firewood before the next round of storms.

The forecast here is a mix of rain and snow, but nothing like the pounding that they got in California.
kevin_standlee: The SERVICE ENGINE SOON indicator light on Kevin's Chevrolet Astro minivan. (Service Engine Soon)
I called Wild West Chevrolet in Yerrington this afternoon to check on the minivan. The good news is that they haven't forgotten about me. The bad news is that some of the parts needed to repair it are difficult to get and that they are still working on it.

I continue to have to use the Rolling Stone as my regular vehicle, which is expensive, and probably about to get more expensive as I'm pretty sure that the RV needs an extensive brake job. The brakes still work, but it's unclear how much needs to be done. Also, with the Big Orange Van offline and the Small Orange Pickup needing a bit of reconfiguration if it is to carry more than one person in it (and person 1 is always Lisa as I can't drive a manual transmission), we are running out of spares for me to put the RV into the shop for repairs.

How long before the dealership gets the parts for the Astro, nobody knows.
kevin_standlee: Fernley House and the East Lot covered with about 10 cm of accumulated snow (Snow Day 2)
The weather forecast I saw online predicted that we would get about 4 cm of snow last night.

How About more like 40? )

I'm not sure, but I think that this is the second-largest snowfall we've had in a single storm since we moved here in 2011. There was one storm that dropped more, and it was followed by several more storms without a warm spell, so the snow accumulated quite a bit. Yes, this is still nothing compared to people in the Midwest or Northeast who get really big storms, but 40 cm of snow in one night is quite a bit by our standards.
kevin_standlee: Fernley House and the East Lot covered with about 10 cm of accumulated snow (Snow Day 2)
That wasn't a very big snow storm, but it did leave about 3 cm on the ground here in Fernley. It was bigger in the mountains, where chain controls over I-80 reached from the western edge of Reno all the way down to Colfax overnight. Today was clear but cold, so lots of snow did not melt.

Nice Winter Day )

Lisa offered to make spaghetti if I could go get some ground beef, so late in the afternoon I gingerly coaxed the Rolling Stone over to Grocery Outlet. That's how I learned that the main roads, including Interstate 80, were clear. Parking lots, however, were another matter, and I took it very carefully getting out of the store's ice-and-snow-covered lot with no mishap.

I count myself lucky that I don't have to do a lot of traveling.
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
After dinner tonight, Lisa and I drove over to the part of town where a bunch of homes put up a bunch of Christmas decorations to watch the light show. I like how they don't seem to closely repeat themselves from what I remember last year. One home that I remember having had a very large display is completely dark, but Lisa pointed out that this is because it appears to now be vacant.

We didn't go looking for other displays in part because I don't like wrestling the Rolling Stone through relatively narrow streets, but from past experience, we know that where we went tonight is probably something like 80% of the decorations in town.
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
As I mentioned in a previous entry, my dentist recommended removing and replacing two crowns. The cost per crown is $1800. My insurance only covers $1000/year. So today I took a half-day off from work to drive to Reno and have the first crown removed. We'll do the second one on January 2, when my dental benefits reset. They will then send the casts off to the lab to be done, and when they come back, they will install the new crowns. Until then, I have a temporary crown on the first tooth.

This will actually be the third crown on that tooth, because it was crowned once, and then the crown had to be removed to do a root canal on that tooth and a second crown installed. That's the only root canal I've had.

The removal procedure wasn't too bad; nowhere near as bad as the original root canal. I now have the removed gold crown here with me. I expect to take this and the other crown and see if there's any money to be made by selling them for the gold value.

I was grateful to discover that there is on-street parking near my dentist's office, because maneuvering the Rolling Stone into the spaces in their parking lot is tricky, whereas on-street parking is relatively easy.

After paying the $800 that's my share of the first treatment (thank goodness for my healthcare savings account!), I thought I had enough time to get the oil changed in the RV. It has been almost four years since I changed the oil in the Rolling Stone, and while for much of that time I didn't operate it — there was a year where it moved less than one mile — I did think I should get the oil changed. I had a 3 PM chiropractic appointment in Fernley, but I had several hours, and I've rarely been at Jiffy Lube more than an hour, so I headed over there.

It took them nearly three hours to get the word done. There were only three vehicles ahead of me, but one of them must have been immensely complicated. Once they had the RV on the block, it did not take that long, even though I also agreed to have the rear differential fluid changed. It looked awful: dark and sludge-like rather than the relatively light, clear oil that it normally should be.

I called the chiropractor when it became clear that I wasn't going to make the 3 PM appointment and they told to come at 4 PM. I though that would be fine, but as I didn't get out of Jiffy Lube in Sparks until after 3 PM, I though I was screwed. Fortunately, there wasn't a lot of traffic working my way from the shop to I-80, and the afternoon crunch hadn't happened yet. Once I got clear of Sparks I put the pedal to the metal, which is something I really do not like doing with the fuel-hungry 460 engine, but I did not have any choice.

Luck seems to have been with me: I made it with five minutes to spare, and the chiropractor's office was running slightly late anyway, so all was well.

So as I said, this is the first of two crown renewals. For most of the next month or more, I'll be living with temporary crowns in the upper right and later lower right portions of my mouth.
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
Yesterday we took the Rolling Stone to Reno to get a small living Christmas tree and to do some shopping. Ordinarily, we would rather not do this on a Saturday afternoon, but our options were constrained. Also, as the RV isn't that maneuverable, it limits some of the places we can go. For that matter, while it's not obvious, the cargo capacity of the RV is less than that of the Astro, because while the RV has a lot more cube, it's mostly full of appliances and a bed. Anyway, we got the little tree (larger than past years, as we couldn't find a smaller one) and got most, but not all of the shopping done before heading home.

It's unclear how long that the Astro will be in for repairs. Until then, we have to use the RV as a runabout, a job for which it is ill suited. Today, I went and refueled the rear gas tank, which holds 20 gallons and was nearly empty. The 9.8 miles/gallon (Yerrington-Fernley-Reno-Fernley plus local errands) was actually pretty good for the RV, but nonetheless it does mean we want to limit trips.

I had ambitions for several complex things this weekend, but in the end I spent so much time sleeping that I didn't have time to work on most of them. Maybe this week.
kevin_standlee: The SERVICE ENGINE SOON indicator light on Kevin's Chevrolet Astro minivan. (Service Engine Soon)
Besides my needing to catch up on the lost sleep from SMOFCon, I also had neglected to restart the fireplace when I got home, so I stayed in bed where it was warm and did not get up yesterday until after 11 AM. I could not stay in bed all day, as much as I wanted to do so, because I had an appointment with the GM dealership in Yerrington to take in the Astro and try and fix the several different issues, starting with the computer reporting an EGR failure even after we replaced it. Also needed is a new muffler and a look at the air conditioner, possibly including re-connecting the rear lines to the front. There's also the rattle that we think is due to those disconnected lines.

Anyway, later in the afternoon after I pulled myself together, Lisa and I convoyed to Yerrington (about 50 miles each way, with me driving the Rolling Stone and Lisa driving the Astro) and delivered the minivan to the dealership. We explained all of the issues we want them to investigate. I signed a disclaimer acknowledging the issues involved with working on older vehicles and that it could take them a while to diagnose everything. That's why we had waited so long before putting it into the shop; our travels are done for a while, so we can give them plenty of time to work on it.

We then drove home to Fernley in the RV, which will need to be our van-about-town until we get the Astro back. It's not ideal, but it will work.
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
When we started getting the Rolling Stone ready for use again thanks to the work Lisa was doing on the Astro, initially the van wouldn't start at all. We figured that was because it had set for nearly a year. Lisa put the van on the battery charger and all seem well, although we had the setback with the power windows. After Lisa fixed that window regulator, I started using the RV while she undogged the Astro and looked into the issue with the EGR valve. Unfortunately, the day before yesterday, the RV wouldn't start again. It had some power, but not enough to start the vehicle.

This afternoon, Lisa pulled the vehicle battery (there's a separate "hotel" battery for the RV appliances) and we took it over to O'Reilly, where we bought this one originally in January of 2021. When we got there, we realized that we were still within the 36 month warranty period for this battery. It took them a little while, but they were able to eventually find my original purchase, and we did a like-for-like swap, saving me more than $200. Lisa bought a new battery cable (just in case) and we headed for home.

Battery Swap )

The RV started up immediately. That's one of the few times a warranty has worked for anything I've bought. But perhaps I should run the vehicle at least once a month from now on even if I'm not using it as regularly as I was when I was living out of it in the Bay Area.
kevin_standlee: (Rolling Stone)
One of the things holding up our attempts to repair the Astro was that when we started to use the Rolling Stone as our temporary transportation, we discovered two problems, both with the windows. The driver's side window would not roll up or down. That wasn't a show stopper. The passenger window, however, would only roll down and not go back up again. We were able to push it back into place temporarily, but it appeared that the power window regulator (the part the makes the window go up and down) was in trouble. We did a bit of searching, and to our surprise we found an exact match for our precise year, chassis, and model of vehicle, and it was even for the Chinook RV conversion. If you're curious, here's the video:



Watching this video made us feel much better, as Lisa was sure she could make this repair.

The doors on the RV have a whole lot of fiddly bits on them, and you have to take everything off to get down to the bare metal of the E350 that Ford sold to Chinook for the RV conversion. After taking off the large number of screws, caps, molding, speaker brackets, etc., Lisa finally was able to get at the nuts that hold the regulator motor in place. With me holding on to the window to pull it up while she worked on it, she was able to get the motor loose, and we set it out on some papers (misprinted signs from Pemmi-Con, as it happens) to take apart the regulator.

What a Mess )

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