Sunday, September 29, 2013

Moab, UT - On the Road Again

Please note that the location heading above is very different from the one I’ve been using for a while. We have finally busted our way out of Grand Junction, CO and have headed on over to Moab, UT, a grand journey of 113 miles but a world of difference between the Journeys. Our RV is finally ready to hit the road and we are more than ready to do so.

We’ve been in Grand Junction with engine problems since September 21 (actually we arrived on September 8 and have been dealing with these problems ever since). And, I do mean problems, plural. We arrived with an overheating engine which barely got us over the Continental Divide even after we disconnected our Jeep. As this was being diagnosed and repaired, we developed a problem with the cockpit AC, in short, it didn’t work. Both of these problems could have been solved fairly easily but both were mis-diagnosed, a wrong part was ordered and one part came in damaged and had to be reordered. On the left hand cylinder, you can see how the metal is broken off and not complete. Obviously, this piece can’t seal at all.
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In the end, an undamaged compressor arrived and Stuart, one of their best techs, installed it in record time. We were ready to go. We had made reservations for the night in Moab, the RV was set to travel. All we had to do was hook up the Jeep and wave a fond farewell. Oops. why is the tech dragging out electrical connection testers?
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Why is he putting his work coveralls back on? Why is the manager coming out? Yep, you guessed it, the Bad News Bears (Nancy and Gary) have another problem. Stuart’s asking about where our fuses are, he’s got out his voltmeter, and Gary gets out his wiring diagrams for our RV. (Last year when we bought this RV, he got online and downloaded the wiring diagrams from Winnebago, figuring he might need them someday.

Well, some day is NOW. He and Stuart, the tech, pore over the diagrams, tracing them and all of a sudden, Stuart, jumps up, strides out of the coach, lifts the hood and - voila! a bad switch. Yep, that’s all it was - a bad switch. Not a compressor, just a switch. The manager got on the phone to see if he could locate a switch in Grand Junction but it was 3:00 on a Saturday and there was no switch to be found. Stuart ‘jumped’ the wires, gave Gary instructions, closed the hood, put away his voltmeter, took off his work coveralls and we were as fixed as we were going to be. And, we were happy campers.

Meanwhile, the RV park in Moab had called back and had made a mistake: they had no space for tonight. Looks like another night at the Freightliner parking lot. But, we know that we will be hooking up the Jeep in the morning and heading out. We’re excited.

Our time in the Freightliner parking lot has been interesting. We’ve had:

        2 major engine problems

        several mis-diagnoses

        a wrong part ordered

        a damaged part delivered

Talk about the Bad News Bears. But, I’m sure, others have been in the same situation. I’ve met people who have sat in a Customer Service Center for weeks on end. We were lucky, we were only there 8 days. But it was a bit frustrating since it shouldn’t have taken that long. Here’s a really BAD SIGN: we were there so long that we knew the names of all the employees and were expecting an invitation to the employee Octoberfest.

On the other hand, we’ve seen others with worse problems. Here’s what we saw come in yesterday. The towing guy brought this rig in, lined it up with the Freightliner bay and dropped it right into the middle of the bay. We were impressed.
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Actually, the employees have all been friendly and helpful and embarrassed that all this is happening to us. Freightliner is also working with us on the costs: the bill for the compressor was completely torn up, of course, and other expenses were reduced considerably. We were plugged into their 50 amp power and could use their wi-fi. Life was good but this was not how I expected to spend September.

Meanwhile, Gary wants to replace our wimpy little Jeep Liberty with this manly vehicle.
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I also want to give credit to Gary for all he did to help solve this problem. He had the wiring diagrams which eventually helped solve the problem. Without these, we would have had to wait until Monday to call Winnebago. He also got the RV ready for the techs. Our engine is under our rear closet and everything had to be moved out. I can move clothes but the boards and metal framework under the them had to be removed. Gary also figured out how to remove our floorboards which also helped get to the engine. He’s been talking with the techs, learning, scurrying around trying to get things done that he can do so we don’t have to pay the techs to do some of the simple things. He’s been a busy boy these days.

As Nick Russell, the wordsmith, says, plans are made in jello, just stir that jello and try again. Tomorrow we start with a new batch of jello.

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