[Jackflash]

The Plan - Pick up the three Granddaughters in Dallas, head up to Michigan to visit Dianna's family for a bit, run up to Petoskey to do some sight-seeing with the girls then swing by Cincinnati to visit with my sister for a couple days on the way home.  Simple, right?

The reality - Everything seems ok as we head out, air pressures don't seem to come up as quickly as usual but they do come up, we get out of the driveway without issue and merrily make our way to Dallas in anticipation of seeing the girls for the first time in 5 or 6 weeks (they spend July with their Dad, they actually live just a few minutes from us).  When we meet up with them it becomes painfully obvious we have a problem, if we shut the engine down for even a couple of minutes we loose air pressure to the point that the doors barely operate, the toilet won't flush and the rear end squats down.  We spend the night at Newell's facility, should have called it good and just left it there to figure out what was going on.  I carry a spare pancake compressor which I had to hook up to the service port to keep pressure up for the facilities, weird thing is the seals don't loose pressure unless you leave everything shut down for a couple of days.  I'm thankful for that as we encountered a lot of really hard rains.

Back the the story though, we got up Sunday morning ready to head for the hinterlands but again had to let the engine run for a bit to achieve working pressures.  Spent the night in beautiful Joliet, IL and again I have to use my back up compressor to keep everything working but the engine brings everything up to snuff in a couple of minutes for travel.  That afternoon we arrived in Cedar Springs, MI and proceed to park the rig in the barn driveway of a friend where we planned to leave it for several days while staying with Dianna's folks and sister.  As a result of our usual stellar communication skills, the right rear wheels dropped off into a very shallow ditch.  Not having realized the situation; I started pulling forward to improve my alignment with the drive, this resulted in the bottom edge of the engine access door (hood if you will) catching on the ground and flexing it enough to create a 6" long crack starting at the curb side of the panel at point of the latch.  It has also jammed the drivers side latch such that I can't raise the panel to access the engine.  Didn't seem to cause any other damage other kinking the air line to the brake quick connect for my tow vehicle which I repaired the next day.

Over the next 5 days I visited the rig daily to run the generator to keep the batteries charged up.  I had the back-up compressor hooked up to keep things working and it cycled on and off as needed.  The coach maintained it's posture, the seals inflated and all air operated equipment worked.  When we are ready to move to Petoskey I notice it takes longer to come up to pressure and I have to fast idle to do it, once under way all is well and looking normal.  When we arrive, we end up idling while we check in and disconnect the Jeep, during which time it looses pressure and the rear end squats.  I have to fast idle for a bit to bring it up so that we can move on to our site.  As we rolled toward our site we were just idling along and again we lost pressure and had to fast idle in order to raise the coach enough to get it into the site and still lightly drug the generator muffler.  By now this was getting really old.  At this point the on board compressor was running continuously and I still had to occasionally supplement it with the back-up to get the toilet to flush.

We were there for 5 days and when preparing to leave I had to idle at about 1500 RPM for several minutes to get the pressures up and this was after spending about 30 minutes trying to get the driver side window awning reeled in.  We headed into Cincinnati, arriving in time to catch rush hour, fortunately we kept moving just enough to keep the pressures up.  Unfortunately we took a wrong turn and ended up driving through some really narrow twisty roads including a one lane bridge barely wide and tall enough to fit through. I had noticed the rig putting out a puff of smoke when transitioning from deceleration to acceleration, something it had never done before. By the time we got to it was loosing more speed going up the hills than normal and after slowing to about 10 MPH to cross that bridge there was a fairly long moderate grade, I couldn't get over 18 MPH and it was putting out a lot of blue/white smoke. I remembered threads on this forum about this and immediately thought "fuel fiter", I was right.   Finally we arrived at the FMCA campground and I use that term loosely.  When we plugged into the post the transfer switch would not trip to engage shore power, I called Newell to see what I could do about it and Mike told me that I could manually trip it then wedge something into it to hold it in place as a temporary fix till I got home and could investigate further.  What I didn't notice was that my volt meters above the drivers seat were only indicating voltage on one leg, something I noticed the two nights later in Nashville.  We experienced more of the same as far as the air system go for our stay there. While there I replaced the filter in the Davco, fixed my power problems.

Sunday afternoon we decide to leave a day early to head home, it takes what seems like 5 minutes of idling at 1500 to get things set this time and apparently they weren't all the way there when we pulled out of the park as the rear skid plate drug as we negotiated the almost full u-turn required to get out of the park and onto the road.  I pulled over to check things out but it appears nothing but the skid plate touched ground.  Outside of Louisville we encountered about a twenty minute backup due to an 18 wheeler catching fire on the shoulder of the highway and every time we came to a stop I had to shift into neutral and raise the RPM to keep my pressures up.  Made the 12 hour drive home without further incident, until we reached my driveway.  I have to turn into the street directly across form my drive, unhook the jeep then back into the drive.  While unhooked of course the coach squatted down and I had to rev the engine to rebuild air but it never really happened.  I turned on the leveling system to raise the coach and Dianna said it looked like it was high enough to clear the hump so I started to slowly back in.  unfortunately it wasn't high enough and the Aquahot exhaust hit ground, I tried to raise the coach more but it wasn't happening so I pulled it back across the street to assess the situation.  when I got out of the coach I noticed an antifreeze looking liquid dripping below the Aquahot and a puddle of it at the entrance to my drive, not good.  with the help of a couple of neighbors we build some ramps that allow me to get into the drive with no further damage.  Oh, did I mention that when we pulled up to stop and unhook the Jeep, I looked in my mirror and noticed what looked like smoke coming from the drivers side rear wheel well?  I immediately walked back there and felt the drive wheel and it wasn't particularly hot nor did it smell hot so I ruled out brakes dragging and looked up between the tires and noticed what looked like oil coating the inner and outer sidewall of the inner tire.  Apparently the bearing seal has gone south, this is a seal that Newell replaced about 16 months ago.  I already knew I had a leaking seal on the right front wheel (replaced by a shop here in town about 2 1/2 years ago) but it isn't nearly as bad, in the 1500 mile drive home it just sent a few very light streaks to the edge of the wheel but nothing reached the tire sidewall.  Fun times!

Got the rig parked in the garage and plugged into the power and still only one leg working so I took pictures of the labels on the panel and start the search for a replacement.  Those things are over $400, luckily I have a tendency to read everything on those labels in case part numbers have been superseded so that I can match specs.  It struck me when I saw a blurb on the label saying that the switch would not work if receiving power from only one leg of a 240v circuit.  The combination of that note and the fact that my volt meters were only registering voltage on one leg made me stop and think about what was happening.  Suddenly a light went on, I remembered just before this trip I was running the shore line back in with the Glendinning and didn't get it stopped quickly enough allowing the plug to slam into the guide.  The subsequent use of the plug over the next few days finished pulling the wire loose form contacts in the plug, an easy fix, everything is once again powered up.  Now for the air and the Aquahot issues, not such an easy fix I'm sure.