Miscellaneous Stuff

We're back at Williams in Tucson, but, at this point, we are just waiting for the bill. The temporary cable for the throttle seems to have cured the problem, so at least we can say we have a solution in hand.

We've decided to just replace the ends of the three wires leading into the ECM, on the theory that the most likely source of cable troubles is the set of well-worn pins in the connector. Also, jury-rigging the throttle, bypassing the main harness, caused our high-idle control to stop working, since it shares two of those pins. If the problem comes back, we'll probably just live with it until we can find the time to excavate into the cable chase to run some new wires. We're pretty confident that the occasional throttle drop-out is not causing any damage.

Williams decided to allow us to keep the ECM that is currently installed, which was their test unit. As such, it's a bit grungy, but seems to be working fine, and this saves us the labor expense of swapping it back out with our original unit. So this morning, the tech removed the temporary cable, lopped off the last couple inches of wire with the connector pins still attached, and spliced them in to the appropriate wires in the harness.

In other related news, I spent a good deal of last night tracing the speed sensor wiring and the transmission diagnostic connector. I was able to repair the latter item, and the transmission tech was able to get into the unit with a reader today and confirm that everything is normal with the tranny. On the speed sensor, it looks like all the wiring is good between the "Maximum Feature Throttle Interface" unit and both the DDEC and ATEC ECM's, so either the transmission ECM is not sending the speed signal, or the interface unit has a problem. I'm hunting around for a replacement interface to see if we can get our speed sensor working.

Just for fun, I will post this map link to our current location. If you zoom in all the way you can actually see the service bay in which we are sitting, compared to the link I posted previously, which clearly shows us in the customer parking area. The level of detail available now on Google Maps (and Google Earth) in some areas is truly amazing. I noticed, by the way, that zooming our January 30th map link in all the way shows us in an empty dirt lot -- trust me, there is a shopping center there now. The detail level is high, but some of the satellite imagery is a couple years old.

From here, assuming all systems are working properly when we drive off the lot, we will head into the mountains east of here, just shy of Benson, to visit our friend who lives in his Airstream a dozen miles down a dirt Forest Service road. We should be able to get most of the way to his property with no trouble, and will boondock on some nearby National Forest land.

Cruisin' along

Another big update today on Odyssey's repairs. Before I start in on that, though, I have an update on our schedule: we're going on another cruise. I mentioned in my last post that Louise's dad is celebrating his 70th, and they are cruising South America for the occasion, and have invited us along. Well, we're now booked, at least for the cruise portion of the trip.

Since the cruise finishes in San Francisco, we will be flying to South America out of the bay area mid-March, and will leave Odyssey in good hands there. Since we'll be gone about a month, we are still trying to find arrangements for the dog and the two cats -- we really don't want to just put them in a kennel that long. Mostly because they hate the kennel (and don't get enough human interaction there, or even interaction with each other), partly because they come back to us worse for wear (the cats overeat and under-exercise, and the dog nervously licks all the fur off her wrist), and partly because it's so darned expensive, at over $50 per day for the three of them. Suggestions (or volunteers) are welcome...

At any rate, this pretty much establishes that we will meet up with our motorcycling buddies in Death Valley over Presidents' Day weekend, and then work our way back to San Jose. Our cruise returns April 12th, and we will be back on the road shortly thereafter, with no particular agenda. That being said, we have plans to be in Poulsbo, Washington June 6-10, followed by Portland, Oregon June 19-25. With less than two months in the interim, we will likely stay west of the Rockies, which will make this our longest stint in the west since we embarked on our adventure.

The other big question mark this presents is how we will manage our Red Cross availability. We had intended to be on the list right now, but with engine troubles that is out of the question, so we are still "unavailable." If we get this resolved in the next couple of days, we could conceivably go on the list for February, but we'd have to leave early March open to get back to San Jose. I suspect we will just end up staying off the list until we return mid-April, then go back on through May, off again in June, and back on in July and through hurricane season. That probably means we will be working our way east in July, with an intent to swing by Nashville where both a windshield and A-frame await us.

Now about that engine trouble... We returned from Sierra Vista (where, by the way, we had a most excellent, but too short, visit with our friends) Sunday evening and spent Sunday night in the parking lot at Williams (map). First thing Monday morning they backed us in to a bay, pulled out our ECM, and put a test ECM in place before lunch. So we drove Odyssey to lunch, with nary a problem. On the way back, however, the same problem came right back, thus ruling out the ECM. As a side note, another old issue we had regarding the ECM not getting vehicle speed data input from the transmission was also not resolved with the new ECM, so I have work to do on that as well (troubleshooting this issue two years ago stopped at the "replace ECM" step, because the speed data is informational only and did not warrant a $1,500 ECM).

The tech spent the rest of the day making up and "installing" a direct cable from the ECM to the throttle pedal, to see if that would resolve the problem. I put quotes around "installing" because running a cable fifty feet from the ECM at the very back of the coach to the pedal at the very front is a non-trivial matter requiring us to unload the contents of every storage bay, remove quite a few of the trim panels, and try to fish the cable through an already jam-packed cable chase. Or buy weatherproof armored cable and a few dozen cleats, put the coach up on lifts, and start running the cable underneath the bays -- less desirable because it is subject to road damage there. So instead we secured the cable along the left side of the coach with gaffer's tape; kind of a kludge, but good enough for testing purposes.

So we left the shop around 4:00 yesterday, and drove around for two hours in stop-and-go traffic, with a few hills thrown in for good measure. No matter what I did with the throttle, we could not reproduce the problem.

Yesterday also happened to be my birthday, but after a full day of working on the coach and getting grubby, followed by pretty intensive driving, I was not up for a fancy dinner. I opted instead for Olive Garden, and so we parked for the night here (map), in a rather stealthy spot behind a Home Depot / PetsMart / Circuit City strip mall, a short walk from the Olive Garden across the street. We were not disturbed, but we did have to listen to the beep-beep-beep of Home Depot's forklifts all night, moving stock around.

As soon as I've got this posted, we will fire up and drive around the city some more, on the theory that the problem may come back with a cold engine after sitting overnight. If we can't reproduce the problem today, I will have them change out the connector pins and perhaps the last couple inches of wire on the existing cable, in the hopes that the problem is at the connector rather than buried somewhere in the length of the coach. It's worth a shot before investing in permanently running a new cable.

Mechanical update...

We are at the Elks lodge in Sierra Vista (map), visiting some friends here for the weekend.

Thursday afternoon found us at W. W. Williams in Tucson. They were able to get to us within an hour or so, and a transmission tech came out with a code reader to diagnose the unit. Unfortunately, after digging out the diagnostic connector and plugging the reader in, the reader could not find any signal from the transmission computer (ECM).

I am only a little surprised by this. We had no transmission diagnostic connector at all when we got the coach, at least none that we could ever find. During the conversion process at Infinity Coach, we rerouted some of the harnesses for the transmission, including relocating the ECM, and Infinity added the diagnostic connector. It is unclear, however, that the connector was ever tested by connecting a code reader. So add to my list of projects tracing the four wires in the connector back to the rest of the harness to see why no signal is available.

The diagnostic thus unavailable, the tech opted to go with us on a test drive instead. He only needed one run around the block to determine that the transmission was fine (whew) and that the problem was actually a momentary drop-out of engine power. He had the service manager ride around the block with us to confirm this. The service manager also sniffed the tranny fluid and informed me that what I was smelling is normal for (and unique to) TranSynd fluid. So out came an engine tech for another ride around the block.

The engine diagnostic connector works fine, and the test drive with the engine tech aboard and an engine code reader connected revealed that the throttle position indication was dropping out during acceleration. The indication on his code reader was very clear, whereas one has to really be staring at the display on our built-in reader, which is perhaps why we did not detect this ourselves, even though we thought to look there several times.

That took us through the end of the day, and we parked for the night in their customer parking area outside the gate. I spent a couple hours yanking out the cables and connectors for our throttle pedal, and testing it with a meter. The Throttle Position Sensor tested good, which seemed to suggest the problem lay elsewhere. In an incredible stroke of luck, however, they had another coach in the shop which they were converting to DDEC-II, which is the same engine control system we have on Odyssey, and they already had an entire throttle pedal assembly on order for that project, scheduled to arrive Friday. Now DDEC-II is an ancient system, and no shop stocks something like an entire throttle assembly for this system, so this lucky coincidence really saved us a lot of time and money in the diagnostic process.

Yesterday morning they handed me the new pedal assembly and Louise and I installed it temporarily for a test. The engine tech came aboard with his code reader, and we went around the block several times, with nary a hint of the problem. I couldn't understand how the old pedal tested good, yet the new one seemed to fix the problem, but we were willing to accept it as luck. So we bought the pedal for $230, finished installing it in a more permanent manner, paid our shop bill, and headed out to find a much-needed laundromat.

With all the lead-up, I'm sure by now you can guess that the problem came back almost immediately after we pulled out of the shop driveway. The laundromat we were headed to turned out to be defunct anyway, so we called the shop, drove back, swapped back to our old throttle pedal, returned the pedal we bought, and discussed next steps. The next step, it turns out, is to replace the ECM, which, on Odyssey, is a several hour project owing to the number of items that need to be removed first before the ECM mounts are accessible. By this time it was after 2pm on Friday afternoon, and they decided that they probably could not get the ECM completely swapped before the day was out. That would have stranded Odyssey inside the gates for the weekend, so we decided to get a fresh start on the problem first thing Monday.

The consensus was that the throttle drop-out was not actually harming anything, and so we decided to drive the 80 miles down here to Sierra Vista for a visit. We'll stay here at the Elks again tonight, and tomorrow afternoon we will head back to Tucson and spend the night outside the shop so that we can get a 7am start the next day on the ECM.

So the current status is that we're pretty sure the transmission is fine, and that we have not damaged anything further in the last thousand miles or so since the troubles began. Yet everyone is stumped as to the source of the problem. We're taking the very expensive step of replacing the ECM as the next step in the diagnostic process, but no one has any evidence that this will correct the problem. Moreover, what step will follow that is a big question mark -- I've already tested the wiring from the ECM to the throttle and it all checks out, and the ECM is not detecting any problem on its own. We have our fingers crossed that there is a glitch in the ECM itself, but that's hard to fathom with no other symptoms. The other thing that concerns me is that the problem only occurs under acceleration, and seems most prominent around the shift points, which may indicate some sort of synchronization problem between the engine and transmission ECM's.

In other news, Louise's dad will be celebrating his 70th this March, and they have invited us to join them on a cruise from South America to San Francisco. So even though we just returned from a cruise in Hawaii, and, left to our own devices we would probably not do another cruise in 2007, it looks like we will be spending the better part of a month cruising in March. I'll post the details here as I have them.

Best casino boondocking deal ever...

We are parked at the Wild Horse Pass Casino, on the Gila River Indian Reservation (map). This spot definitely takes top honors in the unbeatable deal category, based on our experience thus far:

1. The food in the buffet, which is served in a restaurant which also offers a-la-carte options, was excellent, even if the decor was a bit bland.
2. The buffet was $12.95, which is a pretty good deal for a casino outside of Nevada, especially since it included tasty prime rib.
   
3. Coupons freely available at the entrance provide a 2-for-1 deal on the buffet if you also have a player club card.
4. Applying for a player club card, at least this month, gets you a coupon for $5 in cash at the cashier cage.
5. If your birthday falls in the current month, as mine does, you get another $5 cash coupon, and a gift, which was a (really cheap, albeit with a metal band) wristwatch.

So, to recap, we are parked for the night for free, we purchased dinner for two for $13, but we got $15 in cash and a watch just for coming in. We did also buy two glasses of wine, but I don't think the tribe is making a killing on us. And, just to be clear, the casino cashier handed us crisp $5 bills, not chips or gaming tokens.

We spent last night in the yard at Solar Bill's in downtown Quartzsite (map). Bill's installers got all three Shell 110-watt panels mounted on the roof yesterday afternoon, and I had the Blue Sky 3024i controller mounted and wired up, but for some reason charge was not flowing from the panels to the controller by quitting time.

The wires from the roof and the wires into the battery bay that had been pre-installed by Infinity Coach turned out not to be continuous, and I located the appropriate terminations in a junction box in the center bay last night. This morning we got connectors onto them and everything spliced through, and it looked like all was in order. We left the system to charge for a bit while we walked next door to La Mesa RV for lunch: it turns out that La Mesa RV, which moved into a lot formerly occupied by a restaurant, serves a free breakfast and a free lunch to any and all comers every day during the snowbird season.

Even after soaking for a good hour or so, and with the status light indicating normal charging, no current was flowing into the batteries. Borrowing a remote display for the controller confirmed no current being provided, even though we were reading a steady 40 volts from the array. Opening up the unit and performing a factory reset finally did the trick, but it was mid-afternoon by the time we rolled out of Quartzsite. That put us in Phoenix rush hour, and we landed here just after sunset, even though we had hoped to be in Tucson tonight.

We should make W. W. Williams in Tucson before lunch time tomorrow.

Bigger than a blimp

 

Parked at Solar Bill's for the night. 

Catching up with some photos

Camped at Amboy Crater last week.



1940's American SpaceAge style meets 1980's Euro style.



The DOVE rally in Quartzsite. 

Still in Quartzsite

Yesterday morning we made one final pass through the various solar vendors in town, and decided to bite the bullet and buy three 110-watt, 24-volt Shell Solar panels from Solar Bill. We have an appointment at noon today to start the installation. They are squeezing us in to the schedule, so there is a possibility the installation will run into tomorrow morning, in which case we'll spend the night on their lot.

In any case, we'll be in Quartzsite for one more night. Sometime tomorrow we will be on the road again, heading for Tucson, where the shop is expecting us for Thursday morning.

The big show...

Well, we made it to the big RV show yesterday -- what a zoo. We did not spend any time looking at rigs in the outdoor exhibits: with Odyssey finished, there isn't much we are going to learn-and-adopt from new rigs, and we're certainly not in the market for one. We did, however, traverse the entirety of the Big Tent.

Mostly it was the same old stuff, with many vendors we've seen at other shows such as FMCA and the Escapade. Here, though, there is a much higher ratio of crap-no-one-needs. Sort of a combination RV products/Crafts/Herbal Medicine show. I did pick up a new cell phone case (my old one was disintegrating), and Louise bought some seat covers for our driver/navigator seats downstairs, which are starting to show their age, as well as being sticky in hot weather. We also found a gallon of TranSynd at the Spartan Chassis booth, and I snapped it up, since we are forever trying to find it at the worst possible times, and almost no one carries it.

I was a bit disappointed that there was only one solar panel vendor in the tent, and they didn't have any panels bigger than 150 watts. We may try to catch up with some of the other solar vendors that are planted here in the area for the season. We are still looking for a pair of ~175-watt panels.

We've had a relaxing few days here, and I even managed to catch up on a couple of projects, along with a two-month backlog of email. Even with all the rigs here, the desert is quiet and afforded us the opportunity to recharge. That being said, we don't need to do the whole Quartzsite "thing" again, and I expect we would only return here in high season if we do so as part of a group (such as we did this time with the DOVEs). Even then, we'd think twice: the Quartzsite desert in January has most of the disadvantages of a large RV park, with none of the conveniences.

Today we will try to catch up with a couple of people we know who
happen to be in Quartzsite at the moment, and tomorrow we will break camp and head out. Our next stop will be W. W. Williams, either in Phoenix or Tucson.

The Q

We are at the DOVE rally in Quartzsite, Arizona (map). The DOVEs chose a spot quite some distance from the paved road -- we are two miles down Mitchell Mine Road, which is graded dirt, then a few hundred feet onto the hard-scrabble. It's a nice spot, though, far away from the chaos of town and the larger encampments closer to the asphalt, and miles away from the LTVA.

I say "chaos" because we are just two days away from the big RV show, rigs have been filing into town for days on end, and downtown Quartzsite (such as it is) is a zoo. So we are just as glad to be far from the madding crowd.

We'll be staying right in this spot for a few more days. The DOVE rally officially ends tomorrow, but we're going to stick around, get a few things done around the house, and ride over on the motorcycle and check out the show.

From here, we will head east to Phoenix, or maybe even Tucson, to get the transmission looked at.

A familiar stop

We are at the Bluewater Casino (map), along the Colorado River, on the lands of the Colorado River Indian Tribes. This is a familiar spot for us, and it was convenient to our route, being a short detour from AZ95 in Parker, where we crossed the river from CA62. Also, we like the restaurant here.

I will say that we've never seen so many rigs here: I would guess that we were among 30 or so last night. The combination of a holiday weekend and the proximity to the epicenter of snowbird wintering grounds makes for a high-density camping experience. I expect this will get worse as we approach Quartzsite.

Interestingly, as we pulled in and were leveling up for the night, a pair of familiar faces approached. A couple that was with us on our Mexico caravan is here, and they recognized Odyssey as we entered the lot.

Today we will stock up on groceries in Parker, then head down to Quartzsite to search for our group. We are a couple of days early, but I'm betting we will not be the first on site. I'd like to get settled in, and maybe get a couple of projects done before the party starts.

Alone at last

We are at Amboy Crater, along the old Route 66 (map). The BLM maintains a parking lot here for people wishing to hike to the cinder cone half a mile or so away. The parking area is at the edge of the lava field, about half a mile from the highway on a graded dirt road. In addition to the parking area, there are pit toilets and a couple of picnic tables.

When we arrived last night, right around sunset, there was one other car here, which left shortly thereafter. We've had the place to ourselves all night. We finally feel at home again -- this is our first night of solitary parking since before we left for Mexico (not counting the two nights at Playa Tecolote, where we parked a stone's throw from a restaurant).

Just east of here is the ghost town of Amboy, home of recently defunct Roy's Cafe. We'll stop by on our way out of here to see how the place is faring -- the new owner is talking about restoring and reopening the joint. From there we will head south on Amboy Road toward Twentynine Palms, connecting to CA62 which will take us east to Parker, Arizona.

We're hoping to make it to Quartzsite, where we will meet up with some other DOVEs for a few days, and maybe take in some of the big RV show there. I say "hoping to" because Odyssey is having some transmission troubles, and we may have to divert directly to Phoenix, the nearest Allison service facility.

We first noticed problems with the transmission the evening we crossed the border from Tecate. Waiting in line for the border was a tedious, stop-and-go affair, some of which was on a very steep hill. We felt some slippage in first gear there, which we attributed to the tremendous strain. However, the problem seemed to worsen in the hills of eastern San Diego county, with rough shifts in and out of second gear, and we had to stop on the roadside that night to investigate. A quick check of the fluid level revealed it was low, and we put three quarts of fluid in, which seemed to take care of the problem.

Now our transmission has always seeped fluid, which we have been told is a common problem around the valve body on retarder-equipped HTB748's. The seepage speeded up when we switched to synthetic fluid, which is unsurprising, but we continue to run the synthetic since it has significantly reduced transmission temperatures. So when trouble returned a few hundred miles later, we added fluid again. Now, however, the trouble is back, but the dipstick is reading full. What's worse, I am noticing a slight burnt smell from the fluid. Oddly, the transmission control computer is not indicating any errors or problems.

At this point, the next step will be to pull the magnet and see if there are any metal particles stuck to it, and run a sample of the fluid. I want to be someplace where they have the capability to repair, replace, or rebuild the unit when that's done, since the symptoms would indicate some sort of valve-body problem, such as a bad valve or spring, or partial blockage of one of the fluid passages. Fortunately, once it gets into third, or locks up, the coach runs fine. So I am hopeful that we can make Quartzsite for a few days, then head east to W. W. Williams in Phoenix from there.

Other suggestions, or recommendations for other heavy duty transmission shops close to our location, are welcome.

Freezing our buns in the central valley

We are at the Wasco Elks lodge, midway between Wasco and Shafter (map). We had thought about staying at the truck stop in Lost Hills, but California is in the middle of an unseasonable cold snap, and $10 here in Wasco bought us a 30-amp power hook-up, which ran our heaters all night.

Today we will cross the Tehachapi Pass and into the Mojave Desert, where we will spend the night.

Laguna Seca

We are at another of our old standbys, Laguna Seca Raceway (map). We've been here for two nights, visiting with Louise's dad and step-mom, who live just a few miles down the road. We had a nice visit.

This is a comfortable spot, with scenic spaces high on a hill and 30-amp power hookups. It's pricey for a county park, at $30 per night (plus another $2 for the dog), but there are few other choices in this area -- parking-lot stays are not an option in Monterey. Nighttime temperatures have been in the 30's, so the power came in handy to run our electric heaters, and we'll take advantage of the dump station on our way out this morning. Our spot here overlooks a section of the track, and we got to watch motorcyclists practicing yesterday morning.

Today we will head up CA68 towards Salinas, and cut over to US101 at Spreckles. 101 will bring us down the Salinas valley into Paso Robles, where we will pick up CA46 east into the Central Valley, passing the spot where James Dean crashed. We'll end the day somewhere between Lost Hills and Bakersfield.

Wrapping up in the bay area

Well, we have been here just a day shy of eight full weeks (including the time we spent in Hawaii). Even though, once again, we have not managed to see everyone we'd like or to take care of all the local errands we have, we are very much ready to be back on the road, and are preparing to leave.

Just before New Year's we moved Odyssey to the Palo Alto Elks Lodge (map), fearful that any more rain in Sunnyvale would strand us there in the mud for the rest of the winter. We like Palo Alto, since the lodge is walking distance from a number of restaurants, and convenient to some of our friends further north. However, this is likely the last time we will be able to park there, as the current lodge is slated for demolition to make way for new homes on half the property, and a somewhat smaller facility on the other half. Hard to say if the new parking lot will accommodate us, but, in any case, nothing will be possible in the interim.

For the past week we have been at another of our old haunts, the San Jose Elks Lodge (map). Palo Alto has no hookups, so our $10 parking fee there had to be supplemented with another $15 or so in diesel for the heater and generator. Here, $18 per night gets us 50-amp service, handy with nighttime temperatures dropping into the 30s. Also, this spot is walking distance to the light rail system and the railroad line, and we've been taking both to various errands and visits over the past few days.

We had been planning on pulling up stakes today and getting on the road, but getting everything packed back up and our affairs in order may actually run into tomorrow. At which point we will make our way south and then east, stopping first in Monterey for another family visit.

Our short-term goal is to be in Quartzsite around the 15th or so for a rally that starts on the 17th. Afterwards we will stick around for the big RV show, and maybe get some long-overdue maintenance projects taken care of in the warm and dry. We will likely hang out in the southwest until early March, when we will make our way towards Nashville where our new windshield and tag axle A-Frame await us.

Look for my regular postings to resume here in the next day or so, as we get under way.

George is ready to hit the road and continue her life goal...