Monday August 9, 2010-Garden of the Gods Campground

Stella, Cam and I got up this morning and took the truck to the Daniels-Long Chevrolet dealership near us to have the low coolant light checked out. Tyler elected to stay home in bed, and told us when we returned that he had slept until 11:30. He is his mother's son!

If you remember, I had it checked in Carlsbad but we couldn't find anything after flushing the radiator. I thought there might be a problem with the sensor, but I wanted a professional to check it. I didn't really want to get back out on the road with a service problem that may have gotten worse. After a short time, we were told that they had found a very tiny coolant leak at a cooling line to the turbo. We quickly authorized the work to be done. While waiting, one of the salesmen came in trying his best to peddle a new car to the folks waiting for their cars and trucks to be repaired. His off was to put us into a new Chevrolet and lower our payment. I should have taken him up non his offer. Our truck is paid for, so I guess to lower the payment, he would have had to pay us a monthly note....not!

I did go in and talk with him after a few minutes. I soon learned that he is a new salesman, trying to get started in a very tough business, especially right now. I soon learned that he didn't know the answers to any of my questions, but instead of giving me misinformation, he went and found someone who should have known. He introduced me to the fleet manager, who knew more about the products, but still couldn't answer my question about the new DEF (Diesel Emission Fluid). They admitted that they had just had a meeting with someone from the factory who had told them about this new fluid, which must be added to a tank for use as an additive to the exhaust to burn off any hydrocarbons remaining in the exhaust instead of diesel fuel that has been used in the past to "regenerate" the exhaust. They didn't know the size of the DEF tank, how often it should be refilled or the cost of the fluid. Not much help, but at least they didn't lie to me. We did have a nice discussion of the new trucks and he told me that Chevy will soon be coming out with a new 4500 series truck, possibly in a few months. That might be something I may want to look at when they come out. He told me that the new trucks will be on the same body style as the 3500 series of trucks but have heavier running gear to tow more. I guess we'll see when they come out.

We went to the grocery store on the way back home and picked up enough for the rest of the week. It was threatening rain again, so we decided not to do anything else today and just hung out at home. We will do more exploring tomorrow and the rest of the week.

So long.