Tuesday October 6, 2009-Amarillo-Mansfield TX

Today was the worst day of the trip, so if you don't like crying, don't read today's post.

Remember the first day of this long trip when we found the oil leak on the ground at Rayford? The overnight oil leak had stopped for awhile and didn't return until we started back home. I have religiously checked the oil level and it has remained full, even though I had seen an occasional spot on the ground. I never parked in the same place at Priest Gulch, so I could not see a pattern of an oil leak. As we traveled back home, I noticed that the oil pressure was dropping and checked the level on the road, but again it showed to be full. By the time we left Amarillo, the pressure was at 20#, or the first mark on the oil pressure gauge. I watched it like a hawk all the way to Mansfield but it didn't waver but I did notice a lot of light oil residue on the truck and the trailer. It seemed to be worse on the passenger side of the truck. There was not a large enough film of oil to really be concerned about oil leaking but it was still irritating to see this light film of oil all over everything.

We pulled into the park here and while checking in, I left the truck running, as normal, and when I came back, I was surprised to see the oil pressure was actually below 20# at idle, not good! We pulled on around into our site and the pressure came back up to above 20 when under power. We got set up in our site without problem but I started doing some reading about the oil pressure problem. I learned that if one or more of the fuel injectors begins leaking, the diesel fuel will leak down into the crankcase, diluting the oil. Fuel injector problems are the one thing my particular model of truck is noted for, so I should not be surprised to learn mine are bad. I am no mechanic, and certainly not qualified to trouble shoot engine problems, but I can read pretty well and can see that there is a problem. I intend to take the truck to have the oil changed in the morning, leaving the trailer here in the Texan RV Ranch in Mansfield. This should allow us to get back to Houston without doing any damage to the engine.

Now to another problem. I have been noticing a few little problems with the trailer, a delamination on the front end near the front storage. This has already been pointed out to Camping World when we had the television replaced (the television is another story that I won't go into now because it is still being worked on). Now there is another problem with the fiberglass on the front of the trailer that needs some attention. I called CW and spoke with Frank, one of the service advisors there. He told me to bring the trailer in so they could look at it and would order any parts they need and I can bring it back when the parts arrive and then sleep in the trailer in their parking lot. All is well so far.
When we got to Mansfield and got set up, Stella went inside and turned the refrigerator on. We had a discussion just before leaving Colorado about this and had decided that we didn't travel far enough before stopping to make it necessary to leave the propane on to power the fridge. She had started turning the fridge off while driving and had turned it back on when we arrived and were hooked up to power. Today, the fridge wouldn't come back on for us. We checked everything, there was 110 volt power to the refrigerator, no 12 volt fuses were blown, so all of the power to the fridge was working, it just wouldn't come on. The park owner came by to see if he could help, and gave me the telephone number of a man he knew that could help us, but after talking to him (Don) for about 30 minutes and checking everything he told me, we couldn't find anything wrong. I put in a call to a mobile RV service company but never got a call back from them. We took all the meat and cheese out and put it into an ice chest with ice in it to keep it from spoiling and just figured that we would just have to lose anything that we didn't have room for in the ice chest when Stella noticed that it had come on, on propane power! Hallelujah! The fridge had warmed up to about 58 degrees but the freezer had stayed cold so although some ice cream we had in there had gotten soft, it had not actually ruined. The fridge got cold again (it gets colder faster on propane) so we should be all right until we can get back to Houston and get it worked on.

What a day! At least we are back in Texas and tomorrow will be back in Houston. Please wish us luck for the last 250 miles of our trip.

So long.