Well, the REAL test is over. Here's a brief run-down on the troubles we
encountered during our 7,500+ miles (especially for those who are
apprehensive about hitting the road in a 20+ year old motor home):
1. 30 miles out we discovered that "SR JAMES" would not downshift with the
accellerator until speed was below 35. Since we'd just paid to have this
fixed, we were not happy, but not unhappy enough to turn around. We
down-shifted manually for the next 5 weeks.
2. Later the 1st day, we stopped for gas and couldn't re-start; no click,
no nothing. After 2 1/2 hrs. of dinking around by the AAA guys, it started,
but they didn't know what they had done to fix it. (We found out much later
that it was a worn ignition switch that just needed some extra "twist" to
send juice to the starter) But while they were poking around, they found we
had a BIG engine oil leak. We'd driven 320 miles, leaked lots of oil, but
the dip stick still read full. You guessed it ..... a check of the last
service record revealed the same normally excellent mechanic had put in 7
quarts of oil when he changed it. (That's 2 for him)
3. On the second day, we noticed that the compressor was running almost
constantly. It turned out that the 10 cent schrader valve at the bottom of
the wet tank had gone on vacation too.
4. On day 4, as we near to tops of Vail and Loveland passes in
Colorado (10,000 ft. plus), old James starts gasping and wheezing like he's
not getting enough gas. We never did anything about it, an it only happened
when we were accellerating, it was a little warm and we were at least 5,000
ft. (Guess I need to add a supplemental elect. fuel pump)
We also discovered things like drafts at the passenger's feet, strange
distribution of warmed and cooled air, only one chance to stop after
stalling (vacuum pump goes on before next trip), surging cruise control
(new one is on the list), windows squeek, hard lighting refrigerator,etc.
Bottom line: Successful trip! The wife drove nearly the whole way and loves
it. 7,591 miles, 8 quarts of oil, 8.4 mpg and only the one dumb breakdown.
Yes, we have more little things to fix, but we had stuff to fix on our '96
too, so no big deal. I'll be asking for advice before making some more
improvements, but thanks to what we'd already done (and have learned on
GMCnet), the old boy went coast-to-coast-to-coast with hardly a whimper.
More later, Dave
encountered during our 7,500+ miles (especially for those who are
apprehensive about hitting the road in a 20+ year old motor home):
1. 30 miles out we discovered that "SR JAMES" would not downshift with the
accellerator until speed was below 35. Since we'd just paid to have this
fixed, we were not happy, but not unhappy enough to turn around. We
down-shifted manually for the next 5 weeks.
2. Later the 1st day, we stopped for gas and couldn't re-start; no click,
no nothing. After 2 1/2 hrs. of dinking around by the AAA guys, it started,
but they didn't know what they had done to fix it. (We found out much later
that it was a worn ignition switch that just needed some extra "twist" to
send juice to the starter) But while they were poking around, they found we
had a BIG engine oil leak. We'd driven 320 miles, leaked lots of oil, but
the dip stick still read full. You guessed it ..... a check of the last
service record revealed the same normally excellent mechanic had put in 7
quarts of oil when he changed it. (That's 2 for him)
3. On the second day, we noticed that the compressor was running almost
constantly. It turned out that the 10 cent schrader valve at the bottom of
the wet tank had gone on vacation too.
4. On day 4, as we near to tops of Vail and Loveland passes in
Colorado (10,000 ft. plus), old James starts gasping and wheezing like he's
not getting enough gas. We never did anything about it, an it only happened
when we were accellerating, it was a little warm and we were at least 5,000
ft. (Guess I need to add a supplemental elect. fuel pump)
We also discovered things like drafts at the passenger's feet, strange
distribution of warmed and cooled air, only one chance to stop after
stalling (vacuum pump goes on before next trip), surging cruise control
(new one is on the list), windows squeek, hard lighting refrigerator,etc.
Bottom line: Successful trip! The wife drove nearly the whole way and loves
it. 7,591 miles, 8 quarts of oil, 8.4 mpg and only the one dumb breakdown.
Yes, we have more little things to fix, but we had stuff to fix on our '96
too, so no big deal. I'll be asking for advice before making some more
improvements, but thanks to what we'd already done (and have learned on
GMCnet), the old boy went coast-to-coast-to-coast with hardly a whimper.
More later, Dave
