Tag Archives: Speedometer-odometer

2014/04/07 (M) Big Wheels Keep On Turning

The boots may have been made for walking, but the wheels were made for turning and it does not make much sense (to us) to own a motorhome and not use the motor to move the home around at least occasionally. Checkout time at Williston Crossings RV Resort is nominally 11 AM. We were planning to leave by then, but a call to Suncoast Designers at 9 AM caused us to push our departure time back. They suggested we not arrive until about 4 PM to make sure we had a place to park with hookups. That put our departure time target at 2 PM. We walked up to the office to make sure this would be OK. It was; we have been here a long time and been good residents, and no one was scheduled to go in to “our” site today.

Given some extra time we had not planned on, we went for one last, long walk around the RV resort. How different it looked and felt. The resort is turning over from long-term winter/seasonal use to short-term summer/vacation use and there were many empty sites. Eighty-nine rigs left yesterday. Many were Carriage 5th wheels that were part of the 70 rig Carriage Travel Club rally that was here all last week. But some were winter seasonal residents who have been dribbling out since April 1st and will continue to do so into May. We were not the only rig pulling out today. Our other neighbor, Sharon, is leaving this coming Sunday. A few rigs were pulling in, of course, but the departures currently exceed the arrivals on any given day.

When we returned from our walk I mixed up a batch of the concoction we use in the waste holding tanks (48 oz PineSol, 48 oz water, 1cup Calgon). I dumped the black-water tank and back-flushed it, followed by dumping the grey-water waste tank. I ran additional water through the drain hose and then disconnected the hoses and fittings and stowed them for travel. I reconnected the water softener and filled the fresh-water tank. Once that was done Linda helped me disconnect, clean, and stow the fresh water hoses and the water softener.

We tend to forego coffee and breakfast on travel days, but had a little of both this morning as we were not leaving right away. Because of the delay in our departure we did not have lunch. To pass the time I continued with travel preparations. The last time I had the coach batteries connected I noticed that the Pressure Pro TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) was not reading one of the sensors (PS outside drive tire). We have a repeater for this system that I plan to install in the rear of the coach someday, but for now it gets attached to the rear view mirror of the car. I took care of that task and then decided to move the car up onto the patio next to passenger side of the coach. I left the ignition on to power the repeater and connected the coach batteries to power the TPMS receiver. After a few minutes all of the tire sensors were active and the tire pressures were OK for travel. I disconnected the coach batteries and put the car back in front of the coach.

At 1:30 PM we started our final travel preparations, clearing off the counters and moving stuff from the cockpit to the sofa, the bed, and the bedroom floor. At 1:45 PM I shut off the 240/120 VAC electrical power to the coach, disconnected the shoreline, and stowed it in the slide-out tray over the DS drive tires. I installed the screw-in cover for the utility port hole in the bay floor, and closed/locked the bay. I then checked the Magnum 4024 to make sure it had switched to inverter mode, which it had.

Once the shore power is cut we seem to develop an increased sense of urgency about leaving. I think this is due, in part, to the fact that I do not have the ZENA power generator operational yet, so our house batteries do not get charged while we are driving. That’s OK, up to a point; the battery bank was designed to be large enough to run the inverter and power reasonable loads for a reasonable length of time. But the sooner we leave, the sooner we arrive, and the sooner we arrive, the sooner we can plug back in to shore power. We have an auxiliary power plant, of course, so we always have the option of using that if needed. The other reason we are probably anxious to leave is more psychological. Once we are completely disconnected (physically) we are become disconnected mentally, although not necessarily emotionally. We are no longer “tethered” to that spot, and that means it is time to go.

I connected the chassis batteries, fired up the engine, and set the level low system to the driving position. While Linda moved the car to street I drained the auxiliary air tank using the nice dry air from the main engine air compressor. With John’s assistance we got the coach out of the site and lined up on the street. Linda pulled the car up behind the coach and we went through our procedure for hooking it up to the tow bar. We did our standard light check and found that the turn signals on the car were not working. A quick check of the connectors on both ends of the cable revealed a socket on the car end of the cable that was corroded. I used the awl on John’s Swiss Army Knife to clean it up. A recheck of the lights indicated that everything was working. After a final “goodbye” with John and Ali we were on our way.

Our departure delay meant we would be traveling SSW into the sun at the hottest part of the day. The air temperature was 85 degrees F when we left, and the engine ran slightly hotter than usual, indicating just above 195 degrees F on the coolant temperature gauge, so I decided not to run the coach air conditioning. The drive to Hudson was warm, but not unbearable. A cold front was approaching the gulf coast of Florida so we had increasing cloud cover as we progressed south and west towards the coast, which helped keep the cockpit from getting too warm.

We had a nice run from Williston to Hudson. We headed south out of Williston on US-41/US-27/FL-121. US-27/FL-121 split off to the west a mile south of town, made a sweeping turn to the left and then followed a nice straight line SW for 17 miles to its southern terminus at US-19. This stretch of FL-121 is straight but hilly. With the cruise control set the engine is very sensitive to hills. I always know we are on a grade, however slight, by the reaction of the turbo boost gauge and the pyrometers.

Most of the rest of trip was on US-19 except for the last three miles. Traffic was light until we got to Crystal River, which had slower speed limits, lots of stop lights, and lots of vehicles on the road. It opened up a bit after Homosassa Springs, but got congested as we approached Weeki Wachee where FL-50 ends at US-19. From Weeki Wachee to just north of Hudson traffic remained slow and congested with increasingly dense commercial use on both sides of the road and stop lights every mile. Just north of Hudson we turned east onto Little Road, which immediately swung south, and followed it for about two miles to New York Avenue, where we turned west and went another mile to Labor Place, the location of Suncoast Designers.

The coach ran fine, although the Check Engine Light came on almost immediately and was on more than it was off for the whole trip. That did not surprise me as we had not done any work over the last couple of months to fix the fuel temperature sensor voltage problem that is apparently setting a fault code in the DDEC II. I had hoped that the repairs we made in the dashboard wiring harness would fix the speedometer/odometer problem, but they did not; the gauge sat on zero for the whole trip. The left pyrometer (exhaust gas temperature) gauge, however, was much more responsive and tracked the right pyrometer gauge much more closely than it ever had before. It appears that the wires we repaired were for this gauge rather than the speedo/odo.

Once we pulled in to Suncoast Designers we pulled to the side of the road, so as not to block traffic, and unhooked the car. While Linda parked the car I found the office and checked on parking arrangements. Suncoast Designers has at least a dozen RV sites with water and 50 A electric hookups. The only one open was a somewhat tight spot between two other large Class A motorhomes that required me to back in. The maneuver was made more difficult by the fact that the road in front of the sites had a curb on the far side and was not wide enough to allow me to swing the front end without scrubbing the front tires. I repositioned the coach so that I was turning in from the driver’s side, but Linda and I could not figure out how to get the coach into the site. The guy next to us on the driver’s side offered to help. A former truck driver, he knew exactly what to have me do. Unlike some RVers, our pride is not injured by not knowing how to do something, and we gladly accepted his help.

I pulled past the site close to the front of his rig and then turned out to the passenger side, putting the coach at an angle to the open site. He had me back part way into the front of the site at that angle and then turn the steer tires full left to start to bring the coach around. He had me stop and then turn the steer tires full right and pull forward. Steer tires full left again and back up some more, then full right and pull forward. We repeated this one more time and finally had the coach lined up straight and centered between the coaches on either side without having hit either one! Linda was keeping an eye on the back of the coach the whole time (to make sure I did not hit anything) and guided me into our final position. We then leveled the coach and shut the engine down.

The outside air temperature was only in the upper 70’s, but it was 90 degrees F in the coach and the outside humidity was high. In spite of having nine windows that open, the three ceiling vent fans are not very effective at cooling down the interior under such circumstances. In theory we can run all three air conditioners on a “50 A” shore service, but we have tripped breakers before when doing that. (The issue is that circuit breakers are commonly designed to only carry 80% of their rated current on a continuous basis, so two of our A/C units plus a little bit of miscellaneous load can exceed 40 A on one of the legs.) Besides, as soon as I plugged in the Magnum 4024 was going to switch to charger mode and start recharging the house batteries.

I got the shore power connected and checked the Magnum 4024. It went into bulk charging mode and started charging the house batteries at 86 Amps. Since it is a 24 VDC charger, it was drawing ~1/5 that much AC current, or ~17 A, the equivalent of one of our air conditioners. The front (living room) and center (kitchen) A/C’s are on separate legs of the 240/120 VAC power supply, so we can run them at the same time. The bedroom A/C is on the same leg as the front A/C and the Magnum is on the other leg. We ran the front and center A/C’s along with Magnum and let the bedroom stay warm for the time being.

Suncoast Designers provides free WiFi for customers camped at their facility, but the signal we thought was theirs indicated it was “filtered” and we had not obtained the login information from the office before it closed. We used our Verizon MiFi instead and had a good, strong signal. I had a chance to ask our neighbor (helpful truck driver guy) later, and he said the open signal was the one they were using. Although it was a weak (one bar) “g” signal, our WiFi Ranger latched on to it without difficulty.

Linda needed a few grocery items and located a Publix grocery store on Little Road less than three miles from Suncoast Designer’s. As evening settled in we switched off the front A/C and turned on the bedroom unit. Linda reheated some of the leftover Sloppy Joe’s from the pot luck dinner the night before, and we had that on the skinny buns we have started using, along with a simple spinach salad and a few Fritos corn chips.

After dinner Linda sent e-mails to several of our new friends from WCRVR while I checked in to RVillage and took care of a few e-mails of my own. The overnight temperature was forecast to only drop into the upper 60’s with high humidity, and with rain starting before sunrise, so we decided to leave the rig closed up and the kitchen and bedroom A/C’s on all night. We rarely do this because of the noise and because we prefer fresh air, except when it is too warm and/or too humid. Considering that we had traveled less than 100 miles and been on the road just under two hours today, we both felt like it had been a very long day. As much as we enjoyed the social life at WCRVR, it was nice to not have anything to do but go to bed and get some rest.

2014/03/02 (N) Dashboard Wiring

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(Photos of this work are in the gallery post for this date.)

John and Marian returned at 10 AM today. I unpacked all of the tools again, shut off the power to the pressure switch for the auxiliary air compressor, and removed the cover. Sure enough, the diagram was right there. The pressure switch was a Connor designed for air systems. It was not a water well pump control switch although externally you would not know the difference. It was designed to allow adjustment for a cut-in pressure as low as 40 PSI and a cut-out pressure as high as 160 PSI with an adjustable pressure difference between cut-in and cut-out of 20 to 50 PSI. The two large spring-loaded shafts moved the operating range up and down while the smaller single shaft adjusted the differential. It presumably had the two large springs, instead of the usual single one found in a water well switch, because of the higher operating pressures.

After figuring out a combination of tools that allowed me to turn the adjustment nuts, I backed off (CCW) the two nuts on the large spring shafts equal numbers of turns. The adjustment rate appeared to be approximately 3.0 to 3.5 PSI per full revolution. I lowered the cut-in pressure, turned the power back on, and bled the auxiliary air tank until the compressor came on. A little more adjustment and I had the cut-in pressure set to 65 PSI. That put the cut-out pressure at approximately 90 PSI. I decided to raise the cut-off pressure to about 95 PSI, a 30 PSI differential, in order to get a slightly longer off-time. I checked the time with my stopwatch and the compressor was coming on about every 2 hours and running for about 3 minutes. Not bad compared to the 20 – 25 minute cycle we were seeing before the old compressor died. In subsequent tests it has stayed off as long as 2 hours 15 minutes if I did not use any air powered accessories.

The 65 PSI cut-in pressure was selected to keep the overall system pressure above 65 PSI. There is a pressure regulator / water separator that takes air from the auxiliary air manifold and supplies it to the house accessories, specifically the toilet, pocket door, and waste tank dump valves. The toilet, in particular, wants to see 60 PSI to operate properly. The auxiliary air compressor also maintains the pressure in the suspension/brake systems, and I like to keep that pressure above 60 PSI. If not for these minimum pressure requirements I would set the pressure control switch to cycle between 45 and 95 PSI and extend the off-time to 3 or more hours.

With the compressor project wrapped up for now I got out my Pro-Link ECM diagnostic instrument. The ECM for our DD8V92TA is a DDEC II. I turned on the chassis batteries and we plugged the Pro-Link power cord into the 12VDC outlet (cigarette lighter) in the driver’s area and plugged the data cable into the diagnostic port in the outside bay under the driver’s seat. (Note to self: Install a 12VDC outlet next to the data port for future use.) After referring to the manual, we were able to examine the data in the DDEC II.

There was one Inactive code set as follows:

MID: 128 Engine | Fuel Temp Sensor | Input Voltage High | I1 PID: 174 FMI: 3

We did not check for active codes as that required the engine to be running and I don’t like to start unless I am going to run it long enough to bring it up to operating temperature.

This was the same code that Bill and I saw in Arcadia and then cleared, so it must have reappeared on the drive back to Williston on January 1st. I had purchased a new fuel temperature sensor early last year and had our mobile mechanic, Joe Cannarozzi, install it last spring. It is possible, though unlikely, that this new sensor was bad. I also do not think I that the bus has a fuel temperature issue. That leaves wiring or the DDEC II as possible culprits, but not necessarily the only ones. The fuel temp sensor is mounted in a dry pocket on top of the engine underneath the DDEC II. I believe the wires go directly from the sensor through a connector to the computer, so the wires and/or connector are obvious places to look for a problem. More importantly for us today, it appeared that the check engine light has been coming on for a reason, not at random, displaying an active code while driving and coming on and going off as the error condition appeared and disappeared.

Now for the dashboard. The cover just lifts off, exposing the top and back side of all the gauges, switches, indicator lights, dash lights, rotary controls, and wiring; lots of wiring. The area behind the dashboard is not very deep—12 inches at most—and it is easier to see this area from outside through the driver side lower windshield than from inside and above. Extensive work behind the dashboard would require the removal of the driver side lower windshield.

John and Marian studied the wiring through the windshield and spotted some issues. We followed the wires coming out of the back of the speedometer into a large bundle that went to a large circular connector with a twist-latch to hold it together. There are several of these connectors to accommodate all of the dashboard wiring, plus smaller connectors for the dashboard lights and miscellaneous power feeds. (Except for two small air lines for the primary and secondary air system gauges, and some mechanical connections for the front HVAC system, it appears that undoing these wiring connectors would allow the dashboard panels to be removed intact. That would provide an alternate way to work on the wiring.)

The insulation on several of the wires was abraded or had been chewed off. (Mice are known to chew insulation off of wires.) We taped the damaged wires to prevent any further deterioration. We also noticed a wire that came out of the connector that contained the speedometer wires and looped back into the connector. It was approximately 6 inches long and the insulation was missing from one side of the middle four inches, exposing the stranded copper conductor. Not only was that a potential short circuit, the conductor was not in good shape. It was slightly corroded due to atmospheric exposure and it was frayed in several places with only a few strands providing continuity. This in turn would look like a resistance to the circuit, causing a voltage drop and reduced current flow. We clipped out the bad section and spliced in a new piece if wire.

(As a side note, there are only two obvious reasons to loop a wire back through a connector like that: 1) It was intended to go to something that was not installed and then continue on to something else, or 2) It was being used to detect that the cable was plugged in.)

We separated the two halves of the connector and sprayed them with contact cleaner. While they dried we checked for ground connection problems, but did not see any obvious ones. The ground on the speedometer mounting bracket looked sound and all of the other speedometer wires were shielded pairs; the instrument itself did not use chassis ground for its signals.

While we had the dashboard exposed I decided to remove the radar detector. I have never used radar detectors, but it was already installed in the coach when we bought it. I had never used it and did not intend to. It was taking up space and making access to things more difficult. (I had previously removed an electronic compass that did not work and I still need to remove the “musical horn” which we don’t use because it’s annoying.)

With the dashboard work completed we opened up the electrical service bay above the driver side steer tire. This bay contains a lot of chassis electrical components such as relays, circuit breakers, terminal strips, diodes, and the anti-lock brake computer. What we were looking for, however, was the Speed Limit Switch (SLS).

The SLS is used on seated coaches to disable the kneeling feature of the suspension when the coach is moving. In order to do that, the speedometer wires pass through the SLS enroute to the dashboard gauge. The Prevost national service advisor for conversion shells, Bill Jensen, told me back in January that this switch might be installed in our coach even though it was not used, and that it was a possible point of failure that might cause our intermittent speedometer problem.

The Speed Limit Switch was not present, but there was a DB-15 connector at that location that could have plugged in to it. The connector was plugged in to a mating connector that did not have any wires coming out of it. Looking in the cable access hole on the end we could see wires inside. It was a loop back terminator. We separated the two connectors and sprayed them with contact cleaner but we did not open them to check the integrity of the wiring inside.

We buttoned everything up and called it a day around 2:30 PM. I won’t know if any of the work we did today fixed our speedometer problem until we depart Williston Crossings RV Resort in April.

2013_11_01-07 (F-R)A Busy Week

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The first week of November was very busy, enough so that I was unable (unwilling) to do daily blog posts. Covering the whole week in one post makes for a longer post, but probably shorter than seven separate ones.

2013-11-01 (F)

We were supposed to get our bus back from the shop on Friday, November 1. We didn’t. That meant I could not take it to Phoenix Paint in Edwardsburg, Michigan on Monday the 4^th. I was reminded yet again that a true traveler has no fixed plan. With that off the table temporarily, we turned out attention to other things; Ham Radio Breakfast on Saturday, for instance. It was good conversation, as usual, and we finally arranged to have one couple over for dinner in a few weeks.

2013_11_02 (S)

Saturday afternoon Steve and Karen came over to visit and have dinner. They were not able to attend our open house/warming because they were in Arizona where Steve had made arrangements to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon from the south rim and back up to the north rim. Alas, the park was closed and they had to adjust their plans and find other things to do; which they did (true travelers have no fixed plan). We don’t see them very often, so when we do we have a great, long visit. We had a wonderful dinner of enchiladas and Mexican rice, finished off by chocolate cake with raspberry topping made from raspberries that Linda and I picked ourselves at the Middleton Berry Farm back in September. All vegan, of course.

After dinner we looked at some of their photographs (digital) and they looked at some of ours (also digital). Steve brought along a Raspberry Pi computer. It was slightly larger than a deck of cards and had a 16 GB SD Card that served as its solid state hard drive. It had a couple of USB ports, an HDMI port, and some other connections. Steve had a wireless network adapter in one of the USB ports and a wireless keyboard transceiver (Bluetooth, I presume) in the other. We already had an HDMI cable on the TV so he hooked up to that and voila, pictures. He was even able to control the Raspberry Pi using our TV remote! Now you have to admit, that’s pretty cool. We were also delighted to find out that they have spent part of the last few winters in the Venice, Florida area and are returning again this year. We shared our Florida plans and agreed that we would get together.

2013_11_03 (N)

Sunday we worked around the house and on our computers until late in the afternoon when Chuck and Barbara, our friends and fellow Prevost H3-40 converted coach owners, showed up to visit and have dinner. Although they did make it to our open house/warming we did not get to visit with them very much that day. We talked buses, of course, but we discussed a lot of other things too, including Florida, where they have spent the last six or seven winters, most recently in the Naples area. Again, plans were made to meet while there.

As long as I am on the subject of Florida, we started thinking about extending our stay for at least another month because of potential problems with “seasonal weight restrictions” on the roads around our house. I found out from Phil (of the pull-though driveway) that the restrictions usually go up March 1 and stay up until April 15. Most of the roads in our county, and all of the roads we would have to use to get to our house, are subject to these seasonal weight restrictions but the signs never say what that means. As it turns out, it means a weight limit of 8,400 pounds per axle. Our drive axle (four tires) weighs 20,000 pounds and we have over 7,000 pounds on each of the front/steer tires, so there’s actually no legal way for us to get the bus to our house during that 45-day window. What to do? Stay in Florida for another month! Problem solved. New problem: where to stay? New solution: the same place we are already staying, if they will let us extend our reservation.

2013_11_04 (M)

Monday came and went without the bus being ready. While this delayed my plans yet again, it also provided more time to work on WordPress projects. I checked on the WordPress Backup To Dropbox (wpb2d) plug-in and it appeared to be correctly backing up all four of the sites I am working on to our personal Dropbox account. That was good to see. I also started soliciting “beta testers” for each of the sites. I continued working with the WP-Members plug-in and it appeared to be functioning correctly to block access to selected pages/posts behind a user login. Given that, I started generating user lists for each of the sites to generate usernames and passwords and keep track of when I have created those in WP and provided them to each user.

2013_11_05 (T)

On Tuesday Linda was able to extend our stay at Williston Crossings RV Resort until April 1^st (no fooling). We will figure out later how to manage our trip back to Michigan so that we do not arrive before April 16. Sometime during the week I received an e-mail from the Prevost Owners Group, to which we belong, that the Prevost Motorcoach Show would take place in Tampa, Florida on January 13 and 14, with a reception hosted by Prevost Car Inc. the evening of the 13^th. That sounded like an opportunity to finally meet some folks from Prevost in person, and to admire brand new conversions (that we will never buy) from the likes of Marathon, Millennium, Liberty, Parliament, and Vantare. Sometime during the week it also came to our attention that the Prevost Community group we belong to is planning a rally for the first week of April 2014 at LazyDays RV Dealership in Seffner, Florida! Well Bob’s your uncle. It looks like delaying our return until at least April 16 won’t be that difficult at all.

I needed to make an appointment for my annual physical, so I got on the Henry Ford Health System website. They have a new “feature” called MyChart. When fully functional, which it is not yet, you are supposed to be able to directly book an appointment, and see all of your lab results. But first you have to set up your account. I called the number and got an activation code which I then used to create a Username and Password, and was finally able to log in. The direct scheduling feature wasn’t available for my primary care physician, but there was a “Request An Appointment” page. So I did. I asked for an Adult Physical on Mon., Tue., Wed., or Thu. afternoon between Monday November 25, 2013 and Friday December 6, 2013. Less than 24 hours later I received an e-mail informing me that I had been scheduled for a 1:00 PM appointment for an Office Visit on January 15, 2014. Huh???

I used to program computers for a living, and I used to do systems engineering, and I used to do sales and marketing of these things, and I ended my career as a consultant. This didn’t strike me as bad programming; it struck me as bad policy that got translated into a bad systems specification. So I wrote back to HFHS customer service and told them, as politely as I could, that their system was stupid, that is to say, the policies behind the implementation of their system were not “customer-centric.” If I had wanted an appointment in mid-January I would have requested one. So as of now, I do not have said appointment.

The bus was ready to pick up on Tuesday, so Chuck drove me down to W. W. Williams to get it. I took care of the paperwork and left with Chuck following me in his truck. I no sooner hit the highway than I got a Check Engine Light. It came on and stayed on, so I phoned Chuck and let him know that I needed to turn around and take it back if he was willing to follow me and take me back home. He was, so this we did; my plans further delayed. There are worse things that can happen on this bus; the Stop Engine Light, for instance. This light means exactly what it says, the engine is going to stop and you need to get to the side of the road, now, before it does. I’ve only seen that once, shortly after we bought it. We took care of some key maintenance issues and have never seen it again (and I hope that we never do). I figured I wouldn’t get the bus back from W. W. Williams until Wednesday afternoon at best, so any trip to Edwardsburg was now delayed until Thursday. I called Michele to let her know. She had Pato and Tommy lined up to look at it on Friday, so I was getting anxious to get it down there. But there’s nothing you can do until the mechanics (they are now called technicians) are ready to give it back to you. And frankly, you really don’t want it back until they are sure it is fixed.

While I was gone dealing with the bus, we got a call from Steve (mentioned earlier) wondering if he had left his Raspberry Pi computer here on Saturday. We checked. Yup, it was here. Rather than meet him somewhere, we agreed that he would come back to the house on Wednesday to get it and do some work on our computers while he was here.

2013_11_06 (W)

Steve arrived late Wednesday morning, Linux “tools” in hand. The principle target of the work was to install Linux on one of our machines and then install/configure the Apache web-server program. This would allow us to have a “virtual web-server” that I could use to build duplicate installations of my WordPress sites, allowing me to develop and test them before making the same changes to the live sites. That sounded cool. Steve has been trying to get me interested in Linux for 10 years but I never saw a real need for it until now. It turned in to an all-day project (of course, don’t they all?) due to the age of the machine we decided to use, but that was the machine I wasn’t using for much of anything else, so that’s where it needed to go. Steve got Linux installed and then installed Apache2. We ran out of time to configure the Apache2 program, but that was OK as it will give Steve a reason to come back.

While we were working on the computers we talked some more about Florida. It turns out that the Capitol Steps are scheduled to appear at the Venice Stage Theater in Venice, Florida at the end of January. Our annual get-together with Steve and Karen has often involved dinner and a performance by this group, which specializes in political satire, much of it musical. They said we could stay overnight at the place they rent for winter in Venice if we wanted to go to the performance, which is at 8:00 PM on a Monday evening. The nice thing about traveling with cats is that you can leave them for 24 hours and they are fine. They sleep for 20 of those anyway.

I checked Wednesday afternoon and the bus was reported as “ready to go.” I decided to pick it up early Thursday morning and head directly to Edwardsburg. That meant towing the car so I had a way home, but it also meant that Linda did not have to drive me to W. W. Williams. That worked out well as she had to head in to the bakery on Thursday anyway.

I sometimes get a bit anxious the night before I am going to drive the bus as I don’t drive it every day and we are still finding a fixing “issues.” I used to experience the same thing when we would book one of the Southgate Flying Club airplanes and go flying. Again, I didn’t fly every day. Does this ever happen to you? As I was drifting off to sleep I suddenly remembered that I had planned to fill the fuel tank at the Mobil Truck Stop on I-96 between Howell and Lansing. But that was based on leaving from home. Now wide awake, I got my iPad, pulled up the map application, and zoomed in on the I-94 Baker Road interchange west of Ann Arbor. There are three truck stops there, two Pilots and one Travel America. I was able to examine each one carefully, checking in/out access and pump locations. I decided the Pilot station on the north side of the highway was my best option. I knew I had enough fuel in the tank to get that far easily, so I was then able to go back to bed and finally fall asleep.

2013_11_07 (R)

I must have been sleeping lightly because around 4 AM I was awakened by the faint sound of running water. That’s another one of those sounds that will jolt you awake once you become aware of it. The new flapper in the master bedroom toilet wasn’t quite sealed and the water was running ever so slowly trying to keep the tank full. I was finally able to adjust the flapper a couple of days later and get it to seal, but between the truck stop research and the running water, it turned out to be a short, fitful night’s sleep. Not good preparation for a long day of driving.

I would like to say that the trip from W. W. Williams to Phoenix Paint was uneventful, but Check Engine Lights are definitely an event, and I saw ours come on four times. It eventually went off each time, finally staying off after the 4^th time; once it’s come on I tend to be a bit on edge wondering when I will see it again (or worse).

I stopped for fuel at the aforementioned Pilot truck stop on the north side of I-94 at Baker Road and pulled in behind a truck at the last pump, or so I thought. I sat there for a while until the driver came out and moved it, at which point I pulled up only to discover that there wasn’t a pump at that position. So I pulled out of the truck stop onto Baker Road, came back in the entrance, and got in line behind a truck that was putting fuel in its tanks. That truck finally moved and I was able to pull up to the pump.

Getting fuel at a truck stop isn’t like putting fuel in your car. The gallons and dollars involved are usually an order of magnitude larger and you usually cannot run a credit card at the pump. I went inside, waited in line, and was finally waited on by a nice woman. I told her I probably needed 150 gallons and I failed to recognize that she ran my credit card for $150. I was only half done washing the windshields (the bus has four) when the pump shut off. It had put in 37.9 gallons for exactly $150. So I went back inside, stood in line again, and had her run the card for another $350. Back outside, I restarted the pump, waited for it to finish, then went back inside, got back in line, and got not one, but two, receipts with the dollars and gallons on them. By the time I got back on the highway the fuel stop had taken about one hour. More delay.

No sooner was I on the road then I got a call from Chuck checking on how my trip was going. That was both thoughtful and reassuring; it’s comforting to know folks are aware of you and concerned for your well-being. In some ways, owning a converted coach makes you part of a “fraternity”, if you care to join. While we were on the phone the Check Engine Light came on for the 3^rd time since I had left W. W. Williams. It went off and came on again. I discussed it with Chuck and decided to pull off at MY FAVORITE REST AREA to check the coolant level in the overflow reservoir. (I talked about this rest area in my article in the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversions Magazine. This is the same rest area where I was stranded while Linda and I repaired the patio awning that came loose a few miles earlier on westbound I-94. Ironically, I was on my way to Phoenix Paint at that time as well. I’m not superstitious, but I don’t like unlikely coincidences.)

The rest stop in question is near Grass Lake, Michigan, about 12 miles east of Jackson, Michigan. It’s a very nice rest stop; I just seem to end up stopping here for less than nice reasons. I popped the rear engine hatch, improvised a dip stick, and checked the level in the overflow reservoir. It was up to the bottom edge of the filler tube, so no obvious problem there. I looked around the engine bay for any sign of a coolant leak, but everything looked dry. I took some comfort in the fact that Bob, the service manager at W. W. Williams (Dearborn) had told me that he and the technicians were very impressed with the condition of our engine; that it sounded good and ran well. They’re real experts, so that’s no small thing.

The rest of the trip really was uneventful. The Check Engine Light did not come on again, the transmission shifted well, the cruise control worked properly (as it always has), the engine coolant and oil temperatures ran normal, and the speedometer suddenly decided to work again! I took I-94 W to I-69 S to M-60 W to M-40 S to US-12 W to M-205 W and pulled into Phoenix Paint just a mile north of the Indiana border around 1:00 PM. I’ve done this trip many times, but it was a very pleasant drive with fall colors still in evidence, light traffic, and nice weather.

Michele got me into the building and parked and had me air up the suspension so they could have easier access to the inside of the wheel wells. She and Pato got right to work removing the damaged panels while I hooked up the electrical shoreline, got the house battery charger turned back on, and activated some circuits for the inside of the bus including the auxiliary air compressor. I stopped to look at things and answer questions as I unloaded some items from the car, and then moved stuff from the bus to car that had to return home with me. What started out as a trip to have paint scratches buffed out had become a trip to also find and seal roof leaks and repair/repaint damaged body panels, so Michele and I looked the coach over and discussed the work to be done. I was there about 90 minutes—a really short visit for me and Michele—and got back on the road for home around 2:30 PM.

I had originally planned to spend a few days at her shop working on some small projects of my own, but that was based on a Monday arrival. We had plans to meet up with our friend Kate in Ypsilanti on Thursday evening to see Roy Blount, Jr. at Eastern Michigan University’s Pease Auditorium. I made it home with just enough time to change clothes, but not to eat, and we headed off to Ypsi. We got there just as Kate and her friend Teresa were arriving and got four seats together. RBJr was very interesting to listen too when we could hear him and understand what he was saying. He speaks somewhat softly, and the PA system for the auditorium was not adjusted properly to compensate for that.

After the event we headed over to the Sweetwater Café, just a short walk from the auditorium, for coffee. They had some nice looking veggie rollup sandwiches, so Linda and I had a late/light dinner. We finally got home around 11 PM, a long day for me.

Although my health is better than it has been for the last couple of decades, I do not pretend that I am not in my 6^th decade. I can still do the all-day-drive thing, but I am much more tired at the end of it, and it takes me multiple days to recover from it.

2013_10_25-31 (M-R) FOOD At The Phase Place!

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Sometimes I get busy and don’t keep up with my posts. When I go back even as little as a week, as in this post, I find that many of the details are already lost in the continuous flow of daily living.

With the bus work in Williamston wrapped up, I turned my attention to figuring out what body panels and small parts I needed to order from Prevost to fix the damage I did to the passenger side of the bus leaving the campground in Townsend, TN. I spent a fair amount of time in the Prevost CatBase Viewer database. There were enough parts involved that I made an Excel spreadsheet. I called Prevost U.S. Parts and got Roger Anderson on the line. After discussing this for a while, we decided that it would be easiest for me to e-mail him the spreadsheet.

Next up was final preparations for the annual business meeting of our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter (FTH), of which I am the vice-president and secretary. There are a surprising number of documents that are involved in a simple meeting of a small group: an agenda (from the president), minutes from last year’s meeting, financial statements (which Linda and I prepare based on data from the treasurer), proposed amendments to the bylaws, and an updated roster. All of these get converted to PDF files and uploaded to a folder in our Dropbox account. I have provided a link to that folder to all of our members.

We made our usual trip to South Lyon on Saturday morning for breakfast with members of the South Lyon Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC). Linda worked on recipes. I installed the WP-Recipes plug-in and she has started using it to capture and publish recipes for some of our favorite whole-food plant-based (WFPB) dishes. She is evening taking a photograph of the finished dish and adding it to the recipe page. (Click on the Food & Health Tab and then on Recipes in the dropdown menu.)

While Linda worked on recipes I worked on WordPress websites. Besides our own, I am working on websites for our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter (FTH), our FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches Chapter (GLCC, of which Linda is the Treasurer), and our South Lyon Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC).

WordPress is constantly releasing updates and new versions. This generally a good thing, but they always strongly advise that you backup your site (folders/files/database) before installing an upgrade. I haven’t been doing that, so I decided on Saturday that I should. The GLCC website is an add-on domain for our primary/personal site, so I was able to back it up using the backup utilities in the QTH.com cPanel. The FTH website is hosted by iPower and the SLAARC website is hosted by GoDaddy, neither of which use cPanel nor appear to have built in backup utilities. There is some provision for backup built in to WordPress.

When I used the cPanel backup utility to backup our primary/personal site and the GLCC site it was about 1 GB. We only had 2.5 GB on our free Dropbox account, so I signed up for the 100 GB Dropbox plan. I then went on a search for a WordPress plug-in that would do the backups on a schedule. I selected WordPress Backup To Dropbox (WPB2D) and then installed and activated it on all four sites. I am going to test it for a couple of weeks and see how it works. I hope it works well as it is a very simple plug-in to use.

Our FTH meeting was scheduled as a conference call for 6:00 PM EDT on Sunday evening, October 27. We have 40 memberships in the chapter and needed 10 to make a quorum. 6:00 PM came and went and at 6:15 PM we only had 8 people on the line. The president polled the group and decided we would try again the next night; same time, same place.

Our SLAARC information net is held every Sunday evening at 8:00 PM. I was a regular participant up until we moved to the new house. Although I have our 2m/70cm base station antenna mounted on the old TV tower, I do not have the coax run to the ham shack in the basement. Hooking up the radio is inconvenient, especially in cold/dark/wet conditions, all of which we now have. I would like to have the ham shack set up and functioning, but it has not made it to the top of the list yet.

On Monday I drove the bus to W. W. Williams in Dearborn, Michigan to have them look at the auxiliary air system and the speedometer. They thought the constant cycling of the main engine air-compressor was either the governor or the air-dryer purge valve. Since the governor had just been replaced, I authorized replacing the purge valve. They thought the speedometer issue was the “tone wheel”, the sensor, or the gauge. The sensor was just replaced, so I authorized them to check that it was installed correctly and to pull the output shaft housing on the end of the transmission to check the tone wheel.

I called Roger back at Prevost U.S. Parts. He had filled in my spreadsheet and prepared a Prevost quote, so he e-mail those back to me. I decided to hold off ordering until Michele at Phoenix Paint has a chance to look at the damage and decide if she can fix it.

Linda and I had staked out the size/location of our planned bus barn and driveway. We adjusted the stakes slightly, moving the barn 5 feet farther from the road and squaring it up. It’s currently 32 ft. wide by 56 ft. long with a driveway that includes a spur for turning around. Phil from Precision Grading came by Monday evening, measured the area, and dug a couple of test holes to see what soil conditions we had. He said we had 13 inches of good top soil in that area. This will have to be removed and replaced with crushed concrete and 21AA road gravel, so we discussed possible locations on our property for the top soil. Some of it will go in a depressed area behind the proposed barn location. This area forms a lake whenever we get heavy/persistent rain. Some it will probably go on the west side of the main garage driveway, which currently drops off more than we would like, and somewhat unevenly. There are also low spots on the far west end of our property, and some of the topsoil will likely go there.

I spent the rest of this period working on the various websites. In particular, I finally figured out how to configure and use the WP-Members plug-in to restrict access to selected portions of a WordPress site based on a Username and Password. With that feature working, I focused on design (structure) and content for the FTH and GLCC sites. I got sidetracked on Halloween with the idea of installing a “slider” (automated slideshow) in place of the default graphic in the RESPONSIVE Theme I am using for the GLCC site. I selected and installed Meteor Slides based on its demonstration by the authors of RESPONSIVE. It had the appearance of being very simple to install and use, and it was/is once I figured it out. It took me 5 hours to do that, but I did. The site is not ready for viewing yet, but I will share the address when it is.