THE TRIP to and from Arcadia!!!

[ArtGill]

The gathering at Arcadia was great and the trip to and from was interesting. I would like to share the events with everyone and at the end there is a simple soultion.  The first event was the discovery of a lump on the side of my outside drive while getting fuel in Ga.  Four hour later we were underway again with a new recap.   My spare was the wrong size.  Coach-Net provided the service.

Because I wanted to get through Jax, Fla before we stopped for a nap. It was after 1 am when we started checking rest stops, but there was no room to park.  On to plan B, find a Cracker Barrell, stop, sleep a little and then breakfast.  But, this wasn't to be.  We found a Cracker at about 2:30 am near Daytona Beach.  We parked for nap.  About 3:30 there came a knocking on our door from a pair of law enforcement officors.  Just knew we were about to be run off, but no, they wanted to know if we had heard gun shots.  They said not to worry.  Back to sleep, half an hour later, sirens.  Looked out the window and found no more that 50 feet away six police cars, men with dogs puting on vest and taking rifles and shotguns out.  Then we heard a helicoper overhead.  This went on for about an hour, no one paid any attention to the fact we were there.  Short nap and we tried to get breakfast, but the crime lab was there and yellow tape.  They didn't even let the employees in.  They would not say what was going on.  If anyone has heard, let me know.

The balance of the trip to Arcadia was uneventiful.

Our return trip started Monday morning.  We started out on 70 east and stopped for fuel at 27.  As I pulled out of the fuel stop I could tell a loss in power.  We headed on East and got up to 55 mph and then began to loss power.  Classic fuel filter problems and I had no spares.  We limped into Okeechobee.  Because it was New Years day only the Advance store was open and we had to order filters to be delivered Tuesday Morning.  Tuesday Am we changed the primary filter, they didn't get the secondary.  Drove several blocks to the NAPA store and purchased more primary and seconadary filters.  Headed East, still low power.  Stopped and changed the secondary filter,  Still low power.  Stopped agin and changed both filters but upon restart, I lost prime.  Dead Engine.  Called Coach Net again.  Tow truck was dispatched and arrived six hours later.  We arrived at DD dealer in Ft Pearce at closing time.  We found a motel room and went back Wednesday morning.  They had the engine running and decided that two injectors were dead.  Had to order the injectors and they would be in on Thursday.  Another night in a motel.  Thursday with new injectors in 1 and 2, we still had no power.  We checked for boast preasure, air filter, and muffler with no chage.  And then, and then they hooked the test box to the DDEC and found injectors one and two appears bad again.  That didn't make sense, so they started looking and found a loose plug on the DDEC that went to the injectors and boast sensor.  A few tiewraps, a significant bill and we were on the road to arrive in Morehead City, NC on Friday just four day after we left Arcadia. Lesson, if more than one item appears bad, check plugs.

I hope Next year is not this educating. It was great to meet eveyone.

Art