Oregon. A Lot Has Happened, Mostly Great, But Also Bad

We left Kennewick headed to Junction City, OR, near Eugene to have Scott at Amazing Creations replace our consoles, both driver and passenger sides.  The vinyl and formed original consoles were in bad shape, falling apart and off the walls.  Scott has done some sensational work for us over the years and we were confident he could work out a solution.  And adding to our agenda was a replacement of our house batteries at the same time.  Our 4 big Lifeline 4D AGM's have been in service for 7 years and past time to be replaced.  Online and calling around I found a place, Empire Batteries in Eugene that had them in stock, all the other places I contacted had a 10-12 week delay.  So I paid for them in advance with the understanding that they would be delivered to us at Amazing Creations, and help me get the 4 125 pound batteries out and back in.  It worked out perfectly, we had just disconnected the old batteries before Empire arrived, so except for 2 that Jan helped me with, Mark was able to help me out with the other 2 and in with all 4 new ones.  We wanted to make it as short and sweet as we could so we could turn the corner and begin heading back eastward.  It worked out well, Scott got us done in record time, and we were busy with the batteries and other odds and ends, so we ended up leaving in no time at all.

We even got a short reprieve from the smoke

2 of the 4 installed!

Driver side before

Passenger side in process

Scott ripping and tearing

Jan doing some cleaning

What a rat's nest!

What to do, get away for some seafood

I had one job and that was to move the switches from the old
panel to the new and only broke one:-(
Luckily they are readily available in the area

Scott installing the new passenger side console

Panel almost done, so neat, compact and beautiful!

All trimmed out!

The new passenger side all done

Then for the other news, when we arrived at Scott's, his main lot was full so we had to park outside his fence in his parking area which meant we would have to boon dock for how ever long.  We debated, especially with our generator woes, but we said we'd give it a try.  The first day and evening we ran the generator for 3-4 hours, perfect.  The next morning and evening we ran the gen for another 5-6 hours, and A-OK.  But as it turned out our last morning after an hour, we heard it surge, then continued to run another 2 1/2 hours just fine, and then it started surging big time, so bad I had to shut it down.  Scott called a friend of his who has been a long time tech, and he suggested a fuel problem which we all are pretty sure is what is causing all this, but he specifically mentioned perhaps a crack, split, or small hole in the fuel line?  Makes sense, especially with the age of our coach and the fact the generator is mounted on a slide out tray that moves in and out, so the lines are suspended and out in the elements behind the gen and between the front wheels.  Food for thought.  Also thinking fuel, when we left I went to Cummins and got a new fuel pump.  

Taking advantage of being near the coast with some delicious fresh halibut

So the next morning before we started east, Jan and I checked and replaced the air cleaner filter which was dirtier than expected, especially after just replacing it in Florida before we left, and replaced the fuel pump.  Quite a little job as access is a bit gnarly.

New fuel pump

The small hole in which it lives

Getting the new pump hooked up

So after all this, we primed it really well and cranked it up, but could only run it for a few minutes as we were still in the campground, but it ran perfectly for 3 minutes.  Off east we went.  When we stopped for lunch, we started it up and let it run for 30 minutes, it ran fine, and although Jan wanted to let it run longer, I was too gun shy, so we shut it down, kind of not really wanting to hear the doctor's diagnosis.  We pulled into the very, very nice Bend/Sisters Garden RV Resort, and for some unknown reason they were having a power outage, so we cranked the generator, and...............it ran fine for about 1 minute then starting surging horribly again:-(  We figured the last thing we can do is to replace the fuel line, so I started looking for a place in Bend that could do it.  I wasn't sure of exactly what size and kind of fittings were required, and we knew the way the fuel line is routed right now we would never be able to get it out, so they said to take pictures, measurements and come by and they would see what they could do.  They ended up by letting me borrow about 5 different fittings to take back and figure out exactly what we needed.

The fitting and line on our incredibly dirty fuel tank

And the line that goes to the generator

So our plan at this point is to go and get a new fuel line about 18' long, probably more than we need but it's better than being too short:-)  Then when we get to Ennis and stay there for a longer time, we will run the line either temporarily or permanently and try the gen, hopefully that will solve our problem, if not, I don't know for sure what we'll do..

Towards Oregon

We had several more days to kill in smoky Missoula, so what do you do, you eat:-)  We found a Chinese restaurant we thought was so good we had remorse we had never been there in all the times we have been in Missoula.  The China Garden.

Exceptional Hot and Sour soup, perhaps the best we've ever had!

Kung Pao chicken served with a little "hot" sauce

House Lo Mein, yummy!

Then we went poking around and found a great grocery store with fresh, flown in from Alaska, King Salmon.  

King Salmon

With sautéed Bok Choy

Then we hit the Irish pub, Stone of Accord for lunch and of course a couple of Guinness's. 

Corned Beef and cole slaw with homemade chips

Great Rueben with awesome Champs!

The smoke just wouldn't give it up, so what to do?  Go back and get more Chinese.

Spicy shrimp noodle bowl

Stellar Mu Shu Pork

Then just before we were planning to leave in came the weather, it rained most of a day, temps only in the low 50's, and it cleared the air for 36 hours before the smoke came back.  But it was glorious.

A hint on our itinerary changes, we are ready to leave the west, sounds weird, even to us, especially after all these years of coming out here and loving it, but I guess the repetition, the heat, and especially the smoke this year spoke to us, so we are going to head east much sooner.  More details will be forthcoming.  

So we did get off to Kennewick, WA for a few nights and that put us in position to drive the 80 miles to Yakima to pick up our generator part.  It is about 350 miles from Missoula to Kennewick and for the first 250 or so there was almost no smoke, we were celebrating, but as it turned out way too soon.  As we approached Kennewick it became more and more intense really restricting visibility.  We tried to sit out our first night and made it only a little while until the smoke drove us back inside.  

Now I will say I made an error ordering the part from Yakima Cummins instead of Eugene, OR Cummins.  We drove up to Yakima and wanted to make it a day, we picked up the part, went to Costco, out to lunch, then headed back.  What we couldn't believe it was even smokier in town, you could watch it blow and billow down the street.  Made it hard to breathe.  Now on to my screwup, the generator part was $605, but when I went in to pick it up the first thing that amazed me was there was a sign on the door that I would have to have my temperature taken and would be asked questions before I could come in??????  This stuff was common more than a year ago, but not now.  I went in and although no one took my temp, the entire counter was partitioned off with plastic sheeting and each position, there were three were all partitioned off from each other!?!  I said was this for the new Delta, and was told since Cummins is an international company, this was their company policy.  Ridiculous in my opinion.  Anyway, he said that will be $689, say what??  Well there is shipping, that I was never told about, and $55 in taxes!!  If I had waited until Oregon there is no sales tax, oh well it's only money.  Then off to Costco, and we find that perhaps 85% of the people in the store are masked.  That is their business, but understand this is the first we have seen masks anywhere on our travels.  Jan finds some fresh Dungeness crab, hmm, with some picking we could probably have crab cocktails twice:-)  We almost blew off getting lunch with the smoke, but were so glad we didn't, we had an absolutely fantastic delicious lunch with excellent service and our mask issue was eased as no one working or in as a customer was wearing a mask.  The restaurant is called Cowitche Canyon.

Calamari

Apple, chicken, cheddar, peas, and lettuce salad

Prime Rib dip with shoestring fries

So back to the campground and since we still had some time, and had just pulled the part out and knew we could do it quickly, we installed the new part, but since we were in a campground we couldn't run the generator more than a few minutes.  But no surges so far.

So then we picked the Dungeness crab clusters, got almost a pound of meat, and made cocktails for happy hour.

Delicious and huge!

They were so big we had veggies for dinner:-)

We will head to Oregon soon, and hopefully we will be able to run the generator to determine if we stopped the surging.  Catch you in Oregon.