Murphy comes to visit

I guess inadvertently Jan and I were getting a little smug after our ordeal with the AC unit.  We were just cruising around enjoying life and not giving Murphy his appropriate due.  It's been about 6 weeks since the AC replacement.  So as we were driving from West Yellowstone to Dubois, WY, we were pulling a pretty good sized pass and saw a scenic overlook.  We pulled in to take a look marveling at the fact we had finally left the smoke behind, read a few info signs and as we are walking back to the coach by the side of the truck we notice it is covered in some kind of liquid!  Oh my, and so is the left rear of the motorhome, all over the louvers for the radiator stack, and oh man, dripping out of the bottom of the coach.  We open the engine compartment and it is all wet as well.  NOT GOOD.

At least we are off the road in a safe place, except we are in the middle of nowhere, 35 miles to Dubois, which is a town of less than a thousand, and with no cell service.  So the diesel mechanic and I get changed into some work clothes, raise the rear of the coach and crawl under and around to try to find the leak which I thought at first was coolant but now realize is ATF, automatic transmission fluid, which is what our hydraulic system uses to run the cooling fan and power steering pump.  

We can't find the leak.  It is made more difficult by the fact everything is pretty much covered with fluid, so we decide finally after much wiping, poking, and peering that the only way to find it is to start it.  So we do.........and nothing happens.  Huh?  We look at each other and decide we will try to drive it to the campground in Dubois and see what gives.  So we tentatively make our way down the road, constantly watching all the gauges for any sign of abnormality, and pull into The Longhorn Ranch, our campground for the next 4 days.  Jan goes in to check in and I go out to see how the leak looks, leaving it run. It is basically dry, a few drips but nothing of consequence??  So when the rig in front of us moves, I move our coach forward and then since it is taking some time for Jan to come out, I shut it off.  She says we need to unhook the truck, so when we walk back to do so, now we have what looks like several quarts leaking out!  We are tipped a little and wonder if that might be having an effect.  We get unhooked, move to our site, dump a ton of cat litter on the puddle, and start to look to see if there are any mechanics or repair people around.  It is 5pm by now, so we just wait until the next day to pursue it any further.

We find a truck towing/repair service in town that also advertises working on RV's, so I figure I'll go and ask if they can come and take a look.  They are very nice and obviously tell me they would be happy to come take a look, but it would be much later in the day if then.  Okay, well we aren't going to just hang out to wait.  So diesel mechanic, Jan and I tear into it, and oh by the way, it has hardly leaked at all overnight.

Hard to see in this picture,
but the whole thing is covered in ATF

This gives you a better idea of how dirty it is

I should mention a few things, first of all, the campground is very sympathetic and offers help if we need it, many places won't let you work on your rig at all, and where we are is away from everyone else, it's really a prime site, so we have lots of room, it is Wednesday so we have a few days before the weekend, and we don't have to be anywhere for 4 days. We start by crawling around looking for a leak and since we still can't find it remove the louver covers to see what's what.  This is a stacked assembly with the engine radiator on top, hydraulic cooler underneath, with the CAC, transmission cooler, etc, behind.  Well, do we find a mess, ATF everywhere, and it looks like the culprit is the hydraulic cooler itself.

The engine radiator is on top, the hydraulic cooler on the bottom

And man is it leaking

Now there is a company in Oregon, Source Engineering that is known for producing radiators, coolers, CAC's, suspension parts for Monaco coaches.  I put in a call to Jim and send some pictures and see if he might have one of these.  Meanwhile I drive back to the towing company to let them know we now know the problem.  They are very nice and offer to come by later and see what's up.  

We have also figured out why we had the huge leak when we checked in.  There is kind of a tray under the stack that can probably hold a gallon or so of liquid, and when we tipped a bit after I moved the coach, it just spilled out.  In a few minutes I get an email back from Source to say they have one in stock at over $1400 !  We are kind of stuck and we tell each other we are saving a bunch of money cause we are going to replace it ourselves.  We get Source to overnight ship it, another $200, but what choice do we have, and then I go back to the towing company and tell them we are all set, it's only a 1 1/2 miles away.

So how to tackle it?  And what do we do with the mess?  And what do we do with the bad cooler?  We decide to sacrifice a blue tarp we have, fill it up with floor dry to absorb the ATF and dispose of it that way.  The campground has a guy that wants the aluminum cooler so we are all set.  We go buy floor dry, a couple corks to plug the lines, 4 gallons of ATF, and a 1 1/4" wrench since we are told the fittings will be a bear to get loose, turned out they were a piece of cake.  And then we wait, since we can't go any further without making a huge mess and most importantly we want to be absolutely sure the new one is the right one.

Now just to add insult (and more Murphy) to the mix, we had moved the driver side bedroom slide in to make access easier, so after our evaluation we went to move the slide back out and nothing!  We could hear the motor run, it's our only electric slide, the others are hydraulic.  So another project right now.  

Luckily it was a simple problem, the gear that runs along a track had lost its locking bolt and just had to be realigned and tightened, now access to it is another issue:-)  But together we managed to get it in, aligned, and "Bill" tightened.

Jan getting it aligned

Problem solved, at least for the slide.  We went out exploring and hiking instead of hanging around waiting for the cooler, it will be another post.  It arrived around 1:30pm, we had decided between us that 2pm would be our cutoff time to start the project, so we started!

The new correct cooler!

It was truly a mess.  We got our tarp arranged, but when the fittings come off, the ATF pours out, and the cooler is full as well.  But we contained it and the corks really worked.

Yes, a mess

The cork in the fitting

Now when we got the old one out, we were presented with another huge mess.  Our coach is 10 years old, so between the cooler and the CAC, which can't be seen or gotten to, had accumulated leaves, dirt, sticks, all made worse by the ATF leaking, it's a wonder it cooled adequately.

What a mess!

So we picked it clean, then Simple Green'ed it 3 or 4 times and cleaned it up the best we could before we installed the new cooler.

Even more mess

But we got it in and replenished the ATF, ran it for awhile, it's self bleeding, then added more ATF, checked for leaks, and pronounced it fixed!!

Shiny and new!

All done

But Murphy was not done with us!  We have both hydraulic jacks for leveling as well as air.  Primarily we use air, but whenever we are going to be under the coach for a few minutes we use both, so the next morning as we are getting ready to go, we raised the jacks, but continued to get a buzzer saying the jacks weren't up.  We checked and confirmed they were so that buzzer also means you are low on fluid.  No problem we'll just add some.  Now the reservoir for the jacks is up front, so you need to run out the generator to access it.  We push the switch to move the genny and .......nothing!  We want to add fluid so we don't have to listen to the buzzer for the next 300 miles, but you cannot, even Jan can't fit, service the reservoir with the genny not out, so, we decide to just listen to the buzzer and worry about the generator slide later.  It did finally stop by the way.  Then not to be outdone, Murphy struck one more time.  We arrived at our new campground in Carbondale, CO and decided to put out our rear patio awning to block the sun.  We had our cocktails and then press the remote to retract the awning and nothing!  Changed batteries, pressed the electric over ride, nothing, so I had to go up on the roof and manually retract it with an electric drill:-)  We will worry about that later as well.  So now we are going fishing and I'll catch up with our other, non repair travels later.