A knock on the door, Saturday 7 Feb 2015

At 6 AM, while Carroll and I have just awaken, thinking of what to do when suddenly we heard a  knock on the door. I darted out of bed, dressed only I my underwear, wondering what or who the  hell could be at the door at this time of the morning.  In a flash I assumed it must be the police.
To my surprise it was a well dressed young man about 30 years of age and he said Hello ( in Spanish ) do you have a problem. I yes , my MH won't go and needs a mechanic. He said come with me and I will find you a mechanic. I said where and he said in Tepic. Tepic is 45 miles away. So I said, let me get dressed. While getting dressed I was wondering if this was for real or was it a set up but the young man seemed sincere. So I grabbed my booklet with all the Engine Data that I had compiled and the Operation and Maintenance Manual for my Cummins engine. So we jumped in his car and took off. A few minutes later he says I have to go home first, which is in the local town of Compostella. When we got to his home he says you must come in; I said no I'll wait in the car. He says no, you must come in. Now, I'm getting apprehensive but I agree, all the time looking for an escape route if necessary. Once in the house he volunteers that his wife and two children are on vacation. Then he get grabs his iPad and say you type out the problem with your MH. I started typing and lo and behold it translated my English into Spanish so he could understand the problem. He then writes down the translation on a piece of paper and says lets go to Tepic so off we go. I'm feeling more at ease now.
On the way to Tepic we try to talk and I understand that his father  is in the Tepic hospital and will be operated on for stomach cancer on Monday.
When we get to Tepic he goes to a garage and speaks with a Mechanic but they do not have the Code Reader we need. But he sends us to another garage and he assures me this guy can help us. ( I've seen this movie before and it is never good) but I am between a rock and hard spot so I'm hoping.
I should mention that Mexicans work 6 days a week so the garage is open. When we arrive at the garage he ask the Clerk to see the owner.  She then makes a phone call and said the owner will be here shortly so I'm thinking "Mexican Time ". About 1/2 an hour later the Owner and his wife show up and they exchange salutations and I believe he gave them a short briefing about my problem. The wife looks at me and says is it an ISL engine, I said yes,  then she replies do you have the Operating manual so I hand it to her. I'm thinking this lady knows her business. The owner then gets his Code Reader out and ask me if it was a 10 pin or 6 pin connector and I knew it was a 6 pin. I think he said good, we can do it. Then the owner went to his "garage area" and returned with a mechanic. The mechanic says to me Hello. How are you , in English. ( You can imagine how relived I felt ) he then ask some question about my problem. He say we will go to you MH and we will solve the problem. What a relief. The wife, who runs the parts department then handed me a fuel filter and says take it. Then the English speaking mechanic and one other prepared the service vehicle while the owner change into his work clothes.
The young man who brought me to Tepic says you are going with them so we shook hands. I gave him 200 P for fuel and off he went.
The owner told me to jump in the front of the truck and the two mechanics got into the back and off we go to the MH.
Once we arrived at the MH the mechanics did a lot of checking and finally connected Code Reader and said that your problem is not the Throttle that was the problem in Guayabitos. After further checks they pin point the problem as the fuel filter and they changed it and it was obvious that was the problem. They insisted that we take the MH for a drive so we did a 20 KM run and all was great.
Now for the " bill ". Just remember , there was 3 mechanic, a service vehicle and they drove about 100 KM round trip and they replaced the filter. The total bill was 200.00 USD.
The English speaking mechanic ask me many questions about Canada , mostly about Mexicans who work in Canada and about their wages. I told him that a MacDonald's worker would get about 120 P and hour and he say that he only made 150 P per day (15.00 ) ; yes per day.
Finally Carroll and I took off and arrived at Mazatlan about 6 PM. While driving down a street in Mazatlan a dam tree branch jumped out an bite us but luckily it hit the Air horn first then bounced off the awning  and did not due any damage. Our friends Otto and Edna where waiting for us, at the  RV park with a beer and supper. What an unbelievable day. Yes there is an angel. cheers

Leaving Guayabitos Friday, 6 Feb 2015

By 7:30 AM we were guided out of the RV park as it is not an easy exit and we headed for Via Corona which is a an RV park with 9 Hot swimming pools and it is a theme park. The beauty of it is that,  with our RV entrance fee we are allow entrance to all the pools. Incidentally  they drain every pool each night except that they leave one pool for us campers until 10 PM so we can sit around pontificating about our travels and having an after dinner drink.
However about 40 KM down the road from Guayabitos the Check Engine light started to flicker and I was losing power. We limp into the town of Compostaella  at which point we entered the Toll booth heading for Guadalajara. All Toll booth have a large parking area for travelers and truckers  to stop for a washroom break and most have a Macs Milk  type store. We obviously had no choice except to stop and try to get help.

 Luckily there was a Green Angel sitting at the toll booth.
I know your asking , what is a Green Angel so I will tell you. Green Angels are a federal sponsored service vehicle that patrols the toll roads to help ( free of charge ) anyone who has a breakdown. They will help to change a tire, replace a fan belt or call for a tow truck and in fact some Green Angels have a tow vehicle.
So I ask the Green Angel to call a mechanic to help so he "apparently" called one but after an hour he was a no show. So he ask me to jump in his truck and we will find a mechanic. We checked with 5 truck shops in the town but nobody had a Code Reader that could check the reason for the  check light coming on. So he dropped me off at the MH and he made another phone call to another mechanic.  A mechanic , who spoke a little English, showed up about 20 minutes later with a Code Reader but it was for small diesel truck. However he in turn  made several phone calls and said a mechanic with a code reader would show up between one and 3 hours. He never showed up and it is now 5 PM so the best I could do was have a beer. We would therefore spend the night in the MH we will worry about tomorrow when it gets here .
You will not believe tomorrows story . cheers

MH; Check Eng light 5 Feb 2015

The last word yesterday , from the Cummins dealer in Guadalajara  was that the Tech would be in Rincon in the morning. We forgot to ask if that was Mexican time!! All the MH owners, along with me  were just  waiting the Mexican "Super Tech " to fix my MH and he arrived at 8:30. He probably wondered what all the fuss was about as he does this diagnostic check every day. By the way he did not speak a word of English and Chris was in PV for the day.

First he checked to see which indicator light was on; then he got his code reader out which incidentally is about twice the size of a Visa card reader and his Lap Top computer. There are two connection points; one in the dash but not the easiest to access and one in the Engine compartment, real easy to access . He plugged it in and I started the Engine to start his diagnostic test and several of the MH owners were trying to see what was happening. After about 5 minutes he pointed to the front of the MH meaning it was a throttle problem. We shut the Engine down and he got under the dash area to check the throttle connection and I believe he disconnected the components; then got out his iPhone and I believe he reset the fault because the light went off. He then ask me to take the MH for a test run so I drove it forward and backward several time and it was good to go. Problem solved.
The mechanic then called Chris in PV to explain what he did and he then handed me the phone and Chris said he want to advise me to replace the Throttle component once I get to the US because , although it is working , it might resurface again.
Before he left I "tried " to explain that I needed a copy of the work order and an invoice. He said yes to the work order but the invoiced had to come from the office so they are " suppose " to email me a copy. I got distracted by all the fuss for about 2 minutesand before I knew it he was gone and I did not have the work order copy.  GoodSam Insurance will pay for the service call, if I provide an invoice.  I hope.
We parked the MH so we could get out early tomorrow as we are heading for Via Corona.
It is interesting in this day of age that a problem can be fixed without taking a wrench out of the tool box. A mechanic's tool box now contains a computer. Cheers

Motor Home Problem solved 2015

4 Feb:   Chris , the park manager, called Cummins in Guadalajara at 9 AM with me in his office to answer a realm of question about  the MH and the Engine.  I'm sure they figured if they were going to drive 3 hours one way they better have all the information necessary to solve the problem.  Finally , they agreed to send a man tomorrow morning if and when I deposited 5520 P ( 500.00 Cdn ) in their bank account . I immediately went to the bank and deposited the money. They called back a few minutes later and said the Mechanic with the Code Reader would be there in the morning. Finally a ray of sunshine.
I took deep breath , grabbed a beer and went to the pool. The beach is dirty from the 3 days of rain.
It was kind of funny as several other MH owners started their engine just in case they needed this Mechanic while he was here. Nobody had a Check Engine light so all was OK. cheers

Motor home Delima Feb 2015

2 Feb: The rain stopped or should I say tried to stop. I think  the rain Gods just stopped long enough so that we would go outside and then come with another downpour.
Anyway, my friend Dave says , lets go and find a Mechanic in this  area so off we go. I won't bore you with the details but suffice to said it was a fruitless few hours.
So Carroll and I went  to Lo de Marcos to see our friend Ron and he takes me to see his friend Art who has a Code Reader. Art agrees to come tomorrow as he is tied up elsewhere today. Eureka, we might have a solution.   So after a couple drinks at Ron's abode we return home with better " hopes" for tomorrow.  The rain is still off and on but it stayed off for Happy Hour. I said to hell with it, tomorrows another day. cheers

3 Feb: Ron and Art show at 9 AM with the Code Reader and everyone in the park wanted to see what this mystical Code Reader looks like and how does it solve this engine problem by merely spitting out the info on a computer. Our anxiety was short lived as Art's Reader was for small diesel truck ( ie F350 ) only.
We spent the rest of the day  trying to find a Cummins Tech somewhere in MX  and it seems that nobody could tells where to find this Code Reader. With all the frigging Cummins Diesels in MX it was unbelievable that nobody could help us.
Dave Killey  just kept asking all his connections if they knew of a dealer and finally he came up with a phone number in Compostella ( 1 hour away ) and they in turn gave us a number in Guadalajara ( 3 hours away ).
Since it is now 5 PM , Chris the park manager / owner will call the Guadalajara number in the morning and of course hopes are high that  they will solve the problem.
I know everyone wants to help and or feel sorry for us but I was wearing thin on all the question. No one else every had this problem so they never had a better solution than mine. Tomorrow looks like a better day.  cheers

Leaving Guayabitos for Via Corona 1 Feb 2015

At 7 AM Elia and family pulled out as he was heading back to Ft . Steel to help calf 150 cows. His son who runs the farm dropped the blade of a Front End Loader on his toes and cut them off.
Eslers intended to pull out at 7:30 AM but when I started the MH the Engine Check light came on and I had no throttle. Holy Crap!!!. What I did have, was lots of opinions , most of which I did not need.  So I called our friend Ron Miller who has run a Diesel shop in Calgary and Okotoks for 30 plus years. He agreed, that we needed a Code Reader to find the fault. Code Readers are not that common so we figured we would have to get someone from  a Cummins garage in Guadalajara to check it out. But first we called Freightliner and after 1/2 an hour on the phone " Mr. Freightliner" gave up. We tried Cummins but the 1 800 number is in the US and we could not get it to ring thru.  Ron Miller said he knew of a friend in another camp who had a Reader and he would check with him tomorrow.
Since we were in the mists of a torrential down pour we call a truce since nobody was going to stand out in the rain with a computer under these condition. Incidentally the computer plug is located in the rear at the Engine near the oil dip stick.
I even went to another Park to see a guy who had a similar problem last year. Unfortunately he had a Cat  Engine so no luck, however I now have a new friend. Believe me this scenario is not over by an stretch of the imagination but suffice to say we are not going anywhere soon. cheers

Rain , Rain Go Away 31 Jan 2015

Friday was cloudy and rainy most of the day. Every year before the majority of the people leave they have a "class " picture and since several of us were leaving on Sunday and Monday it was decide to have the "Portrait " done on Friday. But the weather did not cooperate so it was cancelled until further notice. On Saturday it rained and rained until 2:30 and then  finally the Sun broke through  for few hours. So we muster the crew together and got the annual picture done. Does anyone what a picture of 50 senior they don't know. OK , I take one 8 by 10 matte.
Actually the rain stay away long enough to have Happy Hour. Then we went for supper and while we were walking the 4 blocks back to the park the rains came and came and came all night and it was still raining in the morning. Did I mentioned it rained most of Saturday.
Since we are leaving tomorrow we spent the most of the day packing up so we could leave by 7 or 8. cheers