Since leaving Colorado I spent 4 nights at Abiquiu Lake where these yellow sunflowers were blooming all over the place. From there I moved down to Cochiti Lake where I ran into some friends who were parked there with their rv's. Roxanne, of The Good Luck Duck blog invited me over for dinner, bbq ribs, yum. Friend Donna was also there so the three of us had a nice visit over ribs and pasta salad.
It was while I was at Cochiti that I discovered that the rv repair shop in Colorado didn't fix my air conditioner, this camping site was the first time I've been plugged into electricity and the first time I was able to turn the air conditioner on. So called the shop in El Cajon where I already have an appointment and we added more time for them to take a look and get it fixed, I hope right this time.
Leaving Cochiti I made my way to Yuma where it is still to hot. I had planned to stay there for 4 nights, I paid for 2 nights, stayed for one, when I checked into the rv park. The picture below was taken a 7:30 the first night when I made a food run to the store. As you can see the Honda now has 60,000 miles on her and it was 101º. Ugg The next morning I was at my storage unit by 7am, left there at 8 and went to Diesel Automotive for a visit. They are my 'go to' mechanics for both the rv and the Honda. My vehicles aren't diesel but that doesn't matter as they'll work on anything.
By the time I got back to the rv it was only 10:00 and very hot. I decided to leave and go to Alpine, CA in San Diego county, only 3 hours west, where it much cooler. So by 10:30 I was on the road heading west.
I knew it would be a strain on the rv to drive during the heat of the day because there's quite a mountain to climb-up out of the Imperial valley into San Diego County. You go from below sea level to 4,00 feet in 29 miles. Along the road are watering stations for your car and pull outs for letting engines cool down and advisory signs telling you to turn off your air conditioners to cut down on the load on your engine. I had my eye on the temperature gage the whole way up the hill and the rv did fine.
Until I was parked in my rv site and I noticed fluid dripping from under the engine area. Ugg. Ugg because my trusted mobile mechanic, Danny from Johnson Services, Mobile Mechanic, had broken his arm in early Sept. and I didn't know if he was back at work yet. So monday morning I called him and no he's not really back working but good news is his brother is helping him out and they could be up looking at the rv in 3 hours. They came and diagnosed the problem. I had radiator failure.
In this picture of the old radiator, we are seeing the top, which looks like the bottom where the failure occurred. See the lighter colored strip of aluminum, with the clip fingers holding the top to the fin area. On the bottom those fingers stretched open allowing a separation and the antifreeze to leak out. It could have been way worse, if had been oil from my oil pan gasket it would have meant having the engine pulled out to fix that, so I was very lucky. Also very lucky that there wasn't complete failure while I was on the road, I was safely tucked into an rv site before this got to bad. The good news is that I now have a brand new radiator and all new hoses as well and new thermostat and we threw in a fuel filter as well and heater hosed too.
Danny, still guarding his arm a bit.
So I'm all set to go. I'll be in the San Diego area for about a month, house sitting for my daughter and taking care of some more business of mom's estate. Then it's back to Yuma for a few days, where I sure hope it will be cooler.
That's all for now.
In my next posting I'll reveal my big next step and future plans.
Easy Rider, seen in a parking lot in California.
