We are dead in the water :(

Last Monday we were on the way to Elephant Butte, NM to attend the RV-Dreams rally.  About 20 miles from Elephant Butte in the middle of nowhere the bus lost power and expelled all of it's radiator fluid.

Shad got on the line immediately with Good Sam's roadside assistance and after going back and forth with them for about two hours on the shoulder of I-25 we decided to head on into Elephant Butte and check into a hotel.  Thank goodness we had decided that I should follow the RV in our Honda Pilot or we would've been totally screwed.

Good Sam's was having trouble finding a roadside mechanic in the area and we spoke with people from both Albuquerque (2 hours north) and Las Cruces (2 hours south).  The mechanics we spoke to kept telling us that we need to take a picture of the problem and send it to them which would've been great had we actually known what the issue was.  We were feeling really green and a little dumb for buying an engine we knew very little about.

The mechanic in Las Cruces finally said that we would need to be towed into him and he would then diagnose the problem.  We had done a little leg work of our own and had found someone willing to tow us to Las Cruces that was local.  We arranged through God Sams to meet the tow at the rig the next morning.

We met the tow guy the next morning at our bus and were greeted with bad news.  Because of the  bus was so low to the ground we we would need a special tow truck, one of the ones that can tow you up onto a flatbed, and at 40' feet there was not one in the area that was capable of the job.  He suggested that he and his mechanics were however capable of checking the engine out at the side of the road.  Great!

After looking at the situation the mechanic told us that we had overheated the engine and that had caused the antifreeze to dump.  He asked what type of oil we were using.  We had the RV checked out by a local Detroit diesel place and had been advised to use straight 30w or 40w in our engine.  This mechanic said that we had been told wrong.  That we needed to be running 15w-40 and that the wrong oil was likely the cause of the cause of the problem.  So Shad and I took off to shop for anti-freeze, oil additive, and oil while the mechanics would empty out the old oil and we could start out fresh with what he stated was the right oil.

It took us over an hour round trip, but we finally found the quantities requested and were back at the bus.  The mechanics started emptying the fluids we got into the bus.  Things seemed to be looking up for us.

Then...

The previously dead engine started right away and was very smoky.  The engine was shut down quickly.  I sat nervously in the car with the dogs, waiting for Shad to come and give me the verdict.    We had a cracked head and the bus is going nowhere.

We got as much of our stuff as we could crammed into the back of the car and headed back to the hotel to let what had just happened sink in and decide where we are going to go from here.  We still have a 40' bus sitting on the shoulder of an interstate and no way to get it moved.  What is Good Sam's going to cover and how much is this going to end up costing us?

Shad called back to the major cities to inquire about the costs of tow and repair.  We were quoted that this would run us up to $1000 for the tow and the repair would be anywhere from $8,000 to $12,000.  We don't have that kind of money right now; we had just dumped a big chunk of our savings on the rig about 3 months ago.  What were we going to do?

Shad called around to the local storage places and found someone that we could be towed into and had room to store us in Elephant Butte.  He met with the local mechanic to see what he thought our best options were to get the rig off the road.  The mechanic said that he could find a way to tow it to the storage facility but there might be damage to the front and rear bumpers in the process.  We decided to go for it; at this point we really didn't want it spending a third night on the interstate.

It managed to make it into storage just fine with no damage to the bumpers!  Good Sams Roadside covered the majority of our expenses.  Whew!

We have decided that we are going to have to try and sell it.  We called around and the best offer we could get for it was to scrap it at 14 cents a pound.  We think that there is still enough value in it that we can do better than that.  If we could afford to fix it we would; the shell is in such good shape and the interior is functional.  Maybe someone out there would want to fix it or have it towed somewhere to live in?

In the next day or so I will be posting ads to Craigslist and probably e-bay as well at less than half of what we paid for it 3 month ago.  I have never sold anything online before in my life, so I'm trying to figure out what exactly it is I need to do.

We are not giving up on our goal to live full-time in an RV.  We've just hit a major bump in the road that will set us back at least a year.  We learned a lot in the short time that we have had it, and while we are sick and heartbroken over what has happened we have learned so much.  We are feeling discouraged, but not defeated. 

Our two nights in Austin!

Sorry I haven't updated since we got home.  We've been busy with life, work, home, etc.

We stayed at the Austin Lone Star RV resort for two nights after our freezing stay in Abeline.  The weather was much warmer and easier to deal with there.  The park was a nice, clean, and friendly place and we were happy with our choice to stay there.

Between visits with my brother-in-law and his future wife we made our way to the Camping World in New Braunfels and picked up a new sewer hose, a good space heater, and a few other vital supplies. 

I came home a bit discouraged because of how our sleeping situation worked out.  At home we have no problem with our 3 dogs crowding into our king sized bed; in a queen sized bed in the bus on the other hand... not so much.  I spent the two nights feeling really cramped and without good sleep.  I know what you are thinking.. "Why not shut the dogs out of the bedroom or shove them out of bed?"  I freely admit that our dogs are spoiled brats and had we shut the door there would have been endless scratching and whining and if we had kicked them out of bed they would've been back as soon as we dozed off.  It's our own fault and we know it. 

We are headed to Elephant Butte, NM for the RV-Dreams rally in 14 days and think that this time we will just have to let the dogs win and split up.  We will take turns sleeping on the sofa hide-a-bed.  It is not ideal; but I think it will help to keep us sane and rested.

We have started a list of things we need to do to make the bus more liveable.  Before we leave we are hoping to have a functioning horn (we have the fuses replaced and have the new solenoid, we just need to do some wiring) and stereo.  We could never figure out why we couldn't get the cable to function when we were in Austin so we would like to figure that out as well.   We still need to get a current state inspection sticker and hopefully with the horn fixed we can get that taken care of.

It might be nice to find a toad in the next two weeks as well. 

I will update later this week as we get things accomplished!

Tracie