Houston, BC - Butt Shots and Fan Belts

Train whistles at 5:44. Geez Louise ! ! ! Was that ever loud. Well, yeah, we’re in Houston, BC and, sure enough, there is a railroad track right next to our ‘campsite’ in the parking lot behind the local restaurant. There are no crossing anywhere near us - why did he have to blow his whistle - TWICE??? We lie there - awake waiting for the alarm.

The alarm goes off at 7:00 and we’re up. No breakfast today, we need to move now, while the motor is cold and the day is still cool. Dress, put things away, get ready to move. Gary gets into the RV with his fingers crossed. He starts it and slowly moves out of the parking lot, up a slight hill, over the bridge and now up the hill to the campground. Up, up, up, slowly, slowly, slowly. OMG, he made it and we are in our spot. A nice long pull-thru with excellent hook-ups, a picnic table, flowers and calm. Whew.

Now, can we eat breakfast? Yep. Then we set up and Gary sets to trouble-shooting the RV. The fan is under the closet so he removes the bottom of the closet but the access is poor. He then removes the front of the engine compartment under the closet. Here he is vacuuming the engine. Gotta have a clean engine.

By the way, you can see in the picture above that I’ve got out my cleaning bucket and magic cloths and am scrubbing all the bugs off the windshield.

I have a picture of Gary working on the engine. Of course, it’s a butt shot but this is the only shot I can get. We can lift the end of our bed up and we actually store some small things under it. Gary’s working under our closet where the diesel motor is.

Usually fan belts don’t lay on the bottom of the engine doing nothing. Usually, they’re wrapped around some round thing spinning a lot. The fan motor usually is not cocked and loose from the engine block. Not good. But, it looks as if nothing actually got broken, just that some bolts came out and the fan motor broke off of the twirly thing it was on. (Ha, didn’t expect such techincal language, did you?)

Yesterday, while I was waiting for the motor to cool in the RV, I drove the car around the industrial park here in town and found the local diesel service center - they work on Cummins engines which ours is. Sometime things go right. But, before we take it in on Tuesday (after the Monday holiday) Gary wants to troubleshoot it so he knows what is wrong. Maybe he can fix it, or not. But, even if he can’t fix it, at least he can talk intelligently with the mechanic to tell him what is wrong. Then he can check afterwards to see if it looks right. We also will need to get it down the hill to the service center and possible back up so he wants to ensure that it will drive and not break any more.

Meanwhile, I clean the bugs off our front windshield. We seem to have picked up a bumper crop of BC mosquitos and other bugs. Oh, my. I look at our windshield and it looks as if we’ve got more than our share so the locals should be pretty happy. I got out my handy cleaner and went to work. Don’t want Gary to see me playing games on my computer while he’s hard at work on the engine. Well, at least I don’t want him to see me. I’m an expert at shutting off the games quickly.

At least we’re in a town not out in the wilderness between towns where even our phone wouldn’t work. We’re also at a nice campground. The weather has turned warm and the view out our windows towards the snow-capped mountains is wonderful.

Gary spent all day on Sunday trying to see what exactly went wrong. Did we lose any parts? Did we damage anything beyond repair? What needs to be done to get the fan motor back into place and how to get the fan belt where it belongs. How can we get the RV back down the hill into town and the diesel service center without harming anything?

Here he is sitting on the ground under the engine with his head up into the engine. When we had fan belt problems before, this is where the mechanic sat when he fixed it.

He vacuums the engine. You know, I never thought that I would be dusting a steering wheel when I cleaned house but now that’s part of my cleaning. Gary probably never thought he’s vacuum an engine but here he is.

  

In the end he wrapped the fan belt around some hoses and used an orange cord to hold them in place. Then he strapped the fan motor to the housing where it is supposed to be bolted with a red strap. Now we’’re ready to head down the road to the service center.

He’s amazing. He’s analyzed the problem, figured out what went wrong and how to fix it. What a guy. And, he vacuums the motor too.