Today was our first day on the road. As you will see it was a wild and trying time. We had haphazardly thrown our stuff together in the motor home and set out for Inks Lake. Everything was going well with Joni at the wheel.
We had just turned onto I-20 heading west from Fort Worth to Weatherford when things started to happen. The ABS light came on the dash and Joni asked me what we should do. I pointed out to Joni that this was a feature of the braking system. We were safe and the ABS was not critical to normal braking. We could call Monaco when we get to Inks Lake.
Well, we made it a few more miles and the next problem occurred. The “Do Not Shift” light came on and the dash started beeping. You can imagine the panic reaction from Joni. To my surprise she stayed pretty calm. I told her this was something that we could not ignore. We pulled off the freeway onto the service road. After a little checking in our owners manual and playing around with our electronic shifter, we found we were stuck in third gear. We could not even shift the transmission to neutral.
On a prior trip to Ray Roberts Lake our alternator light had come on. After some trouble shooting, I had determined that it was the belt slipping and I was able to fix the problem with some belt dressing. However, when we got home and tried to start the coach generator we found out our chassis battery was dead (this was our first clue). We dropped our coach off at Cummins for regular service and asked them to check out the alternator. They pulled out the alternator and sent it to a service to have it inspected. It was fine, so they put it back on and told us the connections were badly corroded. They cleaned them up and told us everything was working fine.
Now let’s get back to our story.
Since I had Cummins work on the motor home previously, I called them to get some advice. They said that since it was a transmission problem they gave me someone else to call. We kept our motor running just in case. I called Steve at Industrial Power Truck & Equipment in Fort Worth.
Steve helped us through some diagnostic test on our Allison transmission. After a few tests we determined that we were not getting any voltage to the transmission. Steve said if we could get the coach to them they could help us out. The only problem was they were closing for a meeting at 3:00 and we had to get there in third gear only. It was currently 2:15 and we were not sure how far away from them we were. The other red flag was, did we have any battery life left to get back to Ft. Worth (downtown no less)?
So with prayers on our minds and doubts in our hearts we started our trek to a place we had never been and people we did not know. It’s a good thing diesel engines have great torque because we had to get this 31,000 pound rig going in third gear. We drove to the next overpass and turned back to Ft. Worth. Back on the freeway we determined that top end speed is 40-45 miles per hour in third gear. After a few minutes and seeming like we would never get there, Joni wanted me to call and ask them to stay late in case we did not get there before they closed. Being an optimist I told her we would make it. After more coxing I agreed to call. Steve said that they would do what they can and I said I would call back at 2:50 to let him know where we were. At 10 minutes till 3:00 we were only a couple of miles from our destination and things were looking up.
Our destination was Highway 121 and Beach Street just east of downtown Fort Worth. We reached the exit with time to spare and then it happened! We had just turned onto Beach Street from the access road when we lost all of our power. The engine was running but it did not have enough power left to complete the turn onto Beach. We had the turn lane blocked on the access road and the two south bound lanes of Beach Street blocked also.
We were a half block from our destination. It did not take long for traffic to get all blocked up. We had people honking at us and driving over the curbs and across the grass to get around us. Joni was near panic again so I called Steve. He said he would send Mark out to help us. Joni was still at the controls.
After a few minutes I decided to walk across the street to see why Mark had not come yet. About half way there I met Mark (a very nice guy). He had a battery booster in hand and felt that would help. Then (and only then) my brain kicked in and I told Mark that we had a switch to kick in our “house” batteries. He said that might work. Back at the coach we hit the switch and wham everything came back to life. All the lights went off and the buzzer quit buzzing. We had all six gears back on the transmission. The coach was happy. Joni was happy and everyone in the traffic jam was happy!
We made it the rest of the way to Industrial Power Truck & Equipment. Steve was there to greet us and Mark told us not to worry. It was now passed 3:00 and both Steve and Mark helped us settle into a place for them to fix our rig. Even though they had a long backup of customers to work on they said they would get to us first thing in the morning. So we packed up some clothes and headed back to Val and Kandy Franklin’s home in Trophy Club.
After a restless night, we returned to our motor home and did some rearranging of our goods while they worked on the problem. They started on our coach about 8:00 in the morning. Too make this long story a little shorter. We had to replace the alternator (it was bad) and we had to run a new heavy duty wire from the alternator to the battery.
With our motor home repaired and our Jeep in tow, we set out again for Inks Lake. We gained a great respect for the people that helped us. They bent over backwards to comfort us and get us on the road again as quickly as possible. We are a few bucks lighter but gained more knowledge of our coach. We feel good as we are now on our way!
