On Thursday 04/16 after I got off work we drove to Lovell’s RV in Columbia, where we bought our RV. The washer-dryer hasn’t worked on the cold-water cycle since we bought it so we finally got the schedules worked out to get it fixed, and we wanted to be there when they opened on Friday morning. On the way there we had a bit of trouble - the “ATC” light in the RV came on a few times. ATC stands for Automatic Traction Control and whenever the light came on, the ATC system slows the engine a bit. So when Lovell’s fixed the washer, we asked them to look at the ATC. But Lovell’s said the ATC is associated with the transmission, so we’d have to take it to a transmission specialist. Since our transmission was made by Roadmaster, that’s where we should take it.
After we left Lovell’s on Friday around noon we drove to Navoo, Illinois to meet Lonnie and Chris, and Theresa and Tomm. Lonnie and Chris have a big 5th-wheel camper, and Theresa and Tomm were going to stay with us. On the way to Navoo our RV started giving us some real problems. The ATC light kept coming on all the time, and the RV would not go over 35 miles per hour; most of the time it was less than that. I called the Holiday Rambler support line and they said it wouldn’t hurt to drive it like that but it should be looked at by Roadmaster. Any time we went up a hill, the RV slowed down to about 10 mph. Sometimes I felt like we would have to get out an push it! Eventually we made it to Navoo and camped. When Theresa and Tomm got there (they had left Pekin on Friday afternoon) Tomm looked at the RV a bit, but there was no way to know what was wrong. So we tried to put is out of our minds for awhile so we could enjoy the weekend. We did some sight-seeing around Navoo, and Chris and Randy cooked steaks on Saturday, but it was hard to enjoy anything because we were worried about the RV. Then the RV batteries started to go down, and the inside lights wouldn’t come on all the way. Then the generator, which can be used to charge the batteries, wouldn’t start. We were afraid we would not be able to bring in the slides, or drive it at all! Randy and Tomm took one of the RV batteries to O’Reilly’s to get it tested, and we ended up replacing 3 of 4 batteries. We would have replaced all 4 but O’Reilly’s only had 3 of the kind we needed. Randy put a battery charger on and we got enough power to bring in the slides and start the engine on Sunday. Tomm was supposed to go to work on Monday but he decided to take Monday off because he and Theresa did not want to leave us when the RV was behaving so badly.
So when we left Sunday around 12:30, Tomm rode with Randy in the RV and I followed with Theresa in their car. We stopped a few times to try different things to fix the problem. Tomm took out the ATC fuses, thinking that we might be able to by-pass the sensor, but that didn’t make any difference. We only got as far as Quincy on Sunday. The distance between Navoo and Quincy is less that 50 miles but it took us almost 4 hours! The RV just wouldn’t go over 35, and on any hill it went a lot slower. And it jerked every single time the ATC came on, which was all the time. We got to Quincy around 4:30 and parked the RV in the Walmart parking lot. We belong to an RV club called Good Sam’s which pays for towing service, so we tried to arrange to get the RV towed. But because it was late Sunday afternoon, nothing was open. We were so glad that Theresa and Tomm were there with their car – we used it to drive out to get dinner, since we didn’t want to use the RV batteries more than we had to. We ended up spending the night on the Walmart parking lot – one RV with 4 people, 3 dogs, and 2 cats! Theresa had brought her 4 month old puppy, which fortunately gets along fine with our pets. Tomm replaced the ATC fuses and we called it a night.
Monday morning we drove the RV (very, very slowly) to a transmission center who hooked up the RV to a computer program to check the transmission fault codes. It didn’t find anything wrong. By that time Randy and Tomm both felt the problem wasn’t in the transmission but every time we called Holiday Rambler, they said we needed to get someone to look at the transmission. Then when we called Good Sam’s to get it towed to Roadmaster, they wanted to take it to another local transmission shop. We quit arguing with them and said we’d go to the other local transmission shop and the tow company said they’d be there in 90 minutes....but we could almost see the shop from the Walmart lot and there wasn’t much traffic, so we just drove there. And son-of-a-gun, the stupid RV worked fine on the drive over there! The guy at that shop was very reasonable and he agreed the problem had nothing to do with the transmission. Since it wasn’t behaving badly anymore, there wasn’t anything he could even look at. We decided to try to drive home. The RV worked perfectly – it ran at the speed limit all the way back to St. Louis. The only think we can think of is that some combination of everything we tried (fuses, batteries, etc) may have “re-set” the sensors.
We got to St Louis on Monday evening, but Theresa and Tomm were too tired to drive back to Pekin so Tomm took Tuesday off also and they stayed the night with us. Tuesday we all slept in and Randy fixed us breakfast. Then we went over the events of the weekend, so we would have a clear chain-of-events to tell Roadmaster. Since we don’t know what caused or what fixed the problem, we are not comfortable taking the RV out until Roadmaster looks at it. They will be able to run tests that the local shops could not. The closest Roadmaster shop is in Wentzville, about 30 miles from here, and we’ll have to make an appointment.
This next weekend was much nicer. I worked Friday to make up for not being in the office on Monday (I used a vacation day for Tuesday). Saturday I cleaned the RV, and Saturday night we went out with some friends from church. Dezina’s son Jacob just got a job as a waiter in a local restaurant, so we all went there to wish him well and leave him big tips.
Sunday after church Randy and I joined some folks from church to go shooting. Kris’ mom has a nice place out in the country, and Kris and her husband Randy invited several friends to go out there for target practice. They have one of those gadgets that fling a small round disk up in the air, and that’s the moving target we shoot at. That was the first time I shot a rifle, but I hit the target on my second shot! I probably got about 25% of the ones I shot at, which I thought was pretty good for my first time. It turns out I like shooting, so I may take a few lessons.
