Plan B – Pretend we know what we are doing.

Time to get up and back to the slimy Racor filter. Not sure if we are dealing with Algae, but we know the coach wasn’t being used that much except for a monthly local fun run. We have never seen Algae here in Boston, but it sure looks like the pictures we see online. I wanted a half dozen Racor filters so we can swap them out every couple hundred miles until we run through the problem and also two of the cannister fuel filters that go in the engine compartment. Loves had nothing. We called the local NAPA, they can have one of each to us in four hours, so we take what we can get. While waiting I plotted our trip back home and started calling NAPA stores on the route. Nobody had more than one locally, but I was able to order online and have filters waiting for us every few hundred miles to be safe.

While waiting for filters we looked at why the Perkins Generator died. We suspected it also lost prime, the method to prime it involves the smallest most ridiculous lever that you have ever seen. So tiny to be almost useless. I looked online and found people suggested putting a small screwdriver through the slot and using that to flip it up and down like a thousand times. Mission accomplished, fuel coming out of the cracked line. Still no joy on start, so we moved up to the injectors and following the manual cracked them there. Finally we got it running, problem is the injector I cracked wouldn’t stop weeping diesel. Not a lot, just enough to make us think twice about running it for any length of time. I didn’t want to crank on it, we both think it is a one time use copper crush washer but we are not sure, will wait until we are back to civilization before we conduct surgery.

The filters arrived, we swapped out the Racor filter and filled it to the brim with ATF. We then tried to pull the canister filter in the engine compartment. It must have been put on with Red Permatex because it wouldn’t budge, it broke our cheap harbor freight filter wrench in half. I confess I wanted to go old school and shove a huge screwdriver through it but thought better of it when my friend said “haven’t you screwed up enough stuff today?”! He was right, we needed the right tool for the right job.

My friend has a real gift getting people to do things they wouldn’t normally do so he went to ask the mechanics at Loves if we can borrow some tools. If you have worked in the industry then you know that NOBODY loans out tools. Nobody! Fortunately they took pity on us and loaned us a few tools as long as they could go inside the bus to check it out. No matter where we go everyone wants to go inside our bus!! A small price to pay!

A few hours later we were back on the road enroute to our next NAPA to pickup more filters. 260 miles down, only 2,828 miles to go!