Good News, Bad News

The cooling unit for the motorhome refrigerator arrived Tuesday afternoon. Tom had talked with JR, the repairman in Gettysburg, and JR advised that we should not bring the motorhome to his garage until Wednesday morning. We have been having lots of rain and JR is located in a low area prone to flooding so he didn't want us have a flooded motorhome. So Wednesday morning we had the motorhome to JR by 9am. At 3pm JR called to say he had the cooling unit installed and it was working. We were 2 days late getting to Myrtle Beach and were anxious to be on our way so we threw all our "stuff" in the jeep, went to Gettysburg, loaded up the motorhome and took off south.

 We hoped to get south of Richmond, Virginia but as darkness set in the rain began to really pour. Also about at this point we heard a noise that sounded like an exhaust problem had developed. (We had had a problem with the exhaust system before that due to the heat had melted the starter leaving us stranded at a gas station in Western Maryland and having to be towed to a garage. The garage, a Ford dealer, installed a new starter that when we had stopped along the street by our house again the starter had melted and we needed to be towed to our local Ford dealer to have the exhaust system worked on along with another new starter.) After having this problem previously we were really anxious about what to do. So Tom spied a Flying J gas station near Fort AP Hill, Va. and we elected to stay there for the night. It is not the most ideal place to stay but it is free and as safe as any area to spend the night and if we were unable to start the motorhome in the morning finding assistance might be easier here than even at a campground, plus there is a restaurant that we were able to catch a late bite to eat and breakfast in the morning.

 This morning the rain had stopped when we got up so Tom did some checking further into the problem and determined that indeed the exhaust system had a problem in the same area as before and we decided at that point we needed to go home before we were stranded somewhere. So we traveled back to Taneytown, pulled the motorhome in the driveway and didn't dare turn off the engine, unloaded it and then took the motorhome to our local Ford dealer where it will stay until the problem is fixed.

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The good news is that the refrigerator is working great, the bad news is that our motorhome is not and we had to cancel out reservations in Myrtle Beach.

We were planning to leave for the Labor Day weekend campout with the Traveling Americans on Friday.  Leah started the refrigerator on Monday evening and discovered that it did not want to work.  It appears that the cooling unit decided it no longer wanted to function.  What to do, What to do?????   Tuesday morning we called JR's RV Repair in Gettysburg, Pa and spoke with him about the problem.  We concluded it was the cooling unit that needed to be replaced. The unit is twelve years old and the average life is ten.  We ordered a replacement cooling unit Tuesday morning but it did not get shipped until Thursday.  We were hoping to have by Friday, but it will not be until Tuesday after Labor day before we receive it.

As soon as we receive the new cooling unit we will take it and the motorhome to the repair shop to have the work performed.  The next big question is "will the new cooling unit work?"  If it does not, we are back to square one.  But, we are going to think positive and know that it will work better the the unit it is replacing.