Thursday, June 29, 2006
When given lemons...
Well, things didn’t turn out quite the way we planned (to say the least). We did leave Barstow at 5:30 and had a nice drive to Las Vegas, stopping to get breakfast along the way at a Casino (boy do we dislike Casinos).
The noise that Snowie made continued and my gut told me it wasn’t good, so I decided to stop at the Chevrolet dealership in Las Vegas. It’s huge and really busy. However, the service guy (Slim) said he’d get the service foreman (Rory) to ride with me, pulling the trailer. Rory seemed quite good and we went for a ride. As soon as I got enough load on the car, the noise became apparent, and Rory said, “that’s internal engine noise – maybe a lifter, a rocker arm, or a piston, and I don’t like how your oil pressure gauge is fluctuating at high RPM.” He strongly advised against using the Suburban to pull the trailer across the desert or in the mountains. It only has 18,000 miles on it! L He also said that this 8.1L has always been indestructible and he was shocked that it would have an internal failure like this.
Well that really put a kink in our plans! I was really disappointed. I’ve done so much work on Snowie and the trailer and the trip – I didn’t want to see it all go up in smoke.
We started to consider alternatives (nobody rents a vehicle that can pull our trailer), and we settled on renting a motorhome so we could continue our trip. So at 11:00 we called around and found a 31’ Winnebago Class C on a Ford E450 chassis. We drove across town, had lunch at another Casino (L), picked up the motorhome, and drove back across town to the Chevrolet dealership, where we had left our trailer. We transferred everything (BBQ equipment, bikes, chairs, dishes, pots & pans, dry food, refrig food, clothes, linens, etc) from the trailer to the motorhome in 107 degree heat. It wasn’t much fun and took a couple of hours. We left the trailer and Snowie at the dealership – it should have a rebuilt or new engine when we get back (we hope). We took off from Las Vegas at 5:30 PM for Zion. We stopped to get some dinner and got here at 9:00. It’s been a very long day for everyone. The kids are exhausted (all 3 have been awake since 5:00) as are we.
One silver lining is that we’ve talked over the past year some about whether a motorhome is a better choice for camping for us. We’ll get a chance to use this one for 14 days and see how we like it. We (I) already miss so many of the niceties we’ve added to our trailer and Suburban, but that doesn’t count – it’s the motorhome concept that will be interesting to try. So far it was easy tonight to pull in and be all setup, without the un-hitching, etc. It was also much easier to park in parking lots and drive around in town.
We look forward to seeing Zion tomorrow. I also need to refigure our trip, because we’ll have to make some changes to pass through Las Vegas on our way out. Good night.
The noise that Snowie made continued and my gut told me it wasn’t good, so I decided to stop at the Chevrolet dealership in Las Vegas. It’s huge and really busy. However, the service guy (Slim) said he’d get the service foreman (Rory) to ride with me, pulling the trailer. Rory seemed quite good and we went for a ride. As soon as I got enough load on the car, the noise became apparent, and Rory said, “that’s internal engine noise – maybe a lifter, a rocker arm, or a piston, and I don’t like how your oil pressure gauge is fluctuating at high RPM.” He strongly advised against using the Suburban to pull the trailer across the desert or in the mountains. It only has 18,000 miles on it! L He also said that this 8.1L has always been indestructible and he was shocked that it would have an internal failure like this.
Well that really put a kink in our plans! I was really disappointed. I’ve done so much work on Snowie and the trailer and the trip – I didn’t want to see it all go up in smoke.
We started to consider alternatives (nobody rents a vehicle that can pull our trailer), and we settled on renting a motorhome so we could continue our trip. So at 11:00 we called around and found a 31’ Winnebago Class C on a Ford E450 chassis. We drove across town, had lunch at another Casino (L), picked up the motorhome, and drove back across town to the Chevrolet dealership, where we had left our trailer. We transferred everything (BBQ equipment, bikes, chairs, dishes, pots & pans, dry food, refrig food, clothes, linens, etc) from the trailer to the motorhome in 107 degree heat. It wasn’t much fun and took a couple of hours. We left the trailer and Snowie at the dealership – it should have a rebuilt or new engine when we get back (we hope). We took off from Las Vegas at 5:30 PM for Zion. We stopped to get some dinner and got here at 9:00. It’s been a very long day for everyone. The kids are exhausted (all 3 have been awake since 5:00) as are we.
One silver lining is that we’ve talked over the past year some about whether a motorhome is a better choice for camping for us. We’ll get a chance to use this one for 14 days and see how we like it. We (I) already miss so many of the niceties we’ve added to our trailer and Suburban, but that doesn’t count – it’s the motorhome concept that will be interesting to try. So far it was easy tonight to pull in and be all setup, without the un-hitching, etc. It was also much easier to park in parking lots and drive around in town.
We look forward to seeing Zion tomorrow. I also need to refigure our trip, because we’ll have to make some changes to pass through Las Vegas on our way out. Good night.
# posted by Craig @ 7:02 PM 
