Just a little rant about a current issue I have with my side radiator hydraulic motor. I travel all over the US doing consulting work and stay sometimes many months in my Dutchstar. I love it and it will become my full time home when my house in Idaho sells. Anyway, been in San Diego for about 6 weeks and it was time to jack up and head to Denver for a little winter camping and a new project. Winter Camping, been there, done that, no big deal. I was out doing my pre-trip inspection and noticed oil dripping from the hydraulic motor that drives the fan for the side mounted radiator. This is not good as I have three significant grades to travel betwixt San Diego and Denver... better get er' fixed.
Plus on my way cross country from Virginia to Cali when I got to the hotter climates and started to do some climbing I was overheating. I got to the Meteor Crater out there on I-40 in Arizona and started researching it here on iRV2. You know running up to 225 degrees, tripping the chassis alarm for over heating... all that fun stuff. It was a pretty tough climb over El Cajon pass running right on the red line for temps and in lower gears to keep the engine RPM's up. So putting two and two together here and I have to wonder if the motor was failing and I am lucky to have made it as far as I did. Also, clearly the radiators need cleaning.
The story goes that this is a $1650 Freightliner part but the company that I had come to do the R&R (remove and replace) said that they may be able to get it rebuilt. I have the time to wait and there are worse places than San Diego to have to be broke down particularly when I am still parked in my nice RV park. I will say that the folks at Vacationer RV park in El Cajon have been wonderful to work with! Well after three days of waiting for the rebuild company to 'look' at it, then two more days of waiting to see if the parts were available, and a couple more days of waiting to see if an after market replacement can be found, and a couple of weekends we are two weeks into this adventure. I bit the bullet and bought the Freightliner replacement and now it is just a matter of the tech having time to come finish the job.
The company I picked to do the repair seemed pretty competent and came with a couple of decent referrals from the locals here but I have had to bug them over and over to keep the ball moving. I'm not going to name them just yet because the jury is still out.
Moral of the story I guess I need to start writing stuff down
Because when I was at Freightliner in Phoenix I forgot to have them check out the overheating problem as it hadn't been an issue for a couple of days and I guess I forgot.
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