Aug 8th

Just a long day of driving across Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.  We crossed the Apalachian Mountains and there we lots of long hills but, other than the noise of the driver’s side exhause manifold leak, the coach did really well.  The ambient temps went from under 70 to low 90s and the engine stayed relatively cool throughout the trip – never got above 215 and it only got there once on a really long hill in the low 90s.  It seems as though the thermostat is broken though – the engine was regularly able to get well below the thermostat temp of 195 – even when the ambient temp was in the mid 80s.  Steve Ferguson has suggested taking the thermostat out and just using a flow restrictor like, I guess, they do in race cars.  Well, a broken thermostat is basically a flow restrictor – as long as it fails open.

Another problem developed during the day…  The Brake Buddy started activating itself.  When we unhooked the Tracker we found that the battery was almost totally dead.  Since we were parked in a WalMart parking lot we pulled the battery out and replaced it with a new one – I am hoping that the lack of power was a possible reason for the Brake Buddy’s antics.  We’ll hook it back up tomorrow and give it another try.