I am getting better at handling the bad stuff that can happen when you drive a 36 year old “antique hot rod with plumbing” – but it is still stressful.

I am having more fuel problems right now.  We are sitting in a parking lot at Seeley Lake, Montana – in the Flathead Lake area.  I think the problem is fixed but I don’t know and if it is not I don’t want to be on this highway in the dark with no breakdown lane – people here don’t stop to help if you are broken down (confirmed by a local and by our experience this afternoon).

Earlier today the coach was acting like it was starving for fuel again.  Early this afternoon we were driving down a 2-lane highway with no breakdown lane – just a sloping dirt shoulder – and the engine just died with no warning .  We st-opped as far off the road as we could get and it would not start so I replaced the big filter just after the fuel pump, then I replaced the one in the carb and that seemed to fix it.

We drove about 10 more miles and then topped off the tank with about 10 gallons.  As soon as I left the gas station it started acting up pretty badly but we got about 10 more miles – to this parking lot – and it quit.

It seems to me that the only thing left that can just quit would be the fuel pump.  I have just the Carter P4070 (no mechanical pump) mounted outside the frame and I have a fuel pressure regulator after it with a gauge on it.  That gauge was showing less than 3 pounds and the engine would not run.

As luck would have it, there is a NAPA store about a mile from here and he was open and he had a Carter P4070.  Not only that but the counter man, Ted Lockwood, offered his cell phone number and said he would come in tomorrow if we needed anything.  Then the owners of this business – it is the Sinclair gas station just south of town- were willing to let us spend the night so we don’t have to see if the repair worked until morning when it will be safer.  No one stopped to offer help but they are very nice people.

I talked to a mechanic who just happened to stop for a drink and to JimK and both seem to agree that the fuel pump must be the culprit.  Bad gas was mentioned but the gas stop was very busy so I doubt that.  We’ll find out tomorrow.

By the way, “Barbie” is what we call our GMC – after the Barbie-mobile of the ’70s