When we left this morning at 10am it was already 92 in front of our house. By about 11 in the Casa Grande area it was 96. It quickly got to 100 and by afternoon it was about 106. It peaked in downtown Brawley, CA at 110. This is the third week of April, Saguaro cacti are blooming – not all of them yet but many of them. When we first moved here that didn’t happen until late May. This is a very early summer.

Well, despite my best efforts (the latest was blocking the intake manifold cross-overs), vapor problems continue to persist. Everything was going well until we got to the cutoff to Gila Bend where we stopped for gas. I had to spend a few minutes bleeding the pressure out from the fuel tanks before I could remove the cap but thought nothing of it.

By now it was over 100 degrees out. We pulled back onto I-8 and I mentioned to Carol how well “she” was running and “she” immediately stumbled with the same old symptoms. I pumped the accelerator and kept it going but was disappointed that the problem was still with us.

When we got to Yuma we stopped for gas again before we crossed into Calif.  When I shut the engine off I could hear a pretty loud humming sound which turned out to be the gas cap relieving pressure – that is a lot of pressure. It again took several minutes of slowly bleeding the pressure by slightly opening and closing the gas cap.

This time I decided to just leave the gas cap loose and we left. We didn’t get very far – the problem became more serious – we even stalled going down the road on the highway. I stopped and tightened the cap and we were back to “stumbles” once in a while but nothing serious.

I am thinking that the pressure that builds up in the tank helps to keep the gas from boiling. When it is boiling the pump can pick up bubbles and starve the engine. I had a link here when I first wrote this post but it no longer works.

Oh well, we got to Indio and the Spotlight 29 Casino at about 5:30 – pooped. We had to run the generator and both air conditioners for quite a while to get it cool and now, at 9pm it is still 96 out. We can’t have the generator on all night so I hope there is a good breeze tonight. Tomorrow we will get close to the coast so no more heat problems – we hope.