The new exhaust manifold gaskets have quieted the noise and we had a comfortable day and a pretty short one to boot. I discovered that my driver’s side CV boot is leaking from a pretty small hole and hoping I can avoid fixing it until I get home.
We had a blast in Milwaukee. Lynne and Tom call each other Lucy and Desi and they act just like them. We are always laughing – Tom is a great guy, smart and entertaining. Lynne is fun and funny and they are great hosts. We had breakfast together and then drove the two hours back to the KOA Kampground where we left the GMC. We retrieved her from the ‘dry storage’ lot in the campground – $5/day – and put her back in a campsite (kampsite? KOA likes Ks) and proceeded to install the Remflex exhaust manifold gaskets.
Once I got them off I found that both of the old ones were leaking at bottom in the middle. The theory is that this is caused by tightening the middle of the 5 bolts too much and tilting the manifold toward the top, leaving the bottom of the gasket uncompressed so it ends up leaking. I did not tighten them even to the 20 pounds of torque specified for the Remflex gaskets so I don’t think that is what is happening in this case. I think that the manifold is warped from the heat and that may even be caused by leaving that top bolt looser than the others. I think that I will be calling Dave Lenzi for some of his super-duper copper gaskets and having the manifolds flattened to remove the warp as Carl (fellow GMCer) suggested. If that fails… headers maybe?
While I was in the engine compartment I looked for a reason for my ‘hot starter’ issues that have been again rearing their ugly heads lately. I found a loose nut on the connection from the battery to the starter. Hopefully, that will fix the problem.
Now our next destination is the GMC Western States rally in Springville, Utah. We plan to drive across Iowa and Nebraska on US-20 through the Sand Hills area in Northwest Nebraska. I will be looking for advice on that route on the GMCnet I think.
Our plan was to get close to Milwaukee and then spend the night and get some rest before facing Milwaukee traffic on Monday morning. Getting all the way there today would have been good but it made the day too long and makes both of us too tired so unpleasant things can easily occur. There is a shortage of campgrounds around big cities and paying the price for KOAs is pretty hard to avoid. This time we could have gone farther but didn’t like the reviews that some of the parks got on TripAdvisor so we picked the KOA which can pretty much be relied upon.
The “husband of the owner” (that is what his name badge said) told us that people commonly spend the night here before going into Chicago by car (about 60 miles away) and they store your RV in “dry storage” for only $5 per day. Since our destination is just under 100 miles away and we would be storing the coach during our stay there anyway, we decided to change our routing plans and just use the tow car from here. The 200-mile round trip would cost us at least $125 in gas in the GMC. The storage fees and gas for the Tracker will cost us only $40 and it will be a lot more relaxing drive.
The picture above is one of several very impressive old buildings that we have seen along the way during both this trip and our previous ones. We don’t really like traveling on the interstate highways because they bypass all of the interesting towns, roads, and buildings along the way. Traveling the pre-interstate highways takes you right through the cities and towns and lets you experience America the way it was when my parents were young and everyone seemed to have more time. Makes us feel like Charles Kuralt. We are thinking that the next time we see one of these buildings we will stop and investigate and try to find a story to tell. It might be interesting.
GMC stuff: We had a rough start this morning. I got ready to go and it would not start. The starter cranked like crazy but not even a cough. I verified fuel to the carburetor and started looking at the distributor. I pushed on all the connections – especially the 12V supply but felt nothing move. I R&R’d the distributor cap and still nothing. I pulled a wire to verify no spark and there was one and it started. I guess something, probably the 12V supply, was actually loose but I didn’t feel it. No further problems with it and drove all day.
Another item waiting to rear its ugly head is my carburetor. A while ago, in the beginning of the trip, I had to crank the idle speed up to keep it from almost stalling at intersections. After a while, no I can’t remember exactly when, the idle ended up being way too high and I tried to turn it down but it is either too fast or not fast enough. I went for too fast. Now, suddenly, the idle is either just right again or too slow. I think there much be more junk in the carburetor but deeper – just a guess.
We really got into some back country roads today. Turns out, it is really hard to get Streets & Trips to stick with decent roads. I felt really comfortable with the roads because there are no high speeds and there is lots to look at. After about two hours of mostly country roads we got onto a 4-lane divided highway in central Ohio and suddenly the coach started vibrating at a pace that made it hard to tell if it was a tire or the road. Seems that lots of paving lately has a sort of ripple effect and it reminds you of a tire out of round. I stopped when it got a little serious and checked the tires but could see or feel nothing wrong. I drove a little farther and was about to stop and check again when the middle tire on the driver’s side separated – the steel belt came loose from the casing and broke. It hit a bunch of stuff and did some new damage to the fiberglass but nothing that didn’t already need fixing. Fortunately it didn’t damage any suspension components.
I changed the tire while Carol called around for a tire store that could supply 6 or 7 new tires. Once we got going again we drove to the store and had them install 6 new Delta Essential tires. These are private branded tires made by major companies as store brands. Delta tires are available mostly in the East but I don’t know anything more than that about them. They were much cheaper than the BF Goodrich, Firestones, Michlins, etc. I put about 50 highway miles on them this afternoon and the feel good.
This thing about my old tires is that I paid top dollar for them even at Costco. They were Michlins and were supposed to be good tires. I bought them 5 years ago, put 45,000 miles on them in those 5 years and rotated them often. One of the tires they took off had another tread separation waiting to happen – wires from the steel belt were poking through the tread, another had some odd wear that could have been the same thing, a third had a nail in it but had not started leaking yet, and then there is the one that failed today. The Michlin web site says that if you put 10,000 miles per year on your RV tires that you should not have to worry about aging – I came very close to that and the tires were only 5 years old. Is it worth buying top of the line tires? I don’t know, but I didn’t this time. I will figure out what to do about a spare when I get home – maybe go to the 2 tires per year plan that Dan Gregg (fellow GMCer) and others use.
Sorry, no photos again.
We are on our way back West and, in an effort to stay away from the tolls, traffic and frenzy of the roads near the Great Lakes we made our way down South a little from there. We followed state highway 17 west for a long time and then took highway 62 down from New York to Pennsylvania. We have stopped in Harrisville, PA for the night. This is our third time in Pennsylvania on this trip. First, just north of the Maryland line on our way to Harrisburg, then back in after Maryland, and now to get out of New York. We had a heck of a time trying to find a campground – I guess because we are not on main roads – and Carol does not like the idea of camping in ‘free’ spots like others do.
Tomorrow we will be in Ohio all afternoon and will be taking our time since we have lots of time to get to our next destination – Milwaukee.
Sorry, no photos today.
Our plan for today was to drive about 20 miles south of Watkins Glen to Corning, New York, the home of Corning Glass and the Corning Glass Museum. All of the photos today are of the glass art they have on exhibit there but they also had several demonstrations. The first we went to was about fiber optics where they explained how the whole thing works and what is going on with the technology. Very entertaining and informative. The second was about traditional glass work called “flame working” with lots of detail about glass and its behavior when heated and cooled. They had another session on “glassbreaking” where they showed the different types of glass we encounter: regular window, laminated safety glass, and tempered glass and how they break and why. The final demo was glass blowing and they made an awesome glass vase with multiple colors in a spiral pattern in about 10 minutes.
In addition to the demonstrations they had lots of info on the history of glass making. Like every other human endeavor most of the innovations in glassmaking have happened in the last 50 or 60 years. Until 1959, plate glass for windows and similar uses was rolled, ground and polished on both sides. In 1959 they invented “float” glass and revolutionized glass making. It wasn’t until the 1984 (if I remember correctly) Thunderbird that compound curves in glass could be done by machine – it was developed at Ford’s request. The GMC’s windshields and most other car windows are bent on a single radius. They didn’t mention it, but Corning is the company that developed the “strong” glass that the iPhone’s screen is made from – still, don’t drop it.
