On April 1st we headed south from Meadow Lake. A week before we had moved our fifth wheel trailer from our property to Milton & Noella Drumheller's farmyard while our driveway was still frozen. Good thing. Our driveway turned to soup during the subsequent week's thaw. We had built the driveway up a bit since moving onto the property but the installation of the underground powerline last November was a setback to all-weather reliability. Another summer chore to the list.
Here's an account of the trip south from a few e-mails:
We arrived here yesterday after a trying day with the check engine light on. It came on shortly after the transmission stopped working just south of Meadow Lake (just whirring noise and revs - no movement). I managed to get it working in 1st and then 2nd and then ran the rest of the way with overdrive locked out and max speed between 80 and 90 km/hr.
Did some cleaning of a solenoid valve under the hood this morning (Monday - April 2). It controls torque convertor lock-up. It might have been a bit sticky but didn't seem that bad. Also checked and lubed the linkages on the tranny this morning. They didn't seem bad. Check engine light was off this morning. I took truck to a shop downtown where I had the regular service done last year. They'll scan it Thursday and if nothing else is wrong do the regular service. I'll be in training so Juanita will drop it off and Becky will pick her up. Nick is working at the refinery in construction for a few months. She and Ezekial moved here last week.
So, I limped the truck & trailer to Regina on April 1st and Juanita followed driving the car. We arrived at the trailer park around 4 p.m. And managed to get a site with 30 amp service. I was happy about that since they had said they only had 15 amps left. No sewer hook- up but got put on a waiting list for same.
Soon after we got set up Becky and Ezekial came by and visited then Juanita and I scooted off to Perkins to get there before six for the seniors' special.
That was Sunday. We spent the next couple of days running errands and getting settled in the rig. We hadn't been in it since early November.
Then, on Wednesday, I started training and then had the weekend off and started work on Easter Monday and have worked ten hours a day on the refinery shutdown ever since. The work is not too hard but I'm not used to the climbing and standing and get up at five am every day and don't have much pep at the end of the day.
After training I came back to the trailer and Juanita and I went to Home Depot and bought wall cabinets for the kitchen and ordered the doors for same. She can take them up to ML next week. They come disassembled so fit neatly in the back of the car. They match the base cabinets and there was no rush to buy, except I am always leery of the chain suddenly changing what they stock and us being unable to match top and bottom cabinets and thought it was something to do on a rainy afternoon in Regina.
After Home Depot we went to Costco for an elegant dining experience of Polish sausage hot dogs followed by a walk through the food section to troll for free food samples. Pretty sparse. I guess they didn't want to pay their clerks stat pay (Good Friday). Then back home to read and nap and finally get up to do some deferred keyboarding.
My tranny may not be too ugly. We'll see. It could easily just be the solenoid pack inside the tranny. That would cause those symptoms. The scan should tell. The shop called Wednesday and said all their hoists were full for Thursday so we rescheduled to Tuesday. We'll know more then. The tranny came with a three year 150,000 mile warranty if you changed torque converter at same time and did the six month servicing (new internal and external filters and about 18 litres of ATF4+ fluid) That three years ran out last November. I didn't do the last six months service which was due in November since it didn't get much mileage added after the May service and the warranty was running out. If we had gone south in October as usual I would have had the service done before we left. If it proves to be a write-off I would look into retrofitting a manual transmission. Apparently the dream truck that some people build for themselves is a Ford chassis, a Dodge/Cummins engine and a Chevrolet/Allison automatic. I am learning to dislike driving the manual transmission on our Hyundai, but if buying a new Dodge truck would probably not buy one with an automatic transmission.
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