Category Archives: Maintenance and Repair

Spyder Wire

It was chilly Saturday morning – 39 degrees. This is the coldest temperature we’ve seen in a long time. Donna found a free boot camp type workout group at a nearby school. She walked to the school while I wrote yesterday’s post. We had cloudy skies and rain showers off and on, broken up by brief periods of sunshine. We see fresh snow on all of the hilltops around us.

Snow on the hills

While Donna was at her workout, I watched the Moto GP qualifying for the race in Mugello, Italy. The Italians were cheering as their hero, Valentino Rossi, took pole position for today’s race.

After the qualifying, I walked over to the office to see if my package was delivered. They told me the mail had come, but all they got was junk mail, no packages. This wasn’t what I expected to hear. I e-mailed the shipper and he sent me the tracking number. The USPS tracking site showed the package delivered at 10am. I went back to the office and was told it wasn’t there and I should go to the post office down the street. It was a short walk.

I gave the tracking number to the clerk at the post office and told them the package wasn’t delivered as shown. They looked up the record and said their carrier scanned the package at 10am and left it in the mailbox. They tried to phone the mail carrier, but she was probably driving and didn’t answer. They took my cell number and said they would call me once they talked to her.

I walked back to the RV park office and told them what I was told at the post office. The guy in the office told me he walked out to the mailbox when the mail carrier arrived and she handed him their mail – it never went into the mailbox. He took his key and went out to the mailbox and opened it. The package was in there. Apparently after the mail carrier handed him the junk mail she realized there was another piece of mail. She put the package in the mailbox while he thought he already had all of the mail for the day.

By noon, the sun was shining and it was dry out. I’d had enough of sitting indoors and decided to work on the Spyder. The package I received was a set of custom made MSD 8.5mm Super Conductor spark plug wires for the Spyder along with two NGK iridium spark plugs. The original spark plug wires were causing an intermittent misfire on the front cylinder.

As soon as I had the tupperware removed from the Spyder, it began to rain. I covered the Spyder and went inside. Five minutes later the sun was shining again. The fickle weather continued as I worked – I would have 15 minutes of sunshine then a cloud would pass over dropping rain on everything for a few minutes before it cleared up again. I covered the Spyder and went inside five or six times while trying to do the work.

Spark plug wires – which are sometimes called high tension leads – are more complicated than you might think. Wire is wire, right? Well, not so in this case. Spark plug wires can carry more than 40,000 volts. This voltage is delivered to the spark plug every other revolution of the crankshaft in a four-stroke engine. The rise and drop of voltage can create electromagnetic interference (EMI) through induction or contact with the insulation of the wire.

The insulation on the Spyder’s original wire was breaking down. That’s why it would misfire – the voltage would leak past the insulation and arc to the engine case. Original equipment spark plug wires are usually a carbon conductor over a substrate of fiberglass or kevlar fibers wrapped in rubber insulation. This type of construction has high resistance and prevents EMI. It’s also cheap to manufacture. The down side is that the high resistance causes a voltage drop and can weaken the spark in the spark plug gap.

Low resistance gives a hotter spark but will create EMI. A solid copper core wire would give the hottest spark but the EMI that results would wreak havoc on electronic control modules and sensors. Modern engines have lots of electronic controls and need to be shielded. The answer is a spiral wound cable with a magnetic center core. This creates a choke that prevents the EMI, while high quality alloy in the spiral wound conductor provides lower resistance. Of course this type of ignition wire is much more costly to produce. The MSD 8.5mm wires I ordered are this type.

Spark plug wires with plastic heat shielding

The spark plug wires on the Spyder run from an ignition coil for each cylinder to the spark plug at the cylinder head. Some modern engines do away with spark plug wires by mounting ignition coils directly on top of the spark plug. These systems have their faults, but you don’t have to worry about a length of high voltage wire.

This is the spark plug wire that was arcing – shorting to ground and causing a misfire

It took some time to get to the plug wires – I had to remove the tupperware and the airbox assembly first. My efforts were broken up by the showers passing through. It took about an hour to get the old wires off. The original wires were housed with a corrugated plastic cover to shield them from heat.

Old wire and new wire – heat shielding removed

I removed the heat shielding from the old wires and put it on the new MSD wires. I measured the resistance of the wires – I expected the original carbon core wires to have 1,000 to 3,000 ohms of resistance. The wire to the front cylinder is longer than the one to the rear, so naturally it would have higher resistance. Remember, lower resistance is desirable as long as EMI can be controlled. The original front wire measured 6,000 ohms of resistance! This is not good. The shorter rear wire measured 3,700 ohms. By comparison the new MSD wire for the front cylinder measured 113 ohms. Huge difference!

With the old wires off, I replaced the original copper electrode spark plugs with NGK iridium electrode plugs. These plugs provide a fat, hot spark and will last at least twice as long as the originals.

Spark plugs

I coated the threads on the spark plugs with a special heat transferring anti-seize compound. This will make them much easier to remove next time without risk of pulling the threads out of the aluminum cylinder heads. I also put a thin coating of dielectric grease in the plug connector on the end of the spark plug wires to seal them and make them easier to remove as well.

New wires with heavy duty insulators at the coil end

I test fired the engine – it started immediately and ran smoothly. So I buttoned everything back up and put all the body work back on and took a little test ride. The difference is unbelievable. The engine runs so much smoother. It has to be felt to be understood, I can’t put into words how big the difference in the character of the engine is. Who would’ve thought something as simple as plug wires could make this much difference? With better combustion, I’m guessing fuel economy will improve as well. Job done.

This morning, Donna and I went out for breakfast. We walked down the road to the Lumberjack Restaurant. It was a treat – I had eggs Benedict and Donna had a veggie omelet with a home-style biscuit.

We may have a few more showers this afternoon. I’ll begin prepping for travel. Tomorrow we’ll pull out of here and head to Corning, California – the olive capital.

Sparks in Sparks

After writing yesterday’s post I set to work on the Spyder. I pulled the center side panels and the top body panel off. With the tupperware out of the way, I removed the two-piece airbox assembly. This gave me an unobstructed view of the throttle body and all vacuum hoses, the idle air control valve (IACV) and the spark plug leads.

Airbox assembly removed

I started the engine and checked the IACV operation. It worked fine and I didn’t find any vacuum leaks. As the engine warmed up to temperature, I realized it wasn’t misfiring. This puzzled me as I hadn’t fixed anything. I let the engine run for several minutes and it was perfect.

I shut the engine off and reinstalled the lower half of the airbox. Then I started the engine again. After a minute or so, it began to misfire. I turned it off and looked things over. What changed when I installed the lower airbox? I saw two things – the fuel line to the injectors was pushed against the cylinder block and likewise, the front spark plug high voltage lead was pushed to the block.

I started the engine again and put my head down near the front cylinder. When it misfired, I could hear the snapping sound of a spark arcing. I shut the engine off and re-positioned the front spark plug lead. I started the engine again it didn’t misfire. Apparently when the high voltage spark plug lead was pushed against the cylinder block, a voltage leak developed and it would jump to ground on the block, thus the spark plug wouldn’t spark when this happened. Positioning the lead away from the block made it too big of a gap for the voltage to jump – it was easier to bridge the gap at the spark plug. Electricity, like water, will follow the path of least resistance.

So the guys on the Spyder Lovers forum who pointed to the high voltage spark plug wires as the issue were correct. I still don’t understand why the lead would short to ground only at idle and initial throttle opening. In theory, the problem should worsen as the throttle is opened. Sometimes hands-on experience with a certain issue beats all the book knowledge and theory. When we get to a place where I can receive packages I’ll order a new set of plug wires.

After I put all of the tupperware back in place, I went for a test ride. The engine ran smooth and never missed a beat. I rode over to Smith’s grocery where I found a beer that I hadn’t tried before last weekend. It’s Innis and Gunn Scottish beer aged in oak barrels.

Innis and Gunn oak aged beer

The label on calls it Scottish beer, not ale. Looking at their website, I found very little information. I don’t know if it’s fermented with ale yeast or lager yeast. I discovered on their website that some of their beers are oak flavored with a process they call an oakerator. This unit forces the beer through a vessel filled with oak chips. The beer I bought says it’s aged in an oak barrel for 77 days.

This beer has a unique flavor and I found subtle differences among bottles with the same label. I really liked it and I wanted to buy a few more bottles. I don’t recall ever seeing this beer before – I’ll probably stock up with a few more bottles before we leave on Monday.

Donna’s flight home from Albany, New York left on time. She had a short layover in Las Vegas before making the final hop to Reno/Tahoe airport. She sent me a text when she was in a cab leaving the airport. I went online and ordered a pizza from Roundtable Pizza right away. The pizza was delivered shortly after she got home.

We sat at the table and talked while we ate. I have to admit I’d ordered a pizza last weekend as well. When Donna is away, pizza is a good option. We watched an episode of The Night Manager, then we had a brief discussion on where we’re going when we leave here. We’re still undecided.

We’ve ruled out Lake Tahoe as the night time temperatures are forecast to be below freezing. We’d rather be somewhere warmer. We aren’t booked anywhere until we reach Bend, Oregon on June 4th, giving us nearly three weeks to fill.

Today we plan to go grocery shopping to restock the larders and look at places to stay when we leave here.

Lean Condition

My week as a bachelor while Donna is visiting family and friends in upstate New York has been relatively boring. I hit the pickleball courts at the Neil Road Recreation Center on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It’s been my only social activity. Other than a couple of trips to the grocery store, I’ve just been catching up on a few chores.

On Wednesday morning, I pulled the body work off the Spyder and looked for an intake leak. It’s been misfiring at idle and stumbles on initial acceleration. It seems to me that it’s a lean fuel mixture condition causing one cylinder to misfire. Some guys on the Spyder Lovers forum are trying to convince me it’s spark plug wires or ignition coils causing the misfire.

I don’t think this is the case. Ignition breakdown usually occurs under load. The Spyder misfires at idle and once underway, it runs fine. At wide open throttle, it produces full power and takes off like a rocket. There’s no misfire once the engine gets to 2,500 rpm or so. I’m still convinced it a lean fuel mixture condition.

Another reason I believe it’s fuel mixture is that the problem only occurs once the engine is up to running temperature. On a cold start, it idles fine and there’s no evidence of a misfire. On a cold start, the engine runs in open loop – meaning the signal from the oxygen sensor in the exhaust pipe is ignored and the fuel mixture is richer than the optimum (stoichiometric) value. A cold engine needs a rich fuel mixture. Once the engine has been running for a few minutes, it goes into closed loop – the oxygen sensor signal tells the engine control module if the fuel mixture is correct and the control module adjusts the fuel mixture accordingly.

When I looked at the throttle body on Wednesday, I concentrated on vacuum hoses. I looked for cracks or loose hoses. With the engine running, I sprayed the vacuum lines and fittings with carb cleaner. If there was an intake leak, the vacuum would have sucked the spray cleaner into the intake and the engine would immediately run differently. I didn’t detect any change in the running of the engine. I gave up and reinstalled the body panels and went to play pickleball.

Vacuum hoses on the throttle body

When I played pickleball Thursday afternoon, I felt a twinge in my left leg. It was high in the hamstring – where the muscle inserts below the gluteus. I continued to play and it didn’t bother me too much. After I came home, I really stiffened up and had pain in the upper hamstring area.

I won’t play pickleball today. I’ll rest my leg and see if I can get to the bottom of the misfire issue on the Spyder. Thinking it over, I’m going to take a look at the idle air control valve (IACV) and the associated hoses. When the throttle plates are closed at idle, the IACV controls the air going into the engine and thus the idle speed. If there’s a leak in the system past the IACV, then it cannot properly control the air and fuel mixture. I still have one item to check off Donna’s honey-do list, but I’m going to make the Spyder issue my priority today.

Donna will return tonight – I can’t wait. I hope her flights are on time. She’ll fly from Albany, New York to Las Vegas then on to Reno. We’re booked here at the Sparks Marina RV Park until Monday. The weather this week has been fabulous. Yesterday and today will be the warmest with the temperature reaching the mid 80s. The rest of the week was mid 70s and that’s what the weekend forecast calls for.

We thought about heading up to Lake Tahoe on Monday, but I think it’s still too cold there. The forecast for next week predicts highs in the 50s and 60s with the temperature dropping to freezing overnight. We’ll figure out our next move this weekend.

Spyder Work

I rode the Spyder to Michael’s Reno Powersports on Monday. I needed to replace the caps on the master cylinder reservoir for the brakes. The diaphragms in the caps were leaking fluid. I’ve heard this is a common problem on Can Am Spyders. The fluid reservoir has sensors in each of the two chambers. If the fluid level drops by as little as a teaspoon, it triggers a warning light and the words “Brake Failure” scroll across the display screen. I looked up the warning light and written warning in the manual – it indicated that both warnings at the same time was triggered by the fluid level sensor. This seems like a dire warning but the brakes work fine.

I added fluid before and the warning stopped. After a while it came back on and then I saw where the fluid was going – it leaked past the caps and ran down the rear shock mount. I added about a teaspoon of fluid to each chamber and installed new caps. Job done!

From Michael’s I took a ride up Geiger Grade Road. This is a two-lane mountain road that twists and turns and climbs over Geiger Summit at 6,700 feet above sea level. Once over the summit, it’s a short ride to Virginia City. Virginia City sprang up in 1859 after the discovery of the Comstock Lode, the first major silver deposit discovered in the US. It’s estimated that as many as 25,000 people lived in Virginia City in the 1870s. Today Virginia City is the county seat of Storey County and about 850 people live there. Storey County has a population of about 4,000. Virginia City is another old mining town tourist trap today.

I took a walk along the wooden sidewalks and looked around. One of Virginia City’s claims to fame is it’s where Samuel Clemens – who was a local reporter for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper – first used the pen name Mark Twain.

Virginia City Mercantile

Wooden sidewalks

Bucket of Blood Saloon

Most of the historic buildings in town date back to 1876. The original town was destroyed by fire in 1875. Many of the buildings are saloons.

Click to enlarge and read the window signs

The Red Dog Saloon had interesting signs on a few windows – one third-story window says “Law Offices – Acquittals in Most Cases.” Another says “Bath House $1 with attendant.”

I didn’t stay long and didn’t go inside the saloons. If Donna were along we probably would’ve poked around in some of the shops, but she won’t be back from her trip to visit family in New York until Friday.

The ride back down Geiger Grade had spectacular views. I pulled off at a turn-out and snapped a couple of photos.

Snow covered mountains across the valley to the west

Reno/Sparks to the north

Tuesday morning I rode the Spyder to the Neil Road Recreation Center to play pickleball. To get there I went out McCarran Boulevard. McCarran Boulevard is a loop circling Reno and Sparks. Some of the cross streets intersect it twice. This can make directions a bit confusing. When I left the Sparks Marina RV Park, I went north on McCarran. I saw a couple of cross streets I recognized, but several miles later I realized I went the wrong way.

I turned around and followed the loop south, then west. I passed the intersection of Rock Road, then saw it again a few miles later. That’s when it dawned on me how I got turned around. I eventually found the recreation center in a seedy part of town on the west side of Reno-Tahoe airport. I played for a couple of hours on the indoor courts and had fun. The level of play wasn’t as high as Towerpoint in Mesa, Arizona, but there were some fairly good players.

The Spyder has been acting up lately. Once it’s fully warmed up to operating temperature, it develops a misfire at idle. Initial acceleration is rough until the engine gets to 2,500 – 3,000 rpm, then it smooths out. I haven’t seen a check engine light or any indication of a fault code. I thought maybe it was a tank of bad gasoline. But, I’ve burned through a couple of tanks of gas and the problem is still there.

Today I’ll pull the body work off of it and have a look. I’m thinking there’s a vacuum leak in the intake system somewhere. Hopefully I can find it and fix it.

The weather has been really nice – Monday and Tuesday we had high temperatures around 70 degrees. Today may be a couple of degrees warmer but still very comfortable. I’ll head over to the recreation center this afternoon for pickleball.

Good Service Gone Bad

I need to catch up on our last week at Towerpoint RV Resort in Mesa, Arizona. I won’t go into a blow-by-blow account, but there are a few highlights.

First off, I mentioned that we had another Jetpack battery failure. This is the third time in less than three years that we had a lithium-ion battery pack fail. The battery packs go into an overheat protection mode that blows the pack apart and shuts the battery down. I think it’s a charging issue with our Jetpack. I purchased a digital lamp timer and set it to vary the time of the charge with discharge times. Somehow the programming of the timer was lost and unbeknownst to me it’s been charging the battery pack full-time. Lithium-ion batteries are at their best between 40% and 85% of full charge – this should result in long life.

I had a new battery delivered overnight. It’s a different brand, not the same Pantech that came with the Jetpack. This one is branded Beltron. Both brands come from China, so they may be the exact same thing with different labels for all I know.

Old battery self-destructed

New Beltron branded battery pack

I bought the new battery from Amazon for less than $18 including overnight shipping. I reprogrammed the timer to cycle between one hour on and one hour off. We’ll see how this works out. When we’re stationary for a week or more, I’ll order another battery for back-up.

I was a pickleball demon the last week in the park. My court time culminated with a round robin session at Sun Life RV Resort for 3.5 level players. I’m not sure how much pickleball action we’ll see in the coming weeks, so I wanted to get my quota. After the round robin on Wednesday, I cleaned the Traeger and loaded the trailer. I’m happy with the results – everything has a place and it all came together nicely.

We planned an early – for us – getaway on Thursday. We wanted to be on the road by 9am, 9:30 at the latest. The day didn’t start off well. I couldn’t log in to my blog. In fact, my web page wouldn’t open at all. When I tried to open Flyingthekoop, I got an error message telling me the page wasn’t available! I didn’t have time to investigate – I had to disconnect our coach, hook up the trailer and load the Can Am Spyder.

I wanted to push the trailer back on the concrete pad at our site, then angle it so I could back the coach up to it and hook up. This turned out to be easier said than done. A few weeks ago I saw an older man struggling to move his car dolly trailer into position in the site across from us. I went over to help and pulled it into place over his trailer hitch. I knew our 20-foot car hauler trailer would be harder to move than a car dolly, but I didn’t realize how hard.

First of all, pushing it back on the pad was a slightly uphill push. I had to enlist Donna’s aid to get it moving. Then, getting turned to the angle I needed was really tough. Our old trailer had a single axle and getting it to turn wasn’t too difficult. The new trailer has tandem axles. With one set of tires ahead of the other set, all four tires describe a different arc through a turn. This means the tires have to scrub as they fight each other to track the turn. It takes a lot of muscle to overcome the friction of the tires scrubbing and laying down rubber.

We eventually got the trailer in position with a lot of sweat. I hitched it to the coach and pulled into the street to load the Spyder. The Spyder rides pretty much alone in the back half of the trailer.

Spyder occupies the back half of the trailer

We wanted to get an early start due to an appointment I had at TrailersPlus. You might recall the issue I had when they installed a door handle on the side door. It wasn’t installed properly and I had holes in the door skin. I was told they would replace the door skin while I waited if I got there between 10 and 10:30am. It’s about a 45-mile drive and I wanted to allow an hour of drive time. We left the RV park around 9:40am.

The traffic wasn’t bad and I made good time arriving at TrailersPlus at 10:30am. But, we had a problem. There were two pickup trucks at the entry, blocked by a locked gate! When I talked to the manager, Troy, on Tuesday he told me they don’t officially open until 1:30pm, but he would book time to have his guy install the door skin in the morning. I thought that was great service.

Now I was stopped on the frontage road next to I-17 blocking the lane as I tried to figure out what was happening. A couple of cars got around me to access the freeway on ramp, but then a big tractor-trailer rig pulled up behind me. I had to move on, I couldn’t sit there and block the ramp.

I went down the road and made a right turn at the next stoplight. I could see the map on the GPS and figured I would make a loop and park on a side street to see why the place was locked up. The next right turn wasn’t pretty. The road was fairly narrow with cars stopped at the light in the opposite lane. As I made the right turn, I had to go deep before I turned in to get our 65-foot length through the turn. I wasn’t going to make it. Lucky for me, the drivers were attentive – the first car pulled forward and moved over. The next two cars backed up giving me room to complete the turn.

Meanwhile Donna was on the phone with the TrailersPlus corporate office trying to find out what happened to our appointment. I parked on the street around the corner from TrailersPlus. I went to the gate – it was closed but not locked with a chain now. I could see people in the office so I opened the gate and walked in. It was 10:45am by now. I walked to the office and went in.

The guy at the counter asked me what I wanted. I told him I had an appointment and needed to get my coach off the street and into their lot. He acted like he didn’t know anything about an appointment but he agreed to open the gate and let me drive in.

After parking the coach and trailer in their lot, I went back to the office. Another guy at the counter asked me if I was dropping off the trailer! I told him I had an appointment and Troy said he would book the time to get the door skin replaced while I waited. Th guy was surly and said Troy would be in later. Then he said let’s go take a look. We walked to the coach and trailer and it seemed like he suddenly remembered why I was there. He told me to drop the trailer and he would get it into the service bay. I don’t know why I had to go through the hassle of dropping the trailer and then hooking up again. The service bay was easily big enough for me to pull through with the coach and he could have replaced the door skin with the trailer in the bay. But I didn’t argue. I dropped the trailer.

He pulled the trailer with a fork lift equipped with a ball. I got my torque wrench out of my tool box and proceeded to check the trailer lug nuts. Troy showed up while I was doing that. He said I should let his guy work and stay out of his way. I told him it would just be a minute, then I’ll stay out. But I watched the work from about 30 feet away. After the fiasco with the door handle and the guy hiding his shoddy work, I wanted to see how this went together.

Door skin removed

The guy damaged a trim piece on the door and had to replace that as well. We were on our way again a little past noon.

Our destination for the day was the Thousand Trails Verde Valley RV Resort and Campground (map). When I pulled off Highway 260, our GPS said we had arrived. All I saw was a narrow winding road ahead and a group of RVs in a dirt lot to my left. I pulled into the lot – I didn’t want to go down a narrow road without knowing where it went or if I would be able to turn around.

I found the campground on the GPS map – it was at the end of the winding road. The dirt lot I pulled into wasn’t big enough to make a U-turn. I had to jockey back and forth to get turned around – good practice maneuvering the new trailer.

The ranger at the entrance had all of our paperwork. This is our first stay at a Thousand Trails park. Our membership entitles us to 30 free nights – well, it isn’t really free if you count the $545 membership fee – it works out to about $18/night for full hook-ups. Not bad. After our free 30 nights, we’ll pay $3/night. That’s a deal! The ranger told me he had four sites that would fit our rig and we could choose the site we wanted and let him know which one we took.

I couldn’t get our full length into the frame at the park entrance

We’re in a 90-foot pull through site, so we didn’t have to drop the trailer. Oh, and while we were on the road, Donna got on the phone with Bluehost – the web hosting service for this blog. They found a bug in a plug-in and deactivated it. Then we updated the plug-in, reactivated it, and that fixed the problem.

It was very quiet here last night. We’re at an elevation of a little over 3,000 feet above sea level. It’s a little cooler here than in Phoenix. We plan to explore the area over the next few days. This post is getting wordy, so I’ll post some of the meals Donna prepared last week in my next post.

*Just so you know, if you follow one of my links to Amazon and decide to make a purchase, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Free Beer

In my last post, I showed the catch basin I made to contain any fluid that might leak from the HWH hydraulic synch cylinder. No fluid has leaked since I had a drop of fluid last weekend. I’m thinking now that the drop of fluid I saw running down the threads on the U-bolt holding the synch cylinder may have been residual oil from the original leak. Perhaps a small amount of fluid remained on the horizontal steel mounting tab for the cylinder. When I fiddled around with the jacks, this residual fluid may have run off the tab and down the U-bolt threads.

On Wednesday, my lifelong friend Jim Birditt rang me up. He was headed to the Wild Horse Pass Casino (map). He’s a truck driver hauling household goods for North American Van Lines. He planned to stop overnight and park his Peterbilt truck in the casino truck/RV lot. I rode the Spyder there in the afternoon to meet up with him. We had a cold one and caught up a bit. I’ve known Jim since I was in the 8th grade. We spent a lot of time hunting together in the 90s.

We talked about the mysterious hydraulic oil leak. We came up with a theory. The synch cylinder has two pistons inside that move when fluid pressure is applied to one side or the other. There’s a shaft that moves with the pistons. This shaft extends out of one end of the cylinder. The shaft has a seal. Maybe at some point, after we set up here at Towerpoint RV Resort, the shaft seal leaked some fluid. Maybe the seal rolled or something was caught in the seal allowing fluid to seep past. If some foreign matter was in the seal, it may have washed out with the leaking fluid and the seal re-seated itself. It’s just a theory, but I can’t come up with any other explanation for why the cylinder would leak fluid one day, then stop leaking. The hydraulic system works fine, I’ve moved the living room slide to apply pressure in the cylinder and there’s no leakage now. I’ll keep the catch basin in place for a while just in case it leaks again.

Jim was planning to head to Tucumcari, New Mexico the next morning. I showed him an alternate route. He’s been driving trucks all his adult life and knows just about every route in the country. But he never went up the Beeline Highway (AZ87) through Payson, Arizona to get to I-40 east. He usually goes up I-17 to I-40. He tried my suggestion on Thursday morning and phoned me later to tell me the route worked out great. He picked up I-40 at Holbrook.

On Thursday evening, Donna and I prepared a whole chicken. I used my favorite chicken rub – Lambert’s Sweet Rub O’Mine – and cooked it on the Traeger wood pellet fired grill.

Traeger wood pellet fired grill

I cooked the chicken for about 80 minutes and used a quick reading meat thermometer to check for proper internal temperature. I shoot for about 170 degrees in the breast and over 180 in the thigh. Cooked on the Traeger, the chicken remains moist while fully cooked at these temperatures.

Whole roasted chicken with Sweet Rub O’Mine

Donna served it with steamed broccoli and wild rice cranberry salad. A delicious meal!

Roasted chicken quarter with broccoli and wild rice cranberry salad

On Friday morning, we played pickleball. The courts aren’t filled with players and people waiting for games anymore. Things have really thinned out here as most of the snowbirds have headed for home.

We went to Tia Rosa’s Tacqueria to meet up with David and Karin Von Kay for lunch. We first met David and Karin in Des Moines, Iowa last year. They were in the site next to us at the fairgrounds where David was showing his 1966 Chevelle in the Good Guys car show. Donna and Karin have stayed in touch and frequently trade recipes. It’s so much fun to meet new people on the road and hook up again at another place later.

Things are winding down for us here at Towerpoint. Our initial two-month stay officially ended Friday. I settled up our electric bill, then extended our stay another six nights – we’ll leave Mesa on Thursday the 21st. I have a few things to get done before we go. At first we thought we’d stay an extra five days and leave on Wednesday. I have the initiation to the Elks on Tuesday night, so I thought an extra day would be good.

On Friday evening, Towerpoint had their final end-of-season party. Free beer, chips and salsa and pretzels. Hard to beat free. Donna and I wandered around the pool area where the party was in progress and visited with a few people we know from the pickleball courts. We were happy to see Howard and Nancy there – they’re the friends that had a horrible traffic accident with their motorhome resulting in severe injuries to Howard and his mother-in-law. Howard’s a trouper and seemed to be doing better than expected. They plan to stay here for a few months while Howard and Nancy’s mom recuperate.

The party included live music – something Donna and I always enjoy. The band was good in spite of the fact they used a synthetic drum track – I always prefer a full group of musicians – even drummers.

Good music – we love live bands

Donna brought a hoop and did some hoop dancing. The band really appreciated her efforts as it encouraged dancing and attention to the music.

Donna hoop dancing

Oh yeah

It was extremely windy making the hooping difficult for her – but it was impressive nonetheless.

From here our plan is to head up to Cottonwood for four nights. This will give us a chance to make day trips to Jerome and Sedona – plus I can catch the Moto GP race a week from Sunday. We’re not sure where we’re going from there.

Synchronizing Cylinder

On Sunday evening, Donna prepared a new recipe called sweet and spicy salmon. My oldest daughter Alana shared the recipe on Facebook and Donna wanted to try it. She bought frozen wild Alaskan sockeye salmon steaks from Costco. She placed each piece of fish on a square of foil and poured coconut oil over the salmon. Then she drizzled the fillets with honey and dusted them with a mixture of cumin, paprika, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper. Then she sealed the foil over the salmon and I cooked it on the Weber Q grill.

Sockeye salmon fillets wrapped in foil

I slightly overcooked the salmon – I wish I would have taken it off the grill sooner. The thing is, the salmon keeps cooking in the foil – it has to be opened up quickly once the fish is off the grill. Steam rose from the foil packets when I opened them.

Sweet and spicy salmon hot off the grill

The fish was tasty though. We’ll make it again – next time Donna says she would add just a little more honey and maybe put veggies in the packet with the salmon. I’ll take it off the grill sooner and open the packets quickly.

Sweet and spicy salmon served with roasted brussel sprouts

All day I’d been checking in the forward basement compartment for a hydraulic oil leak. The paper towels I had spread in there remained dry. On Monday afternoon, I fiddled with the hydraulic jacks. A few hours later, we had a small drop of oil spreading on the paper towel. It was dark by the time I checked it out so I couldn’t determine the source of the leak.

After playing pickleball this morning, I cleared the forward basement compartment and crawled inside. I used a flashlight and clean paper towels to see if I could figure out where the oil was coming from. There’s a 1-1/2″ diameter hydraulic cylinder about a foot long in the compartment. Each end of the cylinder is held to a steel tab with U-bolts. I could see hydraulic oil on the threads of the U-bolt on the rear of the cylinder.

HWH synchronizing cylinder

I loosened the U-bolts and tried to trace the oil. There’s a 90-degree elbow fitting and a hydraulic hose near the U-bolt, but it was dry around the fitting and hose. There’s also a rod that protrudes from the end of the cylinder. I read through a HWH hydraulic system service manual and learned a few things.

The cylinder is a synchronizing cylinder – commonly called a synch cylinder. It’s used when two or more hydraulic rams are operated simultaneously – such as the hydraulic generator slide or the living room slide-out. It’s not part of the leveling jack system. This had me puzzled because the intermittent leak happened after we set up here at Tower Point RV Resort. I haven’t operated the generator slide or the living room slide since we set up two months ago.

I found out that the rod protruding from the end of the cylinder will move when the system the synch cylinder is plumbed into is activated. So I tried running the generator slide open and checked the rod. No movement, so it’s not part of the generator hydraulic system. Then I pulled the living room slide partway in. The rod extended from the cylinder. So it’s plumbed into the living room slide hydraulic rams.

I put the living room slide out again and checked the synch cylinder for leaks. No sign of any fluid leak. I cut an empty one-gallon plastic water jug and made a catch basin. I wired it in place under the end of the synch cylinder where the oil dripped from the U-bolt. I’ll keep checking for a leak and try to trace it again. In the mean time, the catch basin will keep oil off the basement carpet and anything else in there.

Catch basin wired in place

I’m hoping the leak isn’t an internal problem with the synch cylinder, but I’m beginning to think it may be. I looked it up and that part costs $474!

Yesterday I stopped in at the Towerpoint office to pay the electric bill and extend our stay to Wednesday, April 20th. The lady in the office was going to give me five extra days at the monthly rate instead of reverting to the daily rate. Then we talked about the daily rate with Passport America. We’re Passport America members and it gives us 50% off of the normal daily rate. She did the calculation and the Passport America rate worked out to be about $10 higher for the five days – but it included electricity. The monthly rate doesn’t include electricity.

We’re expecting temperatures in the 90s before we leave. That means running both roof air conditioners – and using a lot of electricity. I opted for the Passport America rate so I’ll have no worries about running the air conditioners as needed. She told me not to pay my current electric bill – they will read the meter again on Friday (our original end date here). I’ll settle the electric bill and pay for the extra five nights then.

Mysterious Oil Leak

I mentioned in my last post that Donna kayaked the Salt River again with her friend Audrey on Friday. This time, instead of taking our two-seat Sea Eagle 370, she used one of Audrey’s single-seat Sea Eagle 330s.

Audrey with her Sea Eagle 330

Here are a few pictures from their trip down the river. They started near Saguaro Ranch below Saguaro Lake and pulled out at Granite Reef four and a half hours later.

Egret flying down river

Wild horses off Donna’s bow

More wild horses

Stand up paddle boards – with dogs

View of Red Mountain down river

Also, I mentioned rain moving in Friday night. There were scattered thundershowers in the area while we had the J Street potluck. We got lucky and the thundershowers stayed to the north and east of us. At one point there was virga in the east – virga is rain falling in the sky that evaporates before it reaches the ground.

Virga – rain falling from the clouds but it doesn’t reach the ground

The virga created a rainbow. It rose from the right and arced in a quarter circle. It disappeared before I could shoot a photo. Then it re-appeared in a mirror image arcing down to the left.

Second half of rainbow

My project for Saturday was servicing the Spyder. I needed to change the engine oil and filter and the hydraulic control module (HCM) filter. The engine oil in the Spyder also lubricates the transmission and operates the hydraulic shift mechanism. The first task was removal of the plastic body parts – known as the tupperware.

Spyder with body panels in place

Four body panels removed to change the oil and filters

The Rotax 998cc V-Twin engine in the Spyder has a dry sump lubrication system. Most automobile and motorcycle engines are a wet sump type. Wet sump means there’s an oil pan below the crankcase containing the oil supply for the engine. A pick-up tube in the pan delivers the oil to the oil pump where it’s sent through the engine under pressure.

A dry sump system is commonly found on race cars where it offers certain advantages. In a dry sump system, there isn’t an oil pan below the crankcase, there’s a remote oil tank instead. Two oil pumps are used – one to scavenge the oil out of the crankcase after it has circulated through the engine. The oil is then pumped to the remote reservoir. A second oil pump delivers the oil from the reservoir to the engine where it circulates throughout the lubrication system.

Dry sump systems are more complicated and also have certain requirements for checking the oil level correctly. The reason the Rotax engine uses a dry sump is primarily a packaging advantage. The 60-degree V-twin engine is compact front to rear but it’s a tall engine. Taking away the oil pan from the bottom of the engine reduces the height, allowing it to sit lower in the frame.

Race cars use dry sumps for a number of reasons. They reduce power loss from drag that the oil in the sump can create as the crankshaft spins through it. It also takes away the chance of the oil pick-up drawing air as the oil sloshes around in the oil pan through high G-force loading in turns or with braking and accelerating.

On the Spyder, the dry sump meant I had to drain the oil reservoir, then remove a second drain plug on the crankcase to make sure it was fully drained. When you shut down the engine, the pump in the crankcase no longer pumps oil back to the reservoir. The oil in the engine lubrication system slowly drains to the bottom of the crankcase. I estimate nearly a quart of oil came out of the crankcase drain. On start-up, the scavenge pump in the crankcase would quickly pump that oil back to the reservoir. Here’s a photo showing the remote oil reservoir – it’s poorly focused but I didn’t notice that until I had the body panels put on again.

Remote oil reservoir

I had one problem. The HCM filter for our Spyder could be one of two different part numbers. I never had it apart before, so I didn’t know if we had the short filter or the longer one. The replacement filter I had was the longer one. It turned out I needed the short one. I’ll have to get another filter and take the body panels off again to change the HCM filter.

Spyder buttoned up and under cover

When I was finishing up, Donna was preparing to drive her rental car to a hair stylist in Tempe. She opened the big basement door on the passenger side of the coach and found oil on the nylon bag that holds our windshield cover. Lots of oil. I looked at it and saw it was hydraulic fluid. There are hydraulic lines and an accumulator for the HWH leveling jacks and slide out rams on the top of the compartment. I looked for leaks around the area where the nylon bag was stored but couldn’t find any.

I put a strip of paper towels under the hydraulic lines so I could see if it dripped. The drops on the paper towels would provide a clue where to look for a leak. I checked several times all afternoon and into the night. No drips. I checked again this morning. No drips. Where the hydraulic fluid came from is still a mystery at this point.

We have rain in the forecast today. I heard a few drops already as I typed this. I plan to hang out and watch the Moto GP race – I’ll also watch the Moto 2 and Moto America races. Donna is planning to do some shopping.

By the way – congratulations to the Detroit Red Wings for making the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the 25th consecutive year. That’s right – they’ve made the playoffs every year since 1991!

Leap Day Hijinks

Sunday was a rest and relaxation day for me. I finished a book I was reading and watched the coverage of NHRA eliminations from Wild Horse Pass on TV. In the evening, Donna rode the Can Am Spyder over to Sara Graff’s house to watch the Academy Awards program.

Nice sunset after a relaxing day

We hit the pickleball courts around 8:15 on Monday morning. We had short breaks between games and played steadily until 10am. Pickleball players are rated by ability through a system that numbers players between one and five. One is a beginner while five is expert level play. As you progress in skill, you go through stages. At 10am, they had a class for 3.0 level players. Donna attended and went through drills. The class used two courts. The other two courts were reserved for 3.0 players. I played there although I’m at about a 3.5 level. The guys I played with were all 3.0 to 4.0 players and we had very competitive games. I ended up playing for about three hours total and got a lot of steps in – measured by the Samsung Galaxy S Health app.

Look at the activity between 8 and 11am

Our neighbors were preparing to pull out with their fifth-wheel trailer but they had a problem. The right rear jack wouldn’t retract. They have a Lippert electric jack system on their Durango trailer. I took a look at it but without a wiring diagram, I couldn’t do much. I looked for a simple solution like a blown fuse or loose connector at the jack motor but didn’t come up with anything. They had to stay another day and wait for a mobile RV technician to come out.

I had a repair to make on our new car carrier trailer. When I picked up the trailer, I had the guys at TrailersPlus install a handle on the side door. I noticed right away that the upper mount of the handle was only screwed through the door skin into the plywood. The guy missed the steel beam inside the door. I had him redo it by moving the handle 1/4″ to the right and reinstall the screw. It seemed secure.

The heat sometimes makes the door seals on the trailer stick. This happened yesterday. When I pulled on the handle the lower mount pulled loose – he had missed the steel beam on the lower mount as well! I measured the correct distance and saw I had to move the lower mounting screw 1/4″ to the right. When I removed the existing screw to move the handle, I found bad news. It was amateur hour at TrailersPlus. Not only had the guy missed the beam, he missed twice! I found two holes in the door skin – one had the screw into the plywood and the other was hidden by the edge of the handle. Moving the handle to the right to screw it into the beam exposed the first hole. I wasn’t too happy about it.

Poor workmanship

I phoned TrailersPlus when they opened this morning – they’re closed on Mondays. I e-mailed the photo of the hole in the door skin and I’m waiting to hear what the solution will be.

Donna ordered a new trash receptacle for our coach. It’s larger than what we were using and has two compartments – one for garbage and one for recyclables. It has a foot-operated lid that closes slowly and silently when you remove your foot from the pedal. She found it online at Bed, Bath and Beyond. It’s made by a company called Simple Human.

New trash can

Lid slowly closing over two compartments

Last night, Donna made turkey burgers with a special sauce recipe she got from our friend Karin Von Kay. I grilled them on the Weber Q.

Turkey burger with green chilies and special sauce

Turkey burger with special sauce

Last night, Ozark went crazy with catnip. I gave her a small amount and she kept begging for more. After awhile I think she was a little loopy.

Ozark feeling the catnip

This morning I took it easy on the pickleball courts. I played for about an hour and half while Donna went to the gym and worked out. This afternoon I have some errands to run. We need kitty litter and water from Costco. I need to shop for court shoes and I’m thinking of buying a new motorcycle helmet I saw at Steve’s Cycles.

A Windshield Story

I spent most of Thursday watching NFL football. Mission Bay RV Resort had a steady influx of RVers Wednesday afternoon and more came in for the long holiday weekend on Thursday. There was a large group of people from four or more sites having their Thanksgiving feast at tables set up in the site across from us. They must have been locals as several carloads of people joined them.

Weather-wise, it was an iffy day to dine in the open air. They had their meal early and by the time it started raining around 3:30pm, they had most of their stuff put away. We planned to have Thanksgiving dinner at Donna’s sister Sheila’s house. Her friend, Dr. Jeff Sandler, picked us up on his way from La Jolla at 4pm. We had an enjoyable evening with much conversation and good food. Jeff dropped us off at home around 9pm. I didn’t take any photos – I don’t know why – maybe because I saw so many of the same looking shots on Facebook all day.

Donna bought a bottle of Hangar 24 IPA called Betty for me. Hangar 24 is a brewery located in Redlands, California up in Riverside County. Their Betty IPA is 6.8% ABV with 68 International Bittering Units (IBUs).

Hangar 24 Betty IPA

I enjoyed the bottle of Betty before going to bed. It’s a well-balanced west coast style IPA.

On Friday morning, I got the ladder out from under the coach first thing and removed the front windshield cover. I had an appointment with Pro+Tech to have new windshield glass installed.

Windshield cover off – the crack doesn’t show in this photo

The driver’s side windshield was cracked all the way from the bottom up to the top. Our insurance company, Allied, set us up for glass replacement through a company called Duncan Systems. Duncan Systems arranged to have both sides of our two-piece windshield replaced and sent the glass to Pro+Tech. The guys from Pro+Tech, Dan Oglesby and his son Gabriel (it’s a family run operation), arrived around 9am. They had the new glass in a rack in the back of their truck.

Our new glass has arrived

We had a few rain showers earlier and I was a little concerned about rain coming down while they were working. Dan said he would do one side at a time to minimize the amount of open area while the glass was out. He said he expected the job to take about three and half hours. We put Ozark the cat into her crate while they were working.

They didn’t waste any time and set to work. Our windshield glass is bonded to the window frame with a urethane adhesive. Some windshields are set in rubber moldings. Bonded windshields took over the auto industry in the 1990s. They started by cutting the urethane with special knives – one with a blade folded at a 90-degree angle to reach behind the glass to cut through the adhesive.

Once they had the old glass out, they spent a lot of time cleaning the frame and prepping it for the new adhesive and glass. Dan told me the windshield bonding had failed on three of the four sides of the old passenger-side glass. The windshield was only held in by the adhesive on the right pillar. He showed me where the adhesive had separated from the glass – you could see the dust intrusion. He said the glass probably wasn’t properly prepped. Some urethane adhesives require a primer to adhere to glass. He figured insufficient primer or dirty glass caused the separation. I’m glad I opted to have both sides replaced. I’ve read stories of people having the windshield glass pop out while leveling the coach. We were probably heading for a windshield story.

Once they had the frame cleaned and primed, he was ready to put the new glass in.

Windshield frame cleaned, primed and bead of urethane applied

Old windshield out, frame ready for prep work

Lifting the new glass into the frame

Once he lifted the new glass in place, he used rubber shims on the bottom edge of the glass to center it in the opening. He slapped the glass with an open palm to settle it in the adhesive and work any air bubbles out. Then he carefully masked the body around the glass with painter’s tape. The next step was filling in the void between the glass and body with more urethane. The urethane adhesive he used is a primerless product from Dow Chemical.

Final steps on the driver’s side – urethane filler about to be put in

Ten tubes of urethane were needed for the job

I watched most of the work performed and I’m satisfied that a good job was done. Dan was meticulous throughout each step of the process. If you need mobile auto or RV glass in San Diego, I highly recommend Pro+Tech.

I waited two hours before I reinstalled the windshield cover. Dan said the windshield would set well enough to drive after two hours, but 24 hours is better and the urethane really takes about a week to fully cure. We won’t be moving for another 10 days, so it should be fully hardened by then.

Around 4pm, I removed the dressing from my hand. The nurse at the surgery center told me to keep the original dressing on until Friday afternoon, then I could remove it – just keep it dry and cover with a band aid. The incision hadn’t closed up as much as I thought it would. I haven’t had to take any pain meds since noon on Thursday, but my hand is still swollen.

Incision site on my right hand

Friday evening I grilled chicken thighs on the Traeger. I know it seems strange to have grilled chicken the day after Thanksgiving. Sheila sent us home with turkey and assorted leftovers, but we didn’t have any bread and decided to save the turkey for sandwiches that we can make today.

We had a couple of passing showers in the afternoon before things dried out. It was a cool 60 degrees here yesterday. Today should be dry and a little warmer. Temperatures will continue to warm throughout the coming week and we should be having highs around 70.

Today’s forecast – we’re under the sun where it shows 65

Donna plans to ride her bike to Sheila’s house to check on her cat and pick up her car. Sheila is off skiing in Park City, Utah for the weekend. We can get some shopping done today and return the car tomorrow.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Category Archives: Maintenance and Repair

Spyder Wire

Sparks in Sparks

Lean Condition

Spyder Work

Good Service Gone Bad

Free Beer

Synchronizing Cylinder

Mysterious Oil Leak

Leap Day Hijinks

A Windshield Story

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