STS Hop 6
27 miles via I-85 and I-95.
Well, you guys obviously did not wish hard enough. We made it just over 10 miles into our planned 300-mile trip before the “check engine” light reappeared. We limped (which turns out to be exactly the right word – more on that later) to a truck stop just north of Stony Creek VA. I phoned Good Sam Roadside Assistance and they were almost no help at all. What I needed was a diesel mechanic and all they could offer was a tow.
We quickly concluded that we were going to be stuck in rural Virginia for the weekend unless we could find a mechanic. So we decided to check into the nearby Hampton Inn and use that as a base of operations. We parked the RV in the corner of the parking lot, checked in for 2 nights and set about finding help for the truck. We quickly determined that the nearest GMC dealer was about 15 miles away and arranged an appointment for Monday morning. Then I started calling around, hoping to find a local mechanic who could at least diagnose the problem. I figured if I arrived at the dealer with a diagnosis in hand it would speed things along.
The truck at Carter’s
I found a tow/repair company about 6 miles away that claimed to offer 24/7 roadside assistance. A call to that number wasn’t answered but I thought it might be worth a trip to the address to see if I could scare up some help (driving the truck without the RV was no problem at all – the truck ran fine when not stressed). I had a bit of difficulty locating the company and in fact stopped first at a place across the street. There was a mechanic there working on a diesel truck – a good sign – but he said he dropped his diagnostic computer and would be unable to determine my engine code. He sent me to Johnny’s Tow Service across the street. Which was closed. But a call to the number on the tow truck there yielded a referral to Chester, down in Stony Creek. I called Chester and he told me to come down and he would take a look.
Chester Carter is the proprietor of Carter’s 1 Stop towing service and truck repair emporium in Stony Creek, Virginia which was a town of 202 souls in 2000. And it looks like it may have gone downhill since then. The tiny town is littered with vacant and crumbling buildings. It had a creepy feel, to be honest. With Halloween approaching and the truck very unwell, I began to wonder if there was any escape. Even the Hampton Inn was empty. Would Jack Nicholson appear?
Abandoned grain storage near Carter’s
Chester was a man of few words. And when he spoke it was in a quiet, mumbled Southern drawl which my Northern ears had to strain to understand. He went straight to work and pretty quickly diagnosed the engine code: P1295 which suggested that one of the fuel injectors had lost electrical connectivity. He poked around the engine for an hour, cleaned some connections and, after interrupting work on my truck to change a tire on an RV – which I didn’t mind since he was helping a fellow RVer in need – we took the truck on a 30-mile test drive during which the “check engine” light stayed off.
I paid him about $250, which I thought was fair, and went on my way. I had spent nearly 4 hours watching Chester work (and learning quite a bit about my diesel engine). Chester said that Chevy/GMC diesels were prone to loose connections on certain fuel injectors – especially injectors 2 and 7 (my problem injector). The clip holding the electrical connection to the injector could corrode and work loose, causing the kind of problem I was seeing. Specifically, as soon as the computer detects a problem it puts the engine into “limp mode” which somehow protects it from severe damage, but severely diminishes the power, which lets the truck “limp” to a place to be repaired. He said he had tightened the clip on #7. All of which sounded plausible, but I had very little confidence that he had actually fixed the problem. But I figured that the diagnosis alone was worth the price.
The plan is to do a test drive with the RV in tow Sunday morning and, if successful, head to Myrtle Beach. If unsuccessful, we will move to a campground, deliver the truck to the GMC dealership Monday morning and then cool our heels until they are done with it. In the latter case we could be stuck in Stony Creek for days.
Maybe until Halloween.