STS Hop 7: Stony Creek VA to Myrtle Beach SC

STS Hop 7

302 miles via I-95, US 117, I-795 (through Goldsboro NC), I-40 and US 17, with a refueling stop near Sharpsburg NC.

It is true: the night is darkest before the dawn.

The plan was to do a 20-mile test drive, hauling the RV, around 8am. If the check engine light came on we would book 2 nights at a campground in Emporia VA, near the GMC dealership, and put the truck in for repairs Monday morning. In that case we would have to cancel the entire 3-day stop in Myrtle Beach (one day of which was already canceled) and at least one day in Charleston.

If the check engine light remained off, we would head to Myrtle Beach, with fingers crossed.

The check engine light came on 3.5 miles into the test drive.

So we canceled Myrtle Beach, booked the stay in Emporia and, with very heavy hearts, loaded the RV, checked out of the Hampton Inn and headed out for the 15-mile trip south. I figured we could “limp” there at 40 mph on US 301. But when we left the Hampton Inn parking lot the truck exhibited a whole new level of sickness: I could not get it above 15 mph. We drove about a mile, then pulled over in a parking lot next to Chester’s other shop location (which we had visited briefly on the test drive Saturday). I opened the hood, pushed (ineffectively, I am sure) on some connectors, then sat back to wait for 10 minutes in the hope that the truck would recover enough to make it the 15 miles.

At that point I was more down than I have ever been in our years of travel. We were looking at a potentially extended stay in a small town in Virginia, without transportation, with expensive repairs likely and with Myrtle Beach – one of the stops I was most looking forward to – canceled. This was even worse than that awful, rainy weekend in Knoxville in 2012. I was in a black, curse-our-fates mood.

Then Chester pulled up.

Chester in the engine

He asked how the truck was behaving (stupid question, I thought), but told him that the truck was worse than ever. He offered to run the diagnostics again. I wasn’t wild about the idea, but because the truck was acting up in a different way I thought it might have a different code. So I said ok, realizing that this might boost the total diagnostic cost to over $400.

We limped to his shop less than 2 miles away. Jett took the dogs for a long walk. I watched Chester perform the diagnostics again (same code), then dig into the engine doing God-knows-what. Then we went on a test drive, hauling the RV. I was a bit nervous letting Chester haul our home, but he said he had a lot of truck driving experience and “this was nothing.”

20 miles. No check engine light.

I asked Chester what he had done. He said he had tightened the #7 fuel injector connection – the same thing he had done on Saturday – but was “more aggressive” this time.

I wasn’t completely convinced that the problem was fixed, but as we had just successfully completed the same test drive that I had failed at in the morning, we decided to push for Myrtle Beach. As Chester put it, if we made it to Exit 11 (the Emporia exit) without the light going on, we should “put the hammer down” and keep going.

I waited until we reached North Carolina (over 30 miles) before calling to cancel our Emporia reservation and to un-cancel our Myrtle Beach reservation. Then we put the hammer down and kept going.

We made the entire 300-mile trip without incident (which I regarded as a minor miracle), set up at our site at Ocean Lakes Family Campground just a few feet from the beach (we have an ocean view!), then sat back and lifted a toast to Chester Carter, who saved not only the day but the entire week.

And, hard to believe, his additional charge for fixing the problem? Zero. Free. Gratis.

Chester – you are my new hero.