Of the four known problems with our rig, two were truck-related and two were RV-related. Clearly, nothing could be done with the RV problems until the truck problems were solved. Unfortunately, one of the two GMC dealers in Binghamton NY would not book an appointment until Thursday and the other would only offer a Friday appointment. I booked the Thursday appointment, with the intention of making a personal, pathetic appeal to move it up once I got a rental car and could go see them in person.
To that end I arranged with the campground owner for a ride to Enterprise Monday morning (Sunday was spent in the RV, carless, dining on whatever we had on board and watching DVDs). He drove me there in his 2002 pickup with faulty spark plugs which caused engine hesitation for the entire 18-mile ride. I was grateful that I got to Enterprise without suffering through yet another truck failure. I gave him $20 for the ride.
Enterprise, efficient as always, got me behind the wheel of a Kia in about 10 minutes and I immediately drove to Botnick Chevrolet in downtown Binghamton. Or tried to. This particular Monday was Columbus Day and there was a parade in downtown Binghamton. Many streets were closed off. I drove down a small street which seemed to be open but wasn’t. I got stuck in a long line of cars that had made the same mistake. We all had to back up to find an alternate route.
I did finally get there and made my most sincere, whiny appeal for a more timely appointment. The service advisor, while sympathetic, could only say “bring it in and I will see if I can slip it into the schedule.” I promised him that I would have it in his lot no later than Tuesday morning.
Jett opted to use Monday afternoon to do a trip to the laundromat and food store, to make our RV exile a bit more pleasant. Then, Tuesday morning, I filled the coolant reservoir on the truck and a gallon of water, in case I needed to refill it during the 12-mile trip to Botnick. We had originally planned to get a tow from AAA, but the logistics of that were difficult. Specifically we would have to travel about 6 miles just to get to a place where we had cell phone service and there was a wide shoulder where we could wait. We reasoned that if we could drive the truck 6 miles we could probably do another 6 and avoid the hassle of waiting for a tow.
We made it without requiring a refill and without emitting any steam clouds that would have alarmed our fellow motorists. I left the truck at Botnick with a renewed plea for mercy.
The plea went largely unanswered. We basically cooled our heels the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday, with me making occasional forays into the realm of cell phone service to check the status. Finally, at 3:30 pm on Wednesday, Botnick got it into the shop.
I should mention that one other thing I did on Monday was try to clean the contacts on the trailer hitch connector – the socket that the RV umbilical plugs into that both provides electrical power to the RV while traveling and sends the braking signal from the truck’s brake controller to the RV’s electrical brakes. My view of the braking problem was that it was about 80% likely that the problem was just a bad connection and about 20% likely that it was something else. This was based on the observation that the display on the braking controller seemed pretty normal in all respects except for the color. My recollection is that the screen was supposed to be green when the trailer was hitched and resting and should be red only when braking. My controller’s screen was always red.
So I got a screwdriver and tried to scrape the contacts on both the truck socket and the RV plug. But while scraping the truck socket I encountered a small spark, apparently from the head of the screwdriver bridging the gap between two pins. It was a very small spark and I thought nothing of it… until, on the trip into Botnick, I discovered that the cruise control was inoperative. So that was added to the service list:
- diagnose and fix the coolant leak
- flush the radiator and refill with coolant
- diagnose and fix the brake controller problem
- oil change (it was due)
- fix the cruise control
I thought the cruise control problem was probably a blown fuse due to that tiny little spark, but, like so much else during the week, I was totally wrong. It was a brake pedal sensor switch that needed to be replaced at a cost of about $140.
Botnick completed their work late Thursday afternoon. Total cost: $686.26. But they did nothing about the brake controller, saying that it was an after-market (i.e., non-GM) product that they knew nothing about.
Friday morning I drove the rental car back to Enterprise (total cost: $307.57), got a ride from them to Botnick ($5 tip), retrieved the truck and started thinking about how to fix the brake controller problem.
Total cost of the truck fix: $1018.83. We had our tow vehicle back but needed to figure out the brake controller problem before we could continue our journey.