Well....

Things did not go quite as planned on Wednesday...

We tried turning the ignition to "on" several times (the action that has shown the failure in the past) and it continued to work, so, as I posted Wednesday morning... we headed out north, in hopes of visiting our friends in Ohio by the weekend.

But... we stopped for lunch about 100 miles away at a rest area in North Carolina, and, when we were preparing to leave there, the problem appeared again. We called Freightliner and left a message that the problem had reappeared and that we were returning.

As when we were leaving the farm, the various methods that we have learned to get the problem reset did not work - so the gauges weren't working, and there was a very annoying alarm going off. We finally decided to just drive without the gauges and with the alarm - ugh!

It was interesting - the alarm is a shrill constant tone, and if you get your head in just the right place, it significantly reduces in volume. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to keep your head in that specific place for very long.

When we got back to the Freightliner Service Center, we were "expected". A service guy immediately came to our site to take Gracie into the shop - soon after 2pm. We got Miss Kitty packed up into her carrier and we all got into the Jeep to wait out their work.

Gracie going into the shop

Gracie in the shop

Unfortunately, even though they tried tracing grounds, ultimately, some action that they took reset the problem and they could not recreate it. They brought Gracie back to us by about 4pm. We have tried turning the ignition on multiple times through Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, and it is still working fine. It is weird to be frustrated that it is *not* broken -- but I'm sure almost everyone has dealt with a problem that magically went away when they took it for service, only to reappear later - so you probably know what we are feeling! The problem had become so persistent, occurring every time we turned off the rig, that we felt confident in coming for service... but... it has now become intermittent, the bane of any debugging effort!

They have ordered a new "light bar" - the part that they replaced on Tuesday - still thinking that it is the root of the problem. We don't have a lot of confidence in that, but, maybe that will fix the problem. We are trying to trust in the sovereignty of God, that He has some reason for us being here at this time, but it is challenging. Right now (Thursday morning) we are waiting for the part to come (sometime between 10am and 2pm) and then they will take Gracie again.

One more picture - when Gracie was going into the shop, there was another vehicle in front of the building that looked like a UPS delivery truck, but wasn't:

The words on the side say "Test Truck" and it has some other text that indicates that it is operated by Daimler (parent company of Freightliner).

I don't know whether they are testing some component that will ultimately be included on the package truck, or whether they are testing operators of the truck.