Some projects while around Conroe - Situation 3 - fuel cap

Continuation of fixes while we were in Conroe:

Situation 3: when we were leaving Dallas, we planned to fill up with fuel before we got onto I-45 heading south. We stopped at a TA, but the fueling area was confusing -- there were trucks parked in front of some of the fueling lanes (not uncommon, sometimes drivers go into the building after filling), and there were safety cones around, but they did not seem to be blocking specific lanes. We chose a lane where there was a truck parked at the out-going side, figuring that the driver had completed filling and would be returning before we finished fueling. We noticed a safety cone at the fuel lane next to the one we chose, and another "random" safety cone between the two lanes... but it appeared that the fuel lane was available. After Carl tried to use our fleet card at the pump, it wasn't working, so he went inside; the lane we had selected was out of service. Since we cannot back up the rig with the Jeep attached, now we had to wait for the driver of the truck on the out-going side to return; it turns out that she knew that the pump was out and just parked there while she went in to get food. She returned after we had waited a few minutes, and we were able to get out. (I took the "random" safety cone that had been beside the lane and put it in front of the lane as we got pulled out.) By that time, there were a number of rigs waiting for pumps, and we couldn't easily get back into line, so we decided to give it up and travel further down the highway.

We stopped for fuel not far north of Conroe, which is when we discovered that we'd left the fuel cap on the out-of-service island at the TA - bummer! If we had gone to another pump there outside of Dallas, we would have realized it and retrieved it there, but, we did not. Carl asked at the place we were fueling if they might have a collection of previously-left-fuel-caps to provide to future unfortunates, but they did not. 

We went online to see if we could find somewhere that had a replacement fuel cap, and were dismayed to see how many different diesel fuel cap configurations there are! If we had a normal vehicle, we could have put in the year, make, model and the search facilities on the automotive parts stores could have given us the right cap... but not for our motorhome. Thankfully, we have two entry points for fuel, and thus we have two fuel caps, so we took the one from the passenger side to O'Reilly's with us. The gentleman at the counter there was very kind, brought several fuel cap boxes out, and we found a match pretty quickly.

Carl said, "Take a picture of the part number so if we ever need another one, we can look back on the blog to find the information about what we got!" (Note: we probably use our blog more than any of our readers do, to go back and remind ourselves of how we fixed something in the past, or where we stayed, or... just to jog our memories about where we've been and what we did there!)

New fuel cap in place -- note that it has a tether, so once we have that connected to the rig, we shouldn't lose it again, or not easily lose it!