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!

Some projects around Conroe - Situation 2 - power cord

Continuation of our projects around Conroe:

Situation 2: The first evening that we were here in Conroe, at about 10pm, our power from the pedestal went out. We figured it was a flipped breaker at the pedestal, but upon checking, Carl found that the pedestal was fine. We had had a problem at Lake Tawakoni, when we first plugged in, we didn't get power to the coach from the pedestal. We unplugged and plugged back in and it worked. We had no problems at Hickory Creek -- but the fact that we'd had a couple of problems made us think that it could be a faulty cord reel or a faulty plug. Carl rigged up a combination that worked for our first night, and the next morning we connected our 50A extension cord for a longer term fix.

When I put the 50A extension cord away when we were leaving the farm in Virginia, I "buried" it deeply in the underbay storage. It took a bit of doing to extract it from the bay... 

... but here it is hooked up. In the picture, you may be able to see the extension cord is plugged into the outlet marked "male xfer switch into coach". A few years ago, Carl made a change in the electric bay so the cord reel was no longer hard-wired to the transfer switch in the coach (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2022/05/electric-bay-project.html). This gives us flexibility not only so we can put the autoformer and Power WatchDog into the electric bay, but also allows us to bypass the cord reel and the cord on it if it develops a problem.  This allowed us to provide power to the coach until we could debug what the issue was.

Carl surmised that the issue was in the plug; we had had a problem with it last fall (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2024/09/another-day-around-campground.html)... 

... so we took it apart and found that the neutral wire (white one) had, once again, come loose and this time had been arcing.

The tension created when we roll the cord up on the reel causes the white wire to get pulled deeper into the cord, to the point that eventually the wire won't be attached anymore.

After taking the wires loose, we could see that the blade had gotten hot and melted the plastic, so we could not use this end anymore. Thankfully, we could order a new cord end and have it delivered to Kim's while here in Conroe.

Carl decided to prepare the cord end for the new outlet so we'd be able to put the new one on when it arrives.

The bizarre thing to us is that the plug worked when we plugged it in, and worked for a number of hours, until about 10pm when it decided to fail. We're not sure what the final straw for the camel's back was in this case.

Some projects while around Conroe - Situation 1 - safety cables

As we've indicated before, there's always things that need to be fixed. This is a list of some of the projects that we've done while at Lake Conroe... 

Situation 1: 

When we were hooking up the Jeep a couple of campgrounds ago, we noticed that the safety cable had evidently been dragged and compromised (you can see that just a few of the strands of the cable are still holding -- the only thing we can figure is that it got dragged at some point when we did not have the Jeep hooked up and we thought we had it secured behind the motorhome). 

The safety cables are used to ensure that the Jeep does not get completely separated from the motorhome, even in case of a failure of the tow bar. Longtime blog readers (from back in the days of "Trekin' with the Cartwrights") may recall the day that our safety cables kept the Jeep from getting loose in Shreveport, LA -- https://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2015/11/excitement-for-day.html -- so we are well aware of the importance of having safety cables in good shape when we're traveling!

On the trip from Dallas to Conroe, I looked up the part and ordered replacement safety cables from Amazon to be delivered to Kim's address. We retrieved the Amazon order and had it on our to-do list to replace the cables.

In this picture, Carl is unfastening the quick link where the safety cables attach to the back of the motorhome. The one on the left side opened pretty easily, but the one he is working on was a bear to get open far enough to get the old safety cable out and the new one in (definitely *not* a "quick link" in this case!). He finally got it done though, and the new safety cables are in place for our next travel day.

Dad-and-daughters time

Kim and Pamela asked Carl to get together with them for coffee and to share memories together...

They had a nice visit at a coffee shop / cafe in a furniture store near Conroe.

Joining with Kim's church for worship

We joined with Kim's church for worship on Sunday...

It was great to worship with her church family. Her pastor gave a great message on Religion vs Rebirth from John 3 (Nicodemus coming to Jesus with questions).

In the afternoon, we got to enjoy lasagna from Sue's recipe made by Pamela -- yum!

Saturday with daughters Kim and Pamela - part 3

Finishing up our day in Houston, after walking at the arboretum,

... we headed to Van Leewen for frozen treats!

Delicious!

And so nice to be in a cool (in temperature) place!

Saturday with daughters Kim and Pamela - part 2

Continuing on Saturday...

We drove from the Ethiopian restaurant to the Houston Arboretum, hoping to find a cool (in temperature) place to walk around...

Checking out information on some of the plants...

...walking on a boardwalk on our way to "Outer Loop" path...

"Beauty Berries"

... we didn't get the name for these, but they were pretty!

Kim and Carl

A boardwalk over a marshy area

Our hiking group

It wasn't particularly cool but there was a little shade and a bit of a breeze at times on our hike.