Marking our territory - again

April 28, 2010
Indio, CA

No, we've not let Merlin run amok. We just have a drip under the coach. Not just any drip, but the one I thought I had fixed back in January. I hate it when a fix doesn't "take".

To back up a bit, we've had a minor leak from the transmission for a couple of years, on and off. It got worse on our trip to Florida and back over the winter, and I took it in to the local engine/transmission shop in January. They changed the seals in the "power take off" (aka "PTO") that pumps the hydraulic fluid used for the engine fan and power steering and declared everything OK. It looked that way to me as well, since I saw no drippage on the trip back to storage and a few quick trips to the house and back. Now, I did find a rag stuffed into the side of the transmission when I was under there doing a chassis lube in early-April. Guess what? At our first stop heading west, just over the state line into California, the leak is back.

I did some research and found a shop that specializes in PTO work, "PTO Sales" (clever, eh?) in Fontana, CA, right off the I-10 where we're passing by on our way east. I called first thing Monday morning and made arrangements to be there early in the afternoon. A quick look led to an estimate of $40 in parts and 8-10 hours of labor, mostly related to cleaning things up (can't have road grime and oil fall into the transmission and rebuilding the PTO. OK, so we're not out of here today. We grabbed a travel bag and headed for our friends, Wayne & Eva, in Indio, about 90 miles away. We had a great dinner with them Monday night (Tri-tip with red beans & rice), and their neighbors Will & Diane joined us. We took advantage of their spare room, although the pups were restless.

Tuesday started with a call from Fontana (unlike most service shops, this place was all over the communications process - I didn't have to call them once). "Good news; we're ahead of schedule but we need additional parts". They were able to get everything cleaned up and disassembled on Monday, but found that the PTO needed to be upgraded with a factory-supplied kit. No problem since they stock the parts, but the $40 estimate is now $210. OK, and still on schedule for completion later in the day.

Well, not so fast, fella. The next call comes mid-afternoon, with another good news/bad news message. "We did the rebuild and bench tested it, but found that the cast iron housing is cracked". Huh? How's that happen? No answers there, but we found two new housings. "One is at the factory in Mississippi, but we missed the overnight shipping cut-off. The other is at the PTO Sales shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma and we can get that one here tomorrow, but it's the whole PTO". Ka-ching. Needless to say, we chose the new PTO.

We had another great dinner (on top of breakfast!) with Wayne & Eva and Will & Diane: fish tacos. Eva and Diane contributed black cod that Wayne & Will had caught last summer in Oregon. With fresh corn tortillas, guacamole, chipotle sauce, and a variety of sides, we ate well once again.

When the phone rang this morning, I was expecting the "the part didn't ship" message but was wrong. Instead, we found that the "new" PTO was the same as the "old" PTO, and needed the upgrade kit installed as well. Hmmm, what else can they sell me? With another promise to be done by noon, we decided to head back to Fontana mid-morning. No matter what, we hadn't brought enough "stuff" to stay longer. We arrive just before noon and everything was, indeed, ready for inspection. We check for leaks and didn't see any, so we packed up and headed out, taking advantage of the tailwinds along I-10. We made it all the way to Phoenix (isn't there a song about that?) and parked right in front of the house. We had dinner, I put most of the wine in the "wine box", and we'll just stay here tonight. Since the house is all closed up, we'll stay in the coach. We're self-contained, so that's no issue. It's good to have the leak fixed (fingers crossed here).