Today was our fourth full day at Coach Maintenance Company in Williams, CA.  Days one and two had us in wait mode: Mechanic Ted’s primary project took far longer than he anticipated, but true to his word as soon as it was done he turned full attention to The Big Kahuna.  During those first two days we tried not to waste time worrying about the delay and instead get a few things done. Rosie set up a table outside and worked on some hand made jewelry projects.  We cleaned and reorganized parts of the bus.  I found some rubbing and polishing compound in my Big Box of Bus Liquids and Pastes (B3LaP), and rediscovered the magic that a light rubbing compound can work on damaged paint.  Check this before and after of one of our storage doors, scraped up by a big rock:

When you scrape your vehicle against something, often what you mistake for damaged paint is just a layer of the object you hit stuck to the surface of your generally undamaged paint. Rubbing compound removes all that, in addition to sanding actual light scratches from the top coat. Sometimes the results are extraordinary.  Another door, another example:

So we kept ourselves productive until Ted could get to us on day three in the yard, starting first off with the intermittent battery charger issue, which of course is not currently showing any symptoms. Having consulted the drawings, Ted was able to narrow things down, largely because we had already determined that one of my dashboard mystery lights is in fact a perfectly working generator failure indicator.  The fact that this indicator works at all eliminates some suspect components.  In light of that, Ted had me pull two relays: the starter/generator relay and the sensor relay, and cleaned the contact points in his glass bead power cleaner and adjusted the points alignment.  That is about as much as we can do until the other bus projects are done and we can start it up and see if we get any symptoms.

After that he hooked up an oil pressure gauge directly of the engine to see if what the dash gauge was indicating, catastrophically, dangerously low pressure, was accurate.  It is not.  Oil pressure is exactly what it should be through the full range of engine RPM.  What I have is merely a bad “sender.”  Since it is an aftermarket truck part rather than an original bus part, Ted doesn’t carry them, but has given me guidance on how to get the proper Stewart Warner sender to match my dash gauge.

Next we tackled the bent storage door frame preventing proper closure of two doors behind the right rear wheels.  This is going to get a bit technical, try to keep up.  The frame in question was bent towards the rear of the bus, it needed to be pulled forward half an inch.  So we hooked a big heavy chain to the bent frame, rested the free end of the chain up under the back tire… and then backed up the bus.  The tire ran back over the chain, holding it in place, and the power of the bus trying to continue backwards essentially pulled the frame into position.  So very high tech, but now the doors close.

“Spaz” supervises from atop the bus

Last we started on the secret mystery project.  Anyone care to guess before we give hints?  Too late, here are some photographic hints.

I’m a doctor, Jim, not a bus mechanic! Oh wait, I’m not a doctor either.

Steady… steady… dilithium crystal… nearly… installed.

Ted, supervising my nonsense.

The dirt, I do not care for it.

In addition to the photos, I will tell you that the secret project also presented the perfect opportunity to do a tune up: adjusting the rocker spacing and fuel injector heights, which Ted did.

Modified fuel crossovers already installed. We should be able to make the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs.

Ted flipping the bird to the upper cam assembly, as best I can tell.

My prefered method of “assisting” with the repairs. Ted wrenches, I drink beer.

Finally, here are some belated pics of the damaged reverse gear assembly that Ted replaced while we were in Hawaii. Half a dozen completely missing teeth and every single remaining one heavily damaged.

To sum up:

• Battery charging failure: no indications yet, two components adjusted to fix
• Very low oil pressure reading: Proved to be a false indicator caused by a bad sender.
• Bent storage door frame: corrected
• Tune up: complete
• Secret project: more than half done
• Hand brake adjustment: TBD
• Water temperature gauge failure: TBD
• Right rear tire pair cat’s eye replacement: TBD

We didn’t post much about Hawaii while there since we were pretty busy with family, friends, and enjoying Honolulu.  So now that we have some downtime we will put out a few things that might be of interest to future Hawaii travelers.

This may be one of those personality specific pet peeves which will have you rolling your eyes rather than nodding along, but one of the things that really bugs me about shipboard cruises like those we have taken on Norwegian Cruise Line is the constant sales pitch going on at nearly every event and venue, and often with what I see as a high degree of deception involved.  For instance, one of the free presentations we attended was ostensibly to provide advice and guidance on shopping in the ports of call, but it was really just a one hour sales pitch for the preferred merchants both on and off the ship.

So it was with some disappointment that we discovered the Hale Koa military hotel in Waikiki has lowered itself to at least some of the same practices.  A one hour “orientation” breakfast was nothing more than a hard sell for very expensive guided tours without one mention of the much more affordable methods of getting to and enjoying the same venues.  They pushed a $90 dollar Around the Island type tour that would, as the name suggests, take you on a bus trip around Oahu

Our frequent dead starter battery problem seems like something we should have addressed right away, with the apparent worsening over the last month emphasizing the point.  Believe me, we have tried: two different mechanics took a look and reported that since the symptoms were so inconsistent it was near impossible to trouble shoot down to the bad component.  After our battery troubles going to Carmel Valley, however, I assumed that the problem had worsened to the point of consistency.  Thus our decision to forgo Yosemite and head straight back to the Coach Maintenance Company.  Imagine our surprise when, after thee hours of driving, we pulled over at Wal-Mart with the intention of recharging the certain-to-be-low batteries with our Honda generator while we bought groceries and ate lunch, only to find this:

What the?

That’s right, fully charged,100% ready starter batteries.  This is doubly surprising: not only were they not depleted after a drive that, based on our Carmel Valley experience, should have shown them well below half, but for the past month I have not seen the batteries above 67% even after a full night of trickle charging!  I was not sure if that 67% max charge was a result of using a smallish 12V charger on these big bus batteries or if it had something to do with the way they are wired in series, but I was becoming concerned that in addition to whatever problem I had with the alternator and associated charging system, I might also have to replace the less-than-one-year-old batteries themselves.

Big ole bus batteries

So this is one of those good news bad news situations: the batteries charged up while driving, allowing us a smooth run to the mechanic, but now we are right back to the inconsistent symptoms problem that prevented repair the last two times.  Adding to the stress, Ted has not been able to look at our bus since we arrived two days ago.  He has moved us ahead of another bus job to the “on deck” position, but he encountered significant problems with the job in front of us, which he originally expected to be complete yesterday.

Wiring panel beside the driver seat. Pretty simple, right?

There has been one shining spot of progress, though.  During his breaks we have talked extensively about the bus, with special emphasis on indicators and warning symptoms.  Some of you might recall my complaints about all the unlabeled warning lights and switches we inherited from the previous owner, most of which we have figured out through trial and error.  One indicator has been particularly difficult to sort out.  A little red light below the speedometer has, as long as we can remember, sporadically illuminated during drives.  During the course of the last few months it has become more frequently lit, to the point that it has been solid red the last week or so.

Unlabeled indicator lights: Two greens are turn signals, Blue is high beam head lights, Top left red is low air pressure, the other three reds are unknown…

Originally I suspected it had something to do with our long standing transmission problems.  Once those were fixed I thought it might be related to our unusually low oil pressure reading that Ted pointed out last week.  But after a conversation yesterday with Ted, I learned that one of the core indicator lights on the original driver panel was a generator (alternator) circuit failure light, and it hit me.  Though the light has been near solidly illuminated the last few weeks, the exception was our run from Monterey to Williams the day before yesterday: the light was off pretty much the entire trip, which was surprising and rare enough that I mentioned it to Rosemarie.  The same run where the battery system charged.  Doh!  Finally we have not only the answer to an indicator light mystery, but a clear way of knowing when to expect a dead battery after driving.  Progress!

It’s hardly a secret that the military owns some of the choicest real estate in the country, just look at how much of Waikiki is taken up by the Hale Koa resort and Fort Derussey.  Some of these prime locations also have campgrounds on them with subsidized prices for military and retired personnel.  We took advantage of this in Key West, staying on the Naval Air Station blocks from Mallory Square for $13 a night.

Spacious and attractive site, golf course behind the tree line

We did it again in Monterey, stopping at Monterey Pines RV Campground, one of the annex properties owned by the Naval Postgraduate School.  Prices depend on your exact status and site selection, but we paid $26 per night for partial hook up (30 amp power and water, dump station nearby).  Nearby private RV parks cost two to three times as much for what the reviews suggest are far less attractive and poorly maintained spots.  Additionaly, Monterey Pines recently upgraded their wifi, which we found surprisingly fast and reliable in the spots near the repeater towers, though a bit iffy further down the way.

When you stay as close to the downtown action as Montery Pines allows, you can’t expect a great deal of solitude and nature, but this campground does a pretty good job of providing a beautiful view of a lightly wooded and tree-lined golf course with an abundance of bird and ground squirrel activity, and we even witnessed the final stages of a successful hawk attack on a local bird.  Unless you are there for the golf, and it did appear to be a very nice course with prices just as subsidized as the RV park, the real draw to this place is it’s proximity to the Monterey harbor.

The Circle Of Life, or Death From Above

Some were so large I thought they were ground hogs

You talking to me? You talking to me?

On our first full day after arrival we took a stroll towards the beach, only 1.6 miles walking distance from the park, ending up on a huge sand dune overlooking the bay.  From this point you could walk along the Monterey Coastal Recreation Trail or the beach towards the wharf and downtown areas.  We chose the latter, heading another mile or so along the water’s edge towards Old Fisherman’s Wharf, frequently seeing sea lions and harbor seals.

Once there we walked the length of the pier, with about a dozen restaurants trying to lure us in with free samples of clam chowder.  Since we partook in half a dozen of these, by the time we reached the end of the wharf we were nearly full and only had a small appetizer and a couple of local craft beers.  Unfortunately this was the only restaurant or bar we escaped from without a significant bill.

We went searching for the wine tasting bar that we had found a couple of years ago with former boss, drinking companion and certified sommelier, Paul.  Instead we found one of their direct competitors, Wine From the Heart, transitioning to Sovino Wine Bar, and had flights of half a dozen reds, which were comped after we bought three surprisingly affordable bottles from local vineyards Joyce and McClean X.  Our wine stock is back up to preferred levels now that we have picked up stock here and at Heller Estate in Carmel Valley, but I doubt having a full bar will prevent us from threatening the budget with further purchases as we head north through the rest of California and Oregon wine country.

We stayed in on our third day, as much to get our budget back on track as anything else, and took advantage of the high speed free wifi to catch up on a few of the television shows we used to watch.  On our last full day, Cinco de Mayo, we headed back into town to find a Mexican restaurant for a few margaritas and food.  Among the four to five options within walking distance we selected Lopez Restaurante y Cantina, which had the advantage of having a full liquor license, which meant real tequila rather than the flavored syrup some places use, as well as delicious entres .  It did not disappoint, and the service was excellent.

Horatio inspects our drink and appetizer choices

We woke at a leisurely hour, did a load of laundry ($1 wash, 75 cents dry, very cheap for an RV park) and broke camp after confirming our starter batteries were holding at 2/3 charge.  Four hours of driving with a stop at WalMart for resupply and we arrived back at Coach Maintenance Company in Williams to deal with the battery charging problem and a few other repairs.

We departed Concord on Friday and headed for Carmel Valley, a fantastic and beautiful little town with 19 wine tasting rooms.  We stayed there for a couple of nights at the tail end of a business trip to Monterey a couple of years ago and loved it.  Unfortunately we did not get away from Concord until nearly 6 pm, and since we had not charged up the batteries fully before departing, we noticed that our headlights were not working properly as darkness fell.  We were looking to stop at boondocking site near Hollister, but the bus decided that Gilroy was far enough, and we pulled into the parking lot of a tractor supply company behind a Sonics to recharge using our generator.  By the time we got charged up enough to continue on we realized that none of the owners or managers in the adjacent businesses seemed concerned enough about our presence to bother us, so we decided to stay the night right there.

Who would have thought that a road named “Laureles Grade” would have significant grades?

The next morning we continued on to Carmel Valley, experiencing the usual excitement on a significant downhill grade the last few miles.  The name of the road, Laureles Grade, was a pretty big clue that we were going to have some steep climbs and significant downhill runs, and it did not disappoint in that regard.  Fortunately it was not a particularly long run, and we proceeded with caution and at a very slow pace, pulling over frequently to let the brakes cool.

A beautiful but tension filled downhill run into the valley

We made it safely into Carmel Valley only to have the Kahuna stall completely in an intersection, perhaps the down hill run had been more electrically demanding on the system, but we suffered the embarrassment of having the fire department show up and direct traffic around us for the 45 minutes it took us to get charged up enough to move into the parking lot of the Running Iron Restaurant.

We have broken down before, but this was the first time we actually blocked traffic

Since we had partially blocked one of the entrance to the restaurant, we felt obligated to eat there, and over a late morning drink and delicious breakfast we began adjusting our plans based on the reality of our bus’ lack of readiness for long distance travel.  We would head 20 miles down the road to Monterey, stay at the military owned RV park near downtown for a few days, cancel our plans to go to Yosemite, and head straight back to the mechanic in Williams to address the battery charging issues along with some other items we had previously agreed upon.

Still smiling, though perhaps through gritted teeth

Both Kevin at Bay Cities Diesel ad Ted at Coach Maintenance Company had taken a look at the charging issue, but since the symptoms were not consistently showing up they had not had the time to solve it.  Based on the last couple of days, we are pretty sure the symptoms are now ever-present, and we are confident that Ted will solve it next week.  It is a bit embarrassing to write yet again about our ongoing mechanical problems, but we are trying to “keep it real” as the kids no doubt stopped saying years ago, and will share the good with the bad.  Besides, if you have to be broken down somewhere, you could do worse than Carmel Valley, surrounded by 19 wine tasting rooms, including one of o favorites, Heller Estate.

Making the best of our situation by picking up wine at Heller Estate

Not gonna lie, with regard to our blogging activity here, its been a bit demotivating not having our bus, thus the relativity paucity of posts of late.  But now we have him back and we are rolling, so expect more frequent entries.

We picked up The Big Kahuna from Ted at Coach Maintenance Company a couple of day ago and parked him in front of Rosemarie’s sister’s house in Concord while we made preparations for continuing our journey around the country.  Ted had repaired our reverse gear transmission problem by replacing the nearly stripped reverse clutch gear, and dealt with a number of other maintenance issues for us as well.  He switched our the transmission fluid from ATF to 10W40, apparently a much better option for the Allison VS2 transmissions, but warned us that we need to keep a better eye on the fluid level.  He also suggested that the change in fluid at the proper level should eliminate the long standing and very aggravating difficulty of getting Kahuna to transition into top gear on anything other than a down hill grade.  Sure enough, we had no problem at all during the 95 mile return trip to Concord.

Unfortunately Ted did not have time to trace down the charging failure issue that keeps killing our starter batteries, but we have made arrangements to return next week for a full line up of repairs and improvements, which we will get into on a later post.  In the meantime we wanted to hit a couple of places here in central California, so we are nursing the batteries along until we get back to Ted’s shop.  That is proving a bit more challenging that we anticipated as the charging failure seems to have gotten worse, or at least it is now consistently failing to charge rather than just occasionally failing to charge.  Ah well, we will lick it eventually.

We are back in Concord, near the San Francisco bay area, after a fantastic nine day vacation in Honolulu with friends and family.  If your bus has to break down you could do a lot worse than killing time in Waikiki while you await repairs.  Sure, we have already busted our monthly budget, ’cause Hawaii ain’t cheap, but our heads are back on straight and we are better ready to deal with the slings and arrows thrown our way by a 52 year old behemoth.

Last we mentioned, the Bus Nuts forum members had found us a mechanic in Benicia, where we left the bus before departing to Oahu.  David at bay Cities Diesel repaired the power steering leak, and after a few days waiting for an opening drove the bus 90 miles north to the Coach Maintenance Company, in Williams.  Coach Maintenance specializes in old buses, as you can see from the pictures on their site.  We were quite grateful that David took us in on short notice despite his work load, but had we known about Coach Maintenance a few weeks earlier we would have taken Kahuna straight there.  We don’t yet have an estimated date or cost of repair, but things are looking good: as of yesterday Ted reported that he had identified and mostly completed repairs to the transmission. Hopefully the operational and road test after he puts it back together will not reveal additional problems. As to the alternator, David reported that the symptoms were not consistent or even consitently present, so he was not able to devote the time needed to track down the bad component.  Ted said he will take a look but if the symptoms aren’t there he can’t do a lot for it.  We shall see.

Our big decision today was where to have lunch, and since we are in California and have never experienced In-N-Out Burger, the choice was simple.  We are told this will be much much better than our our experiment with Whataburger in Texas.

Perhaps this should be filed under First World Problems or a Privilege Check.

You might recall our “woes me” post about The Big Kahuna’s mechanical problems and how frustrated we were by them.  I even stooped to the particularly self indulgent and whiny phrasing “this is the closest we have come to wondering if we are doing the right thing.”  So a little perspective: we have the unmitigated privilege of being able to retire decades earlier than many Americans, with a robust pension package utterly unattainable by most workers, governments subsidized lifetime healthcare coverage, and today we flew to Hawaii for a vacation from our incredibly stressful life of travelling around the country full time.  Yeah, its that bad, weep for us.

Through a window, but not a bus window

The bottom line is that things break, and we have sufficient resources to get them fixed.  Even on a retired income we can manage such events as mere setbacks rather than life altering catastrophes. Yes, this is overtly political, but I honestly believe that the American public was sold a decades long bill of goods with the demonstrably false idea that the workable pension programs of the mid century could be replaced by the woefully inadequate and volatile private investment plans of today.  While “only” 15% of the population lives in poverty, another 30-40%, the working poor and barely middle class, are one major catastrophe away from dropping into the poverty ranks.   Rose and I are insulated from such an occurrence, but sometimes its tough to see our own situation objectively.

But if there is one place that will allow us that objectivity, it is Hawaii!  So purely in the interest of recognizing our own privilege we have flown there, and will spend a week contemplating how lucky we are while drinking copious amounts of fruity drinks with umbrellas or flowers in them.   We consider it a duty, to ourselves and to you, our readers.

As I mentioned in the overly long post about loyalty programs, we are doing this vacation on the cheap: the airline tickets were paid via our big stash of airline miles, and the hotel is the fantastic Hale Koa, a deeply discounted resort for military and retired military personnel in Waikiki.  Again, privilege. Sometimes we military guys and gals can forget the ludicrous number of special discounts and programs we have access to, such as Hale Koa and half a dozen other military only resorts around the world.  Because of Hale Koa, Honolulu is one of the rare places where we usually choose to pay for the hotel room rather than dip into the hotel loyalty points and stay at one of the fantastic Hilton, Starwood, or Marriott properties in the area.

After our three day rest stop in Bakersfield’s Orange Grove RV Park, we broke camp and made the last mad dash towards San Francisco.  Thanks to advice received from members of the Bus Nuts discussion board, I had located a bus mechanic just 10 miles up the road from Rosemarie’s sister’s house, where we would be staying during our Bay Area stop.  David, at Bay Cities Diesel, works on a lot of diesel buses, but usually not one as old as The Big Kahuna, and given how much business he has already I don’t think he would have agreed to take on the work at all without the referral from Geoff at Bus Nuts.  As it is he only agreed to work on the alternator and power steering leak, and to try to contract out the transmission problem.

As of yesterday, April 10th, he had found and sealed the power steering leak, which included having to bleed the system to get all the air out.  One of his guys had also begun work on the alternator, confirming that it is indeed an electrical problem and not the batteries, with voltage readings fluctuating all over the place.  Like many electrical problems, the challenge is figuring out the exact bad component in a complicated system.  Finally, he located a vintage bus specialist 90 miles north that has agreed to work on the transmission, but is not sure when he can get to it.  Since Rose and I are leaving town for over a week tomorrow, he even agreed to get a driver to take the bus up to the transmission shop if they are ready for it before we return.

While here we have had a great visit with Rosie’s sister and her family, and a chance to visit my college roommate, Charles, and his wife Leanna, down at Stanford University where he now influences the minds of our bright young things.

Last we wrote, we had driven blindly out of Joshua Tree National Park, alternator failing to charge the batteries, power steering module leaking, and transmission missing one of the critical components that other transmission seem to have, i.e., a reverse gear.  We stumbled into the town of Indio, next door to Coachella and just down the road from Palm Springs, and as one might expect in such an area, we paid through the nose for a one night spot in a lovely little RV resort.  A night there allowed us to get our bearings and stop the headlong rush north without the appropriate research.

Orange grove converted to an RV park

Thus we pulled onto I-10 west, but only for a bit as our research helped us plan a route that avoided the L.A. traffic area as much as possible.  We also had a stopover point defined and an RV campground arranged, one we selected not merely for its location four to five hours down the road and very near the highway, but also for its large number of pull through sites and wide turns within the grounds.  Because of the reverse gear thing.  Because, we can’t back up.

And they let us pick oranges, though at this point in the season us short people needed some tool assistance

Late afternoon we pulled into Orange Grove RV Park, which, it will shock you to learn, is in an orange grove.  A portion of said grove has been converted to over a hundred RV spots, with orange trees left in between each spot, but cut topiary style into Dr Seussian discs.  It is a very clean, reasonably affordable, full service (power, water, sewage, cable, internet, pool, clubhouse, etc) RV park with very large sites (ours was 90′ long).

Dr Seuss Tree, obviously

Aside from that, three things set it apart from other comparably priced parks: 1) the internet actually worked pretty well, though the sign in process was unnecessarily complex and required a trip to the front office to get the trick of it. 2) You can pick the oranges from the trees, though short people like us had to use tongs to get a bag full of the very sweet citrus.  3) It was the single most organized RV park we have ever stayed in.  It’s hard to explain this, exactly, but one example: Easter Sunday morning we decided to stay one more day, but the office as closed.  But they had so clearly thought through the after hours check in process: For reservations arriving that day they had a large board with separate envelopes taped to it, and another board for those showing up without reservations with an envelope for each available spot they could select.  But they took it one step further, anticipating that anyone scheduled to leave that day might, like us, chose to extend their stay, so they had specifically omitted those spots from the availability board envelopes. to extend, all we needed do was stay in place and pay the next morning.

Stay we did, three days here, working on the bus, cleaning, reorganizing, and researching. We also met a group of Canadian RVers heading back north fr m Arizona that allowed us to join their Easter dinner.  This went a long way towards assuaging our family loneliness on the holiday.  Look, Bakersfield was not exactly on our list of places we must visit, and it may not be on yours either. But if you find yourself heading through California, either direction, this RV park makes a great stopover and recovery point; we can’t recommend it enough.

Easter dinner with four of our new friends