#@*!&^!!!

About two weeks ago Marc was driving back from working on the duplex when he noticed smoke pouring out of the back of the Freightliner. Pulling over to check, he found the ground wiring to the generator and all the wiring to the auxiliary fuel tank entirely melted together from fire. No, the generator was not running at the time and this followed upon us having just used it for a hundred hours dry camping at Ft. Lewis. Since the generator weighs about 800 pounds, there is no sure way to tell if the fire burnt up the motor until we arrive back in Bend to the use the shop hoist. Needless to say right now; no boondocking in our future if this turkey (Onan) is burnt up. At eight grand it’s not something we will be able to replace.

Three days ago as Marc was on his way to Lowe’s for parts and I was still working in the duplex, he called to say he was back at the RV and the Freightliner wouldn’t run. It had suddenly started running on five cylinders and then stopped running completely. Since Marc uses the Freightliner not only as a pickup for the large and heavy items like sheet rock and doors for this duplex repair, its use is obviously crucial to the job to say nothing of having to haul the rig over to the sewer dump every ten days. He changed out the fuel filter but it was still running terribly rough. He made one last run for the heavy stuff he needed from Lowe’s and has now parked it. Despite the fact that what he really wants to do is shoot it and put it out of its misery, the only thing for us to do is chase down an unknown Caterpillar dealer for a service shop and likely pay thousands of dollars to delve into what is wrong with it at this point. It is very obvious we will never make it out of Washington and over the mountain passes with the rig with it operating on five cylinders and barely running.

So much for any profit from this job…If it weren’t for bad luck, we would have no luck at all.