Whistling Dixie - A Blogging Detour

I know many of you are waiting on the edge of your seats (not Marti) for my post on the National Naval Aviation Museum.  I was looking forward to writing up my visit with a few special aircraft to show pictures of.

Alas, it will have to wait for another day as I take a blogging detour.

This morning we packed up to get ready to leave the FamCamp in Pensacola, Florida and start our trek to South Carolina for a couple of weeks.  Yesterday I did all my pre-trip checks, tire pressure (all good), fluid levels, battery water, etc.  Gave the Journey a serious eye-balling to make sure everything was ship shape (motorhome shape?).  Everything was as it should be for carefree travels down the road.

Once everything was stowed, I turned the ignition key and...the engine started right up.  That's when the fun started.

The Journey is built on a Freightliner XC chassis.  One of the features is a computer controlled information center on the dashboard that reads out all kinds of information.  And the computer went out of control.  I got all kinds of waring lights and messages as well as a whistling alarm.  The screen flashed "Brakes Worn", "Oil Change", "Water in Fuel" and the whistling alarm sounded, and sounded, and sounded and sounded some more.  Also the icon for the cruise control stayed on, the fuel gauge slowly bounced back from fuel to empty to full and the whistling alarm continued to sound.

The other gauges read normal, oil pressure, temp, charging and air pressure.  So I turned off the ignition and turned it back on, no joy, just more whistling.  I gingerly pulled out of the campsite and tried the brakes, they worked fine, in fact, everything worked fine except the exhaust brake, the cruise control and the message screen.  I stopped and checked the central ground wires connection under the dash, I took it apart looking for corrosion and found none, so I re-tightened it.

Next, I took some wrenches and a wire brush and took apart and cleaned all the battery terminals, both the chassis and house batteries.  Lots of connections and wires come off the batteries.  Once everything was put back together, I tried the ignition again and...no joy, just the annoying alarm whistle.

We decided to head out anyway, the only real problems were no cruise control (I have cramps in my right leg from holding the accelerator pedal down all day), and the exhaust brake did not work, so I made sure I kept extra distances between me and the cars in front.

We are heading to our daughter's house in South Carolina for a couple of weeks, and we planned after visiting her to head to the Freightliner repair facility in Gaffney, SC for some routine service before heading to New Jersey to welcome our new granddaughter.  We decided to call Gaffney and see if we could get an appointment for next week.  We landed a slot for Wednesday next week. The shop is about an hour and a half North of our daughter's house so we'll run up to Gaffney Tuesday afternoon and check in to their campground to be ready for our 7:45 am appointment on Wednesday.  We'll hang while the Journey gets poked and prodded and hopefully repaired quickly.  Then we'll bounce back to our daughter's house again for the rest of the time we have slotted for the visit.

It is acting like a ground problem, I checked the obvious, but we're at the point where some computer diagnosis is required.  In the mean time, we're shopping for ear plugs, because the *^&$#%^! alarm whistle won't shut off.

What did you say?  Huh?  I can't hear anything now...

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