5C's Que Pasa

Woke up at 6:30AM to 50.5F. Brr.  We were backing into the shop bay by 7:45 AM.  Hector, the mechanic who worked on the RV all day yesterday started rechecking what he did yesterday and retightened all the bolts, rechecked the hoses and then ran the engine for a while.  He even layed under the engine and radiator to check for leaks.  We were then moved out of the bay and the engine was power washed to clean all the oil off of it.

Such cute bus stops in Tucson.  The purple arm on the right looks like the cactus on the left.

Narrow road at the Mexican Customs just after the first toll, but if we can do it anyone can.

Silver bullets  as I call the round silver mini vibradores and then a large tope just at the end times 2 sets just before KM 21 and again three sets  just after KM 21.

VERY sharp drop-off to KM 21, if go turn in to the left closer to this sign, it is not as bad.

Steep drop off coming out of KM 21.  Colin was concerned about this one, but take it very slowly and at an angle and you will be fine.

First time in 22 years have we seen a line up like this.  But then we usually go through about 7:30AM.

The sun set behind the mountains about 5:30PM and then it got darker by the minute.

Parked for the night next to this happy driver.

I have a small update from the Isla, the noseeums are very bad so be sure to bring “a lot of the good stuff” referring to bug spray.  I brought enough Vitamin B6, 100 mg, to take one per day to help stave off the mosquitoes and the noseeums. Something new.  Hopefully it will work.

Another chilly morning here in Tucson @ 53F.  We were driving separately at 7:20AM and arrived at Accu-Trac on the dot of 7:30AM as they opened.  The owner was just behind us and took Colin into the office and checked him in.  By 7:50AM we were backing into the shop.  They did some fiddling removing the vent, etc in order to get closer to the radiator.

Lady, the company mascot. She is five and ever so friendly.

However a semi came in and everyone rushed over to do what needed to be done.  He was soon gone.  At 9:25 they started a combustion test to check that the engine does not have a crack where combustion gases can go into the water jacket. A double check on what Cummins had done November 4th, only this time the engine was running.

The test result shows that our engine is good.  If the water was yellow it would have been bad news.

Not a lot of space to work with.

A fellow worked non stop from then until noon when he took an hour for lunch. Colin headed out to Walmart to buy noseeum protection. The shaking and pulling started again at 1PM.  It seems like the radiator did not want to come out. He pulled and rocked the RV over and over.  Finally two other guys came over and at 2:10PM the radiator was expelled.  I felt like I had given birth.

Taken out with the radiator in the case.

The old radiator.

It does take a lot of space.

The new radiator before being placed in the case. By 3:30PM it was back inside but there was still a lot of attaching of hoses and connections plus a reinstall of the charge air cooler.

Meanwhile Hector arrived a few hours late but he did show up.  I had been concerned about the hot sun beating on the window all morning but he worked under a small filter of some sort.

Turns out it was a UV filter that stopped the sun’s rays from hampering the process.

He never stopped talking for one minute.  He was explaining to Colin about the new Hermosillo bypass and what signs to watch for and said that it was tricky. He talked about Mexico, family and lifestyles, etc.  He was born in the US and only spoke Spanish for the first six years of his life.  A very personable fellow who knows his trade.

That round black thing on the left was a UV light.  Look at those eyebrows.

Hector did a great job for $75.00  It truly appears that he does have that magical touch.  Hector is the manager for Tony’s Auto Glass here in Tucson, 520 889 2422 and his personal cell is 520 444 8870.  As he left he mentioned that he might be able to get a windshield here in one day.  Wish he had mentioned that on Monday 😕  Perhaps it’s because he and Colin bonded.

As did Lady with Colin.  She loved to have that ball pulled from her mouth and thrown, over and over and over.

By 3:10 the new rad was being put into the old case.  I was starting to droop as it was 88F inside the RV.  We are mostly out of the bay and in full sun.  I am beginning to feel like a blob.  I haven’t even moved 1000 steps today. I need to get walking on that beach.

I caught my first Arizona stink bug here in the RV. They are about half the size of what ours are back home.

So here we sit at 3:45 waiting. They are not certain that they can finish tonight. It took much longer than anticipated to get the radiator out. They close at 4:30PM. Meanwhile at least we have wifi.

They worked until 5:15PM bolting it all together and the mechanics went home. We pulled out of the bay about 5:40.  Had to wait for a tow truck to drop off a truck. We were locked in the yard by the owner.  I asked for the code to the gate in case of emergency.  Colin already had the tow hitch and tow shield on the car. There was no point in taking that all off just to go for dinner.  I had been dreaming all day of driving to the Desert Diamond Casino and parking there for the night.  We would have each signed up for their rewards cards and received $10.00 to play the slots and $10.00 towards dinner. Truly I saw this as my reward for the last two weeks of stress.  Twas not to be.

Putting it together so that we could move the bus out of the bay.  The fellow on the right is the one who worked all day on our radiator.  He kept sneezing.  I really hope that it is only allergies.

The owner was surprised when I asked for a 15AMP cord.  Turns out that they run off a generator and inverter.  He could not believe that we had no generator nor batteries.  Actually neither can I.  It is going to be a long night.  Oh, I asked him to please leave the internet turned on.  Good thing I did as he usually shuts it off.  We are living with the slides in due to not enough power and are using one low voltage bulb put into our regular overhead socket. It did feel a bit lonely after the owner left at 6:10PM.  There aren’t even any yard lights on.

Anyway they need another 60 -90 minutes in the morning to do tests and such which is an excellent idea.  We don’t want to drive an untested radiator.  Especially not with our track record.

So here we sit listening to two howling dogs in the distance. Time for brie, cranberry crackers and wine.  Dinner won’t be so elegant but I will come up with something.  We do have a fridge full of food 😉

Beautiful from what I could see from here. Time to publish before we run out of power.

Mexico update by Ferne regarding Pemex 4925 in Los Mochis which is fenced for security.

I am so mad I could spit!!! Last year when I overnited at the common to us spot in Los Mochis. Someone CUT both of my bikes off and stole them!!!! It had to be a truck driver , the only people who would carry such equipment. In my generosity, I hoped someone else needed them more than I.

So this year, I had replaced both bikes, one an electric, one a pedal bike, new bike rack, new non cutable cables etc., you couldn’t get them off. The night before last I was in the same place in Los Mochis….supposed to be secure with a chicken wire fence and a SECURITY GUARD……… the bikes are there, but someone STOLE the 2 SEATS from the bikes. Both seats were not stock, new ones, costing 50 bucks each…..   GONE………. Most of us who come that way, think we are secure in the lot, we are not.

Had to be stolen by the truck drivers     so beware !!!!!    

We started the morning working on sorting out the cracked windshield issue.  Turns out that we only have part of our insurance with ICBC and the other part with Aviva.  Our glass coverage is with them and our deductible in not $500.00 as I had previously posted but $250.00.  They say to go ahead and get a new windshield installed and that they will reimburse us once we get back to Canada.  A special thank you to blog readers Karen, Neil and Scott who came to the rescue with some suggestions.  Neil who is new to the comment section of my blog and most welcome gave us the phone number of a company to contact.  We did indeed call Andy who is most knowledgeable but it will take a week to get the glass in.  We just can’t delay that much longer.  He did inform us that the cost was $1600.00US 😯  Meanwhile we are hoping that Hector will come through for us tomorrow and do a minor repair that will hold the window together at least as far as Mazatlan and back to the US, about 1500 miles.

Next up was Accu-Trac who would have been willing to start operation radiator today.  Colin decided to wait until tomorrow just in case.  Sure enough the delivery was delayed and in the end only got to Accu -Trac about 3 PM this afternoon.

Sadly we discovered that it was not the radiator that we had ordered 😥  We wanted the brass and copper one but were sent the aluminum one as that was all they had in stock. We would have to wait a few more days for one to be shipped out from California. Colin called his go to guy at Freightliner back home in Kelowna and Troy said that many semis are now using aluminum rads. That this is the new normal and they are considered good radiators these days.  When they first came out years ago, they were not very good at all.  This particular one is all aluminum with no plastic at all. Both Troy and Performance Radiators here in Tucson who brought it in for us claim that we should get at least ten years out of it. So we now have an appointment with Accu-Trac at 7:30AM tomorrow.  They say that they will have us on the road at the end of the day 😎

Even better is that Accu – Trac charge $107.00 per hour for labour versus the $155.00 per hour that Freightliner charges. We also will be able to be right there to see what is happening and ask questions.  Also that means that Hector can come and work his window magic.  He would not have been allowed access to the RV at Freightliner.  I cancelled our hotel reservation for tonight for $95.00US and instead paid an additional $41.00 for another night here at the Crazy Horse RV Park.  We were supposed to be out of the RV tonight. So much nicer to be in our own RV tonight and again tomorrow night.  We so hope that this will all work out.  Accu – Trac is less than a mile away from here so by adding coolant we will be able to drive there with no issues.

Because of the increasing velocity of the wind Colin took down the arm and dish but left the tripod up.  It took less that five minutes to set it all up again and get 90% green on both lines.  We are taping a show tonight so it was nice to use the already set up dish.

The cold front arrived here in Tucson this morning with 60F temps and huge winds, gusting to 20 plus MPH. I had heat on inside for most of the morning. We did go out to do our final grocery shop this afternoon before crossing the Mexican border.  Tonight after we shower we will fill the fresh water tank and dump the grey.  That way we are ready for anything.  We also fuelled up the Jeep at 2.35.  Good price.

I love my RV fridge.  I actually have nine heads of romaine in there plus, plus, plus.

Now for the Mexico updates.

Click here for link about crossing into Mexico at Nogales on November 11th, part one.  This is an excellent detailed article by my friend Carol.  I was to cross two days prior but with our breakdown she and Bill went ahead of us.

Carol just posted part two of the 5 1/2 hour trip from Nogales to San Carlos.  You can access that well written and detailed trip by clicking here. I especially appreciate her comment about not worrying about the orange cones when doing that sharp left turn off to the Hermosillo bypass.  I would have been most concerned as we approached that area from a distance.  The distance travelled via the bypass may be the same but the ease of the drive as mentioned by Carol is most important.  I shuddered every time we had to drive though that city.

I also received input this evening from long time RVer Audrey who crossed into Mexico today via Lukeville.  I know that some of you are waiting to read this.  This is her report in her words.

Crossed the border at Lukeville/Sonoyta in our 1 ton dually pulling a 5th wheel, after going down to the border yesterday to get tourist visas. Once at the customs(aduana) at around k21, we took the autobus entrance, which is the second one. Passable English was spoken, we were told at Banjercito that our truck was over the allowable weight and we would need authorization from customs official.  This was no problem, as the customs office is in the same building, and the officer stamped our form, no questions asked. We then completed our TIP, and were on our way.  The road conditions from Sonoyta to Caborca were ok, there was just 1 rough and dusty detour of about 2 miles, N of Caborca.  From there to Santa Ana the road was good 4 lane divided, with one hefty toll.  Punta Vista RV park in Santa Ana is open, and would welcome your business!

Thank you ladies for your input.  This is going to help many others crossing into Mexico in the next few weeks.

Stay tuned for the details of operation radiator.

We spent sometime last evening and again this morning debating a new radiator vs a repaired one and for certain we want a new radiator.  So Colin was at Freightliner about 7:30AM today. First thing is that the parts department needs to try and find a new radiator that will fit onto our Spartan chassis. They can’t even discuss scheduling us in for the work until we have the part.

While Colin was gone I received an email from blog reader Larry who is in  Charlotte, NC.  His exact words were Hi, I see you are stuck in Tucson at the Crazy Horse Rv park.  I assume you are going to have the garage across I-10 from the TTT work on your radiator.  If so I would be careful dealing with them.  They have a poor reputation.  I never even checked their reviews on Google.  Thank you ever so much Larry. The reviews were mostly very  bad.  Someone actually had a radiator done by them and it started to leak three weeks later.

Once Colin got back from Freightliner we decided to try and find our own new radiator as the parts department were not very positive.  So I researched  on line while Colin made the phone calls.  I really thought that today would be a day of R & R  🙄

We worked from 8AM until 1PM.  Colin made 69 phone calls during that time.

He called Spartan (our chassis) a few times trying to get the dimensions of our radiator core.   I said to call such and such a number.  They had a radiator that they thought might work.  We still needed to go back and forth re size.  We called the people who made our current radiator for Spartan and they don’t have it any longer.  The history in my computer is extraordinary. I had three windows open with multiple tabs in each. Colin finally called the parts guy, Jake, at Freightliner.  He said that he had found something and it was $2400.00 plus $440.00 shipping and it was an aluminum and plastic radiator.  The one that Colin had found and was trying to verify sizes by calling Spartan was only $812.00 plus no charge for shipping, it was in Phoenix.  And it was brass and copper 😀  The back and forth on sizing took hours.  Meanwhile we called Jake in parts and told him about the $817.00 radiator.  Silence.  Then he said he would look again.  He never called us back, we always had to call him. By now we were certain that Colin’s find was a 95% fit.  Would Freightliner install it if we ordered it?  Yes. However Jake had found another radiator for only $912.00 plus $100.00 overnight shipping.  Sadly it was again an aluminium radiator.  We had until 1PM to make a decision and the clock was ticking.  At this point it wasn’t about the small difference in money but about copper and brass vs aluminum.

Spartan offered to send someone to the warehouse to measure the unit but they mis measured it.  We also found out that we had until 3PM to order the copper and brass unit.  Colin called Freightliner about scheduling the removal and insertion of the new unit.  Ideally we would like it done in one day, that way we don’t have to pack up and move into a hotel.  Earlier this morning service had said it was possible to do it on Wednesday.  They were not answering their phone so Colin drove over.  Meanwhile we were still waiting for the fellow to come and repair the windshield.

I needed to get laundry done so I got started on that, Colin dropped off my two large baskets.  I had walked back to the RV when he arrived.  He decided to order the part from Phoenix. They said that if the part did not fit and was not damaged from us unpacking and trying it that they would take it back.  Back to service and now it appears that Thursday is the first day that they may be able to change out the radiator 😯

Earlier today when we started researching other possibilities we were given the name of the company across the road that we no longer wanted to deal with.  They had quoted us between $2500.00 – $3,000.00 to remove, repair and install our radiator.  Now we had a brand new radiator for much less than that price including labour.  So we asked for another recommendation and Accu – Trac Truck Repair was suggested.  They did answer the phone this morning and told Colin that they could do it.  However they were not returning calls nor emails later when we had more specific questions.  Colin drove over there and they were closed for the holiday.  They have great online reviews.  I guess we just got the manager for a few moments earlier today.  He said that he could do it but we did not specifically ask if they could do it in one day, etc. Regardless you can see that we will be paying much less for a new radiator plus labour than we would going to the first company we found for a repair at over $2500.00.  Thank you again Larry.  I do love my blog readers.

So as it stands, we have a radiator coming in tomorrow about 10AM  that we hope will fit.  We will check with Accu -Trac at 7:30AM when they open if they can do it all tomorrow or even in one shot on Wednesday. If not then we take the RV to Freightliner and can pray for Wednesday but likely will have to settle for Thursday.  I checked and we can stay here in our site for one more night at over $40.00.  Or we can move over to the free hookups at Freightliner.

Once the laundry was done, we headed over to Trader Joe’s for a few items.  I just checked the bill and they over charged me by $1.50 for one item 😥  I don’t think I have time to deal with that.  The checkout gal was a bit absentminded and I was too distraught to focus.

On the way back to the RV we refilled one of our two five gallon jugs of water.  We are preparing to leave tomorrow and are planning as if we will be dry camping for five days.  So I had to come in and wash my hair (lots of water, etc. ).  We then dumped the tanks, filled the water tank etc.  Funny as we may even end up here all day tomorrow. But on the other hand we may be gone to Accu-Trac by 8AM so that they can start taking out the radiator.

So I can’t tell you the que pasa because I have no idea what is going to happen.

As we left the Circle K, I was surprised to see CBD being sold right next to the soft drinks and cigarettes.

At the moment we are in limbo re the windshield repair.  The crack is about 20 inches long and is exactly where I look out the front window as we drive.  The window repair dude never turned up and I started to call others. We also started asking about a replacement window  but that would take 5-7 days.  Some said that we should not try and stop the crack from spreading. Others said that they could try.  Finally Colin spoke with Hector @ Tony’s but he is away tomorrow but says that he is the only one who can fix it for us before we head to Mexico.  He claims that he has a special technique that only he can do. However we have no idea where we will be on Wednesday.  So at this point we are to call him Wednesday in the morning.  As you can see it is all up in the air.

I have moved onto chocolate as wine is not helping.  Will this nightmare ever end?

Colin was surprised this morning when he opened the curtains. He recalls hearing a snap at some point last evening.

We did hear a stone hit the windshield yesterday morning as we drove back to Tucson. I guess by putting the jacks down the RV got slightly torqued and the window gave. 

We spent most of the day waiting for a mobile window repair guy.  The crack is about 18 – 24 inches.  We have a $500.00 deductible for window replacement back in Canada with our insurance policy.  Does anyone know if ICBC will replace a window in the US?  Anyway it turns out that the fellow will come by tomorrow morning now.  We both spent a good deal of time researching parts including radiators plus some what ifs.

Last night our special Shaw remote refused to fast forward nor rewind. Colin asked a friend to bring us a new one when he came in December.  Then for some reason he decided to check out You Tube and there was a step by step video.

He carefully took it apart and cleaned it as instructed and it works again.  Yeah Colin.

Earlier today I got a comment from a blog reader, Dave, who happens to be less than a mile away.

Debbie and Dave are full timers currently on hold at an RV hook up at Freightliner.  They have some work that needs doing.  We had a lovely visit and learned that Freightliner is open tomorrow on the holiday. We wrongly assumed that they would be closed tomorrow. Colin will be sure to check in there early tomorrow morning to see if they can do something for us quicker than the other place and if they can find us a new radiator.