Grain elevators and rolling golden plains. You guessed it, we're in Kansas Toto. We got off the ground at 7:31 AM to be exact. We dropped the dogs off in Carl Junction at UJ's. UJ is the uncle married to my mother's oldest sister. (BKA my Aunt) We kept their dogs two weeks ago while they took a little trip back east. They swung through O'ville to see my Gram. I got a call saying she wasn't feeling too well. She was in the hospital last week, severely anemic, but she is on the mends.
It looks likes we are going to have to find a Jeep dealer in Wichita. The Jeep keeps switching into overdrive even on flat surfaces. My self diagnosis... the throttle position sensor is going out.
The Durango did this to me one time on the way to O'ville. I burned a half a tank of gas on the way to Springfield. It was after hours when I got to Springfield so I limped on up to Gram's. The next day I started calling Dodge dealers. I had to limp to a town about 40 miles away to get it fixed. As it was I spent all day Saturday sitting there waiting. It took them a half hour to fix it, but they didn't pull it into the garage until I had sat there for five hours. After four I was bored and hungry and ready to tell them to keep the fracking POS. So I called my aunt and cousin. They came to get me and we went to eat. I was going to leave the Durango and ride back to Gram's with them, but the service manager realized he had pushed me to my limit and pulled it into the bay that had been sitting empty all morning.
I fear we will get to spend the same quality time at a garage somewhere along the way. Of course I have already developed a plan. If all else fails and we still need repair we can limp on over to Colorado Springs, leave the Jeep at a dealer and rent something to go on our way. The problem seems to be intermittent so for now we are plugging along.
11:38 AM North of Wichita, Roadside Park.
We stopped and made a ham sandwich. The picnic shelter provided shade. The wind was hot like out of a convection oven. Our sweat dried before it left our glands. But no wind would have been worse. We ate our sandwich, a few Pringles™, and split a Pepsi™. Normally, we are Coke™ drinkers, but we bought a bunch of Pepsi™ for my friends and decided to just drink the Pepsi™ instead of buying more soda.
While munching on my sandwich I told iWof, 'There is something seriously wrong with this ham. It has a lot of gristle.' I reached up to subtly pull said gristle out of my mouth and discovered that it was waxed paper. His royal funnyness had forgotten to pull the waxed paper that divides the slices off of my cheese. I guess with enough mustard, even paper tastes okay. But, it's really chewy.
1:04 PM West of Salina Kansas. Side of the road.
The Jeep finally let us know it wasn't fooling around. As we were accelerating down an on-ramp it died. It took several very intense tries before it started. What to do now? It's a long way to the next town if we keep going. iWof is finally convinced we should stop and have it fixed. The only option is to return to Salina. Luckily we have the iPad and iWof ordered the data plan for this trip. I searched for Jeep dealers in Salina, KS. Two came up. The first one I called said his shop was closed for the day and he was no longer the Jeep dealer. The second one said his shop closed at 1PM. He took pity on me when I played the Joplin card and made a bunch of calls. None of the places he knew about was open or interested in taking on the job in 105 degree heat. He suggested I go to Autozone™ so I looked up the directions and away we went.
The guy at Autozone™ was awesome. He hooked the car up to the reader and sure enough the TPS was bad, but the MAP (manifold air pressure, I think) sensor was bad as well. It also said there was a major vacuum leak, probably because of the MAP.
Now we knew what was wrong for all the good it did us. The really awesome guy at Autozone™ went to a lot of trouble to find us a shop that could install the new sensors. Customer service like that is uncommon it seems. Finally he had called all the commercial shops he could think of and they were all closed. So I asked if he knew any people who tinkered with cars that might be willing to help us out. He thought for a minute and said he knew of two guys but knew they were both busy. They had both been in to buy parts earlier. But he called Mike Compton and told him our pathetic story. Mike said he would be there in around ten minutes.
True to his word he showed up, told us to buy the parts and follow him home. He had a nice shop in his back yard and lots of project cars parked near his oversized garage. In half an hour he had both sensors installed and iWof took it for a test run. Everything checked out and we were soon back on the road. Mike was only going to charge us $20 bucks. I said no way and we gave him more.
If you think that is the end of our tribulations, think again. Just East of Limon, Colorado I was driving when the dash binged and the tire pressure light started flashing. Never before had that light flashed. It always stayed lit without flashing in the past when the tire pressure was too low. I groaned. What. Now? iWof told me to pull over. He grabbed the tire pressure gauge he had thrown in the door pocket before we left. All of the tires were about six pounds above the maximum tire pressure. He let about three pounds of pressure out of each tire and the light went off.
Just before the Limon exit the light began flashing again. In the pit of my stomach I felt a painful burn. Limon was where we stayed the night after the horrible hail storm that did $8000. damage to the Jeep two years ago. I slowed down and the light went off. We pulled over in Limon and iWof let more air out of the tires.
All the way from Limon to Colorado Springs the light flashed after we went through a small town where the speed limit had dropped. But it would go back off within a couple of miles. iWof decided we didn't want to let more air out of the hot tires because he was afraid we would have four flat tires in the morning.
Before we leave tomorrow we will check and adjust the pressure, if necessary. For now, we are staying in a nice Holiday Inn™ with a wonderful shower. The comfy bed over there is looking pretty darned good. So.....
Bye for now.
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