The first trip was supposed to be a dual purpose trip, shake out the RV and visit our fathers for Father's day. Greg and I both expected to have a few problems with the winnebago. We decided it would be best to put as many miles on it before we left for Alaska, in order to work out any looming problems.

Around 6pm on June 18, 1999 we loaded up the RV, our first destination was of course the gas station. As we pulled into the the gas station, about four blocks from the house, Greg noticed a popping noise. 

Greg says, "Hey Joe do you hear that?"

Joe says, "Hear what?"

We proceeded to fill the beast with gas and get underway, new destination Allentown, Pa. A few more blocks from the gas station, Greg repeats "Joe did you hear that?"

Joe says, "oh that, don't worry about it, you were going up a big hill..."

A few more miles and the noise begin to get a rhythm... BAM, 2 second pause, BAM, two second pause... We both look at each other with concern that maybe we won't make it to Allentown, Pa. A few more miles pass, as we approached Route 32 on the Baltimore Washington Parkway, Greg says "ya know Joe its like a spark Plug isn't even connected".

A light clicks on in my head, I remembered removing a spark plug wire when I changed the valve cover gasket, however I didn't remember putting it back on... I told Greg, "Hey maybe we should pull over and take a look under the hood (full well knowing that we might find a spark plug wire dangling)." Sure enough we pulled over on Route 32 and found the culprit, a dangling spark plug wire. We reattached the wire and were under way with no more noises and much better engine power.

As we proceeded on our journey, around Maryland house on 95, I took over the driving duties. The merge to get back on the highway was from the left!!! Well not having driven the RV before and not able to see very well, I had the RV up to about 70-75 mph so I could cross 3 lanes of traffic to get to the slower lanes. This was the RV's first time going that fast for us!! woohoo it can really move!!! I proceeded to drive us to a traffic jam just below Philadelphia on 495... We trade driving positions again because I had to relieve my kidneys :-). 

The traffic jam was miserable and was causing the RV's temperature to raise well above normal, nearing the "red" zone. Greg decided to use the heat to cool the engine, so we baked for a while but that brought the RV's temperature to a safe level. After about 45 minutes of stop and go traffic we are again underway. About 30 minutes later Greg decides it's to cold in the RV and tries the heat again, this time it didn't work!!! Hmmm Greg that's strange, it worked about 30 minutes ago. I guess we'll just check it out in the AM.

The next morning Greg's brother Pete was summoned to check out our RV (Pete is a professional mechanic). As we were looking things over we decided to look for the source of our heat problem... that is when Pete noticed the RV pissing antifreeze all over the driveway. The radiator was spewing along a silver solder joint that I had suspected would never make it to Alaska, pointing that out to Greg when we were purchasing the RV. 

Sure enough disaster one struck and stopped progress from our Father's Day visits. Greg and I both kept an upbeat attitude about the problem, telling each other the purpose of the trip was to find problems and we found one!!! LOL Look we avoided one possible disaster on the road to Alaska!!!

The RV would spend the week in Allentown and would get repaired the following weekend. Overall we were pretty happy that the failure occurred where it did and not on the road to Alaska. It was easily repaired and the costs of parts were reimbursed by Queenstown RV, true to their word of a 30 day or 1000 miles warranty.