A multitude of maladies beset us during travel today from Jasper, AB to Dawson Creek, BC, all three occurring on the Bighorn Highway, aka Route 40. First up was our old friend the Malfunction Indicator Light (MIL), that helpfully illuminates in the dash upon a chassis malfunction and then unhelpfully displays a series of codes that are only available to Freightliner technicians (per Freightliner)…or to anyone performing a few Google searches. The MIL du jour (this isn’t our first chassis malfunction rodeo) is SPN 3361, FMI 4, SA 0, which means the Diesel Exhaust Fluid System Circuit Board experienced a low voltage condition. Having called Freightliner for various MILs in the past, we know the response is “well, it may not really be a problem, just keep on driving and see what happens. If it goes away, don’t worry about it.” Comforting, isn’t it? Well, it went away and I’m no longer worrying about it.
Next up was a new malady, the half bath toilet stopped flushing. The toilets on our motorhome have electric flush, meaning you push a button on the wall and the contents are macerated and sent to the black holding tank. The downside of a non-gravity flush toilet is that gravity cannot help you when an electronic gremlin pops up. The user manual confirmed there is no way to manually flush the contents of a non functioning toilet. Seems like an oversight to me. Anyways, after Karla and I fiddled around with and shook a few wires, the toilet is operational again. I suspect this is not the last we hear of this problem. Luckily we have a RAIT (redundant array of identical toilets) on board.
The final problem is one that we fully expected to encounter on this journey, just not so soon: a rock chip. A passing gravel truck (one of hundreds on this road) threw a large enough rock to place a huge chip in the lower middle windshield. I laughed when I remembered that any chip greater than a US quarter cannot be repaired. This thing could comfortably fit 4 quarters in it with room to spare. I read somewhere that applying scotch tape over the chip may slow the spread, we’ll see. A new windshield is $3000, but the bigger problem is getting one shipped up here could take weeks. Let us all bestow powers of great adhesiveness to our lowly Scotch tape!
As Karla pointed out, we didn’t blink an eye at any of these troubles. After 4+ years of RV ownership we’ve learned you gotta roll with it.
