February 24th was an eventful day. We decamped and drove to Oceanside harbor for a pleasant lunch with Vicki's brother Bob and his wife Beth. When we began to pull out of the parking lot--very long story short--our camper's transmission failed, utterly. I managed to coax the camper into a parking space while Vicki desperately called Bob to return and take us to our 2:30 and 2:45 appointments for our second Moderna vaccinations. It would have been a really bad day had we missed those! Meantime, I called Europarts San Diego, from whom we have been buying Sprinter parts for perhaps a decade, and asked their recommendation of a shop that knows Sprinters, near Oceanside. The vehicle was undriveable.
After spending the night where we were parked, with police permission, the tow truck took us to Big Red's Performance Auto, in Escondido. There, all the scans indicated transmission, and, even after erasing the various error codes, a test drive indicated slipping between gears and no shift beyond 3rd gear. Prognosis: new (rebuilt) transmission, which would take perhaps a week to acquire and install.
We were not happy campers. But, as Vicki observed, it is a common Sprinter malady, ours is a 15 year old vehicle, and we do budget for (minor) catastrophes. And, as catastrophes go, it was a fortuitous one. We had already planned on putting the camper in storage the next day and driving a rental car to West Yellowstone for a week's snowmobiling; and had already reserved snowmobiles and motel rooms. So, we just left the camper with Big Red (rent-free), rented an AWD Jeep, unpacked and repacked, and set forth, much poorer and not wiser, but still very lucky, for our old sledding grounds in Montana.
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| A scene I've been dreading, for decades... |
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| Moonrise over Barstow, CA |
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| Entering Nevada; of course |
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| Definitely not in San Diego anymore; northern Utah |
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| Now on route 20, Idaho, nearing West Yellowstone |
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