Thursday December 29th 2022

There was more humidity in the air today. The day started with a lot of fog in the area. This immediate area seemed to be clear of fog. Over the course of the day there were more clouds in the sky than the last couple of days, but temperature got to the mid seventies. It was a few degrees warmer than Wednesday.

My day began with figuring out plan B for getting my fuel leak fixed. The mechanic that was supposed to show up at 2PM Wednesday hadn’t been heard from since a text message at 2:30PM. I would have expected something last night or the first thing this morning. Yesterday, one of the voice mails I left on Monday or Tuesday returned by call. This morning he got my business. I canceled the previous guy with a text message of my own and scheduled the new guy for 3PM.

The new guy arrived before 3PM and immediately found the leak in the fuel line where it connects to the manifold. It looks like some rodent may have taken a bite out of it. He took off with the fuel line in hand on a search of the local auto parts stores. Unfortunately he didn’t have any success. The part would have to be ordered from Ford with a long lead time. The best solution was to patch the existing line. A bunch of high tech adhesives and epoxy goop later the fuel line was patched successfully. I’ll keep watch on the patch and pursue the Ford part order if necessary.

I’m really lucky I didn’t have more problems. I had smelled gas before Monday, but hadn’t seen anything identifiable under the motorhome. The location of the leak caused fuel to spray on the outside of the hot manifold which vaporized the fuel. All it would need is a spark to have an uncontrolled fire. The fact that Monday morning was so cold resulted in less gas getting vaporized. The liquid drained onto the ground in a big puddle. In a way this is a good result from a very cold morning.

This RV resort continues to fill up. They open the section of the park with the recently completed electrical service. There seem to be two types of occupants. Families are here for the school vacation week and New Years Eve weekend. Snowbirds are also arriving in droves. Most of them will be here for a few months.