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We are currently at Victoria RV Park in Victoria, Texas until Wednesday, June 8, 2011.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Well, the time has flown by and we have come to the end of our stay in Mazatlan. We were scheduled to leave Monday, Jan 28. We began packing up on Saturday, and Larry went to start up the motor on our motor home and guess what? – It didn’t start. Now, Larry is a very mechanical guy, but never having owned a diesel he didn’t quite know where to begin looking for the problem. Since I’m not mechanical, I will defer to him to explain..…

I crawled under the motor home and looking up said to myself, “What in the world is all this stuff?” My first thought was that it was a solenoid problem, because, when I turned the ignition on, there wasn’t even a click. But where in the world is the solenoid located on this motor? After some looking and testing I found something I thought might be a solenoid, but there weren’t the heavy battery cables running to it like you would find in an automobile. There were two smaller cables running to it and a conglomerate of wiring I couldn’t begin to trace, but I did find a wire connected to it that was hot when the ignition was turned to the starting position. I then felt confident that this was the solenoid and that was where the problem lay. My good friend Manny crawled under there with me and pretty much confirmed my diagnosis.

I removed the part and wondered where I might find a Freightliner solenoid in Mazatlan. But Manny knew where there was a truck parts house, so off we went on a hunt for the part, I, knowing it would probably cost an arm and leg for a Freightliner part. We knew there was an Auto Zone next to Wal-Mart, so we thought we would take a chance and go there first. The young female clerk, knowing no English, kept asking what kind of “auto” it was for. We kept telling her “no auto—RV Freightliner.” After pulling 4 or 5 traditional solenoids from the shelf, she said, “no got.” But then she decided to ask the manager. He climbed up a ladder to the top shelf behind the counter and, lo and behold! pulled out a box with my solenoid. Man, was it ever expensive…. A whole 220 pesos ($22 USD). Wow.

Went back to the RV park, installed the part and the diesel turned over, started and has been fine ever since. In the meantime, we had extended our stay another week, not knowing how or when we could get our mechanical problem resolved.




We all gathered for a goodbye spaghetti supper Sunday evening, hosted by Connie and Manny. It was hard to leave our old friends as well as the new ones we met this year, but it was time to head north for our reservations in Kino Bay.

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