Or, in other words, I'm struggling today part two?
It's Monday and I didn't work at all on Friday or over the weekend. So this morning the priorities were mixed between finding someone to work on our RV and getting phone calls made and work done. By lunch I had finished with my bare minimum work requirements and shifted into dedicated time on the RV.
New Shinny Cooling system in the front is the new transmission cooler (replaced the old one) -- behind that is the AirCon radiator, and behind it is the actual engine radiator. on the other side is a fan... if that fan fails there's no way air is getting into that radiator...
There was only one shop around that could help today, the other shop couldn't even look at it until Thursday. And the shop that could look at it today was a mobile shop.
I worked with a couple of friends today thanks Jason, Dave, and Don. Three volunteer facebook messenger mechanics who were able to help me find the thermostat, test the old one and put it all back together.
However it wasn't the thermostat... our old one worked just fine.
I tested the radiator fan.
It appears to be broken again.. better stated it's the fan clutch which is broken, (the fan free spins a dozen times when the engine is off, it's not supposed to turn without drag and shouldn't turn more than three times) I found this great article on fan clutches if you're ever interested in getting nerdy about them. We did replace the fan clutch in Kentucky when we drove the RV home from California originally, so I'm really upset that it's broken again!!!
There's the fan clutch (the shinny thing on the otherside of the fan... it's not easy to get to! #Tomorrow
So tomorrow I'll begin the work of seeing if we can get a clutch fan in East Texas.
Oh and this time I will definitely add multiple electronic fans to assist the radiator fan... and to take over in case the clutch fails again.
But that's not the worst of it.
The mobile mechanic finally was able to come out and visit Gracie. When he did he verified that the fan clutch was indeed broken but he also removed the cap from the radiator and watched the fluid level when I turned it on. We only ran it for a few minutes so it never got up to normal opperating tempiture but what the mechanic saw told him that the head gasket was broken... perhaps not all the way through since there is no water in the oil on the dipstick but instead that there is pressure being exchanged and when a piston compresses it also compresses the water lines in the radiator. Thus he saw the water level go down a couple inches, and then return, go down again and then return so high that it poured water out of the radiator. At the same time it also bubbled.
All of this is VERY bad news, as a broken head gasket means that we need to take the engine apart... and there might be other problems (with the heads, or the rods, or who knows what else). So if it is the gasket we're being encouraged to replace the engine.
We cannot afford to do that.
Had I known the engine was bad when we replaced the tranny I doubt we would have done the tranny.
So we're here in East Texas for a bit. We might drive to Dallas to get the engine looked at if someone there can get to it sooner than Thursday.
Booo. This is not encouraging.