We rolled out of the park fairly early eager to hit the road and equally excited about leaving the Denver Meadows Resort and its concrete jungle. We were making good time out of town, thankfully traveling against the business traffic coming into the city. Highway 70 took us out of town heading west and just as we started the ascent towards Vail pass. The worst engine sound I’ve ever heard started grinding away in the Fox’s belly. The closest analogy I can think of is take an empty Folgers coffee tin, you know the old ones before they invented plastic, dump a handful of loose change, nails, paperclips, small nuts and bolts and then shake the bloody hell out of it and that would approximate the cacophony erupting from my engine.
With heavy hearts we pulled the Fox over for a closer inspection. I was thinking what in the world could be wrong with the truck I just took it in yesterday. YESTERDAY!!!!! For servicing. So I called the Boulder dealership and they had no clue what was going on and blamed the noise on using too low an octane of fuel. They were too far way for us to limp to but they suggested a dealership about 11 miles back down 70. The winds of fortune were blowing because the whole drive to the dealership was down hill. No kidding except for the last 5 yards the whole trip was downhill and we coasted without any engine issues.
They thankfully took us in and after 3 hours of work the problem was permanently fixed but not wholly remedied. See the problem wasn’t the octane of the fuel it was the fact that a little vacuum tube that controls the 4 wheel drive had burned through and thus the vacuum seal wouldn’t hold and the truck kept trying ot ratchet into 4WD even though I wanted it in 2WD. Long story short there was no engine damage and they fixed the problem without the official part, which we’ll have to order and have installed at some future date. Anyhow here’s the video.
One good thing that came out of the wait for the truck is that I found out I was accepted into a degree program which I had applied to. This fall I will be attending UCF and beginning a program for a Masters of Fine Arts in Film and Digital Media concentrating on the Visual Language and Interactive Media tract. I am really excited and the news was a real boost to a day that had hit a speed bump.
Our trip continued out of Denver and over and through Vail pass. We had to travel pretty slowly since the incline was so severe. I think we averaged 35 MPH in a 75 MPH zone. We were in good company though as all the other big rigs were going the same speed. Downhill was another story, we had to keep the Fox in low gear for much of the decent lest we go barreling off the freeway into the river.
It was a gorgeous drive and we even got snow flurries at the top of the pass. The day entailed a lot of driving but we rather enjoyed the change of scenery and when we finally approached Grand Junction and saw the Great Mesa we knew we had definitely left the alpine forest behind for a while. The RV park in Grand Junction was really nice and we cooked some dinner as I attempted to clean Kodi who was filly following the salty and sandy road conditions coming through the pass.
Keep on truckin’!