We usually look for some structured task to occupy the coldest months of the year. When it is cold and/or rainy it is too easy to just sit around in the Motorhome and be lazy.  Past tasks have included a state park and a wildlife refuge in Texas.  This year we are going to try our hand at house repairs.  Carol, Lynn’s sister, owns a home built in the late 1800’s, and if you have ever lived in one you know how much maintenance is required.  The biggest issue is location.  It gets cold in Connecticut and they get snow.  Both totally against our adopted “snowbird” guide to locations.  But, we’ll give it a try.

So, we needed to place the motorhome into storage.  I found it a nice home in a rural part of Pennsylvania close to Lynn’s mother’s house.  And yes some things are indeed cheaper in the country so the location made sense.  Well the new facility was running a little behind it’s occupancy date so we ended up temporarily storing the motorhome then moving it into covered shelter a few weeks later, during a visit to mom’s house.

We got a nice early start to minimize traffic around NYC as we traveled to PA. Things were going well in spite of the heavy wind and rain until the Focus just quit at about 60mph in the left lane on I-81 near Harrisburg.  My initial diagnosis was “out of gas” but the gauge says 1/8+.  Well as luck would have it we were close to an exit with a gas station and a fuel can.  Gas added, it started back up.  Drove to a close exit and topped off the tank and indeed it was empty!  That’s a new wrinkle, don’t trust the gauge or the “miles to empty” reading on the dash.  I don’t like it but I can deal with it for now.  We finished our visit and the motorhome move and headed back to CT.

The Focus wasn’t idling right and was hard to start when we bought gas. Seems like time to seek help.  I explained the symptoms at the local Ford dealer and they pulled out a Technical Service Bulletin summarizing all the issues.  Seems Ford is having failures with the Fuel Vapor recovery valve(collects gas vapors from fuel tank filling) and later sends them through the engine for combustion).  When this valve fails it collapses the fuel tank and damages the fuel pump and sensor.  Great! and oh by the way it is not under warranty.  Needless to say Ford is currently on the “naughty” list awfully close to Christmas.  But, with a new tank, fuel pump sending unit and vapor recovery valve all appears well.