WE are stranded in Grants Pass.
We broke down near the bottom of Sexton Pass on I5 on the Saturday of the Laborday Weekend. No Tow Trucks were available and we had to stay in the rig overnight 4 feet from the slow lane on a curve! We were towed at 11 AM Sunday morning back into Grants Pass and dropped at the Walmart and now safe. There are few tow rigs available in some areas and few shops or mobile techs or shops that can handle a large RV. This situation is exacerbated on long holiday weekends!
Vehicle: 1999 Holiday Rambler Vacationer F53 gas Triton v10, 1/3 tank of gas. Prior owner at some point installed a frame mounted aux fuel pump before and attached to the filter.
Conditions: Driving 55 MPH and pulling a dolly with a Hyundai Tucson on 9/5/2020 at about 2:30 PM and 99 degrees.
What happened? We don't yet know what failed. I crawled under and believed the aux pump failed and found a replacement. I installed it in the extreme heat, it did not fix the problem. It would start but did not continue running. FUEL or Pump in tank failure? We found a single mobile tech that was available, there were no other options. He showed up later Sunday and dropped the tank, the pump was non-op. We found one at a parts store and it was installed. It didn't seem to run any different. The tech questioned his install and dropped the tank again. Everything seemed as it should. Sunday he scanned and looked for codes and a few senors that were questionable were replaced as a precaution, and had no impact or change.
2 working pumps may have also overfuled the systems. We tried both and it runs really bad with the frame rail pump installed.
UNSURE what to think. Tuesday morning after checking various connections and replacing a suspect damaged fuel pressure regulator we removed the frame rail secondary pump!
We drove with the engine cover off and had a fuel pressure gauge hooked up to the fuel rail and it had the correct pressures and the engine ran perfect! Up and down hills in town for about 30 minutes and no problems! You could watch the fuel pressure rise on the hills as should be expected. We put the engine cover on and went for a drive on I5. It immediately had a problem and under load lost pressure.
Everything was good with the engine cover off and with it on there was more heat and had an instant effect on drivability. SIDENOTE we only had about 1/3rd tank of gas, could a pump that's not fully submerged overheat and cause a loss of fuel pressure under load?
Due to the fires we are stuck. The 2 week trip we planned is canceled and now we are trying to get back home. We may have to abandon our RV and store it since we don't trust driving it home 400 miles away.
Does anyone have any helpful suggestions?
Please help
Thanks
