More Misbehaving

At least Lucy is consistent. Any highway travel with sustained speeds over 60 mph results in a flickering TEMP/PRES light. Strangely though, the light seems to only come on with left-hand turning. Hmm. A dangling wire shorting out perhaps? Worth a look. Additionally, I’ll also be removing the lower shrouds to improve cooling across the fins.

Saturday morning VERY early I drove down to Lynchburg, VA to spend some time with my best buddy Bill. Around ten that morning, while we were working in his garage, my cellphone rang with Ariel on the other end. She informed me Ringo’s battery was completely dead. She went on to ask me if wet paper towels on top of the battery could cause the problem. Yep, the couple pieces I’d slid under the battery hold-down had gotten wet during the nasty they’d experienced in PA. The wet paper made a good enough conductor to drain the battery, but not good enough to cause a fire (TYL). She was able to find a helpful construction worker to give Ringo a jumpstart and he’s started up every time after.

While he’s been starting consistently, the drive home from PA yesterday was not with its issues. Ariel told me that part way home, the engine just started to chug – miss. Then when she was slowing down after exiting the interstate, the engine just died. While it started right up again, it died a few more times before she made it to our driveway. I went out after dinner and, other than a higher than normal idle, it ran fine. I reduced the idle speed and took a wait-and-see attitude. This morning, towards the end of Ariel’s drive to work, the engine wouldn’t idle when the car was stopped. It appears I’d overdone it on the idle speed and the higher speed I’d experienced the night before was due to the engine not being fully warmed up. Irr.

Finally, Heidi had to get in on the act. This morning I thought I’d drive her since the weather was supposed to be nice enough for top-down motoring. I climbed behind the wheel and turned on the radio to get the tunes going, but pressing the ON button did NOT bring up the display. Crap – dead battery. Yep, a turn of the key resulted in nothing more than eliciting another expletive from me. She’d been sitting in the driveway all weekend, through some serious rain storms, so maybe water got somewhere it shouldn’t be and caused a drain on the battery. This would be somewhat in line with the issues Brianna was having with the car down in Blacksburg - unexplained dead batteries. I’ve checked for a battery drain in the past and came up with nothing, so maybe a good rain is required before the drain appears. Anyway, I hooked up the charger to her battery and we’ll see if it will recover one more time.