Hello All, We arrived up here earlier this month. The trip up was absolutely beautiful. It's a rare thing to spend almost a week driving across Canada in March and have blue skies and dry pavement all the way.
The coach never gave us a problem again with the fuel filters or the radiator. The six coach batteries kept the coach heated all night long even down to 0 without needing to run the generator. We did run the generator each morning to provide enough current to the block heater to warm up the engine. 92's don't like the cold. I think if we had a diesel coolant heater installed, our generator use would have been reduced to few hours total on the trip for cooking. Fuel prices in Canada figured out to almost $5 a gallon and that was in March. I wouldn't be surprised to see $6 now. When road conditions allowed, top speed was 55-60 which gave me a high of 7.5 mpg and a low of 4.53. I haven't figured out the overall yet. The high was due to the flatlands of MN/ND and a tailwind. The low was due to headwind/wintergrade fuel/terrain. I was glad to have had the radiator leak-seal in the system not only due to the prior leak, but also as a preventative in case a piece of gravel got sucked through the screen and into the radiator.
We did have two new things pop up, the cable connection to the starter solenoid came loose from the inside and I had to hold the cable to start the engine otherwise it would ground, and one waterpump stopped working and the other was leaking.
Typically, the winter driving is more hazardous for the windows due to the use of gravel vice chemicals on the road surfaces. This was my third trip on the Alaska highway with the coach, but the first in the winter and we ended up with three rock chips. It was much better than I expected.
Thanks again for all your help and suggestions while enroute!!!
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Paul
'93 45' #320
Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
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