We left the Cotton Gin RV Park shortly before noon on Saturday, January 17. This may seem late, but it is reasonable since the distance is only 140 miles. At least that was our thought. Short drive, easy day, no stress . . . right? No. Out in the panhandle is a small town named Memphis - literally in the big middle of nowhere.
About 8 miles north of Memphis, with no cell phone coverage, an error light lit up the control screen - a red wrench and the transmission started erratically shifting up and down. Fifth gear was suddenly missing and when the truck tried to shift to fifth, there was an erratic series of shifts across the gears until it settled on sixth gear. Note, our fifth wheel RV weighs around 19,000 pounds. What to do but carefully press on. We "nursed" the RV and truck into Amarillo to the Overnight RV Park. We later learned that with the warning, the truck goes into "limp home" mode. In "limp home" mode, the transmission tries to lock into one gear - in our case it was sixth gear (second overdrive). Unfortunately, we were in the "canyon area" of west Texas, so "limp home" meant creeping up hills, losing speed all the way up, and just no acceleration. Also, in "limp home", shifting between gears is very rough. So when we had to stop at a light in some small town, getting the truck and RV moving again was unnerving.
We called and rented an Enterprise car and prepared to stay at least 5 days in Amarillo rather than one night. I got the truck manual out and learned we had received a "PowerTrain Malfunction" - not something one wants to learn while pulling 19,000 pounds. Sunday was just stressful, running some errands and preparing to spend longer than planned in Amarillo. To add to the stress, Sunday was extremely windy in Amarillo with winds of 30-40 mph with gusts of up to 60 mph. Monday morning found us at the Ford dealership service department early.
In addition to this problem, the weather news was not good. Dire predictions of a major winter storm moving into northern New Mexico and panhandle Texas on Wednesday were broadcast on every outlet. If we didn't get the truck back on Monday, then we would probably spend the week in Amarillo along with the winter storm. Ugh!
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