Encountered a lot of unexpected issues getting the coach out of the campground in the morning, and left later than desired once again. We were planning to stop at a WalMart tonight, since all the tanks were full or empty, as appropriate, the batteries all charged, the laundry all done, hot water stored in the water heater, etc. From the Flagstaff WalMart sleepover experience, we learned WalMart parking lots fill up fast with campers, and you need to pull in early to get a good spot - or to get a spot at all. So today we pulled into a WalMart well before where we really wanted to stop. We pulled far to the edge of the parking lot, to inconspicuously change the oil in the generator. We don't normally do maintenance in the WalMart parking lots, though the generator oil change is a small job we felt we could do quickly and cleanly, and we were out of the way of everybody else. And since we had stopped so early, we wanted to try to salvage something useful from the lost driving time.
After the oil change, the generator starting battery wouldn't turn over the generator, so we jumped it off the coach batteries. We previously had found the generator battery had very long jumper cables attached - which was our first clue the generator battery may be part of our problem with starting the generator. With the jump, the generator fired right up and ran smoothly. It shut down in about five minutes. We thought it was an overheating problem, though later that evening I did a lot of investigating online and now think it's a propane starvation issue - enough propane flow to start, though not enough to keep the generator running while carrying a big load like the air conditioner. I had shut off a couple of the tanks right before we left CA since there was some propane smell coming from that compartment after we topped off the tanks after the test drive. Before I can bring more of them back to service, I'll need to re-do the connections, do soap-bubble checks to ensure they aren't leaking, and check all the connections for the connecting hoses and the regulators to ensure none of them are leaking - it's going to take a couple of hours to do all that. By now it was getting pretty late, and we wanted to get up early, so we turned in for the night.
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