Well, dudes, I just got back from an awesome 2 week roadtrip in the southwest. However, about 2,000 miles into it while in Moab, UT, it overheated and blew a head gasket. That was last Wednesday, 18 October. Because of my wife’s dialysis, and us being in very remote locations, we had to do quite a bit of extra driving on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for dialysis sessions.
I designed the itinerary before she needed to start dialysis, so the routing was not optimized for those sessions. As a result, we sometimes had to drive 300 miles round trip for a 4h dialysis. When you do the math, that’s pretty much all we could do that day.
The head gasket blew when we were staying in Moab, UT, on our drive to the nearest available dialysis clinic that day, in Grand Junction, CO. That’s a round trip distance of 230 miles (we had already gone there from Moab for Monday’s dialysis). We were only 25 miles out of Moab, heading to Grand Junction, when thankfully I noticed the temperature starting to climb. As the engine cooled and I added coolant, I could see drops of oil in the coolant. DAMN, not a good sign. We were able to limp back to Moab without needing to be towed.
We rented a car in Moab and I drove her to Grand Junction for dialysis. In the meantime a garage in Moab started tearing down the engine to pull the heads. Fortunately we were towards the end of our roadtrip so we’d done most of what we wanted to do in the 2 weeks. That’s much better than blowing the head gasket at the beginning of the trip, and spending much of your trip having the repair done while you lose out on some key hotel reservations in some awesome places. We had already been to the Grand Canyon North Rim where we stayed at the North Rim Lodge, and to Monument Valley where we stayed at The View Hotel and were there for the annular eclipse. Some awesome places and fantastic sights. So we were fortunate.
As I like to say, no matter how bad things are they can always be worse. So, be grateful for what you have!
The shop called to say that the heads do not need to be resurfaced, so thankfully that saves time and money on the repair. The engine did not get too hot. More gratefulness. Fortunately while driving I can monitor both the water temperature and the oil temperature. On Friday’s dialysis run to Grand Junction (in a rental) I was able to get the needed head gaskets, so the guys in Moab have the parts they need.
In the meantime we revised the final 3 days of our roadtrip and ended up flying home from Grand Junction. When the Jeep is repaired I’ll fly back to then drive it home, a distance of 1,000 miles (almost exactly; it’s 975 miles). At home here I’ve got another rental. I found a nearly-new Toyota 4Runner for $22 a day at Fox Rental Car in South San Francisco. Not bad, right?
So, the journey continues. Our life with the Jeep continues.
