This "check engine" light has been bedeviling me for nearly a year now...My 2004 Toyota Tundra has an engine logo that lights up above the steering wheel if a) the gas cap isn't on properly; b) the spark plugs needed to be replaced; c) the oxygen sensors -- I have two -- that are part of the catalytic converter system are malfunctioning; or d) the catalytic converter is shot. When the light went on before I hit the road last year, I took the truck in to the Toyota dealership In Torrance which I've always used for service and maintenance, and they said the catalytic converter needed to be replaced. Well, that would cost at least $2000, so I held off as I didn't have the money at the time, and it didn't need replacing until I had to get my next smog check, which will be in May 2014. So for the first 6 months of the trip I drove with the light on, wondering when the catalytic converter would fail entirely which would cause the truck to stop running, then when I returned to the South Bay of Los Angeles in December I took the truck in for servicing at an independently-owned repair shop as their prices would be lower than buying and having it installed at the dealership. Well, the folks at the repair shop said that the catalytic converter was fine; when they did a diagnostic, the only code that came up was for the oxygen sensor, so I breathed a sigh of relief and paid around $300 for a new sensor. Problem solved, right? Last week the "check engine" light went on AGAIN, and I was seriously thinking that Tundra was possessed by a gremlin...I found a repair shop here in Overton and had the mechanic give a quick diagnostic read (he plugged-in a handheld device to something under the dash, which then reads the diagnostic codes that are causing the light to go on) and after checking a book said an oxygen sensor was "bad" -- the repair shop in the South Bay had only replaced ONE, and I have TWO, one on each side. He (his name is Eric) was the only mechanic at all 3 shops who gave me that information, and actually went underneath the truck and pointed out the sensors to me. He said if I bought the sensor at the Napa auto parts store across the street and brought it in to him, he'd install it in about an hour -- and the total cost, with the price of the sensor, would be about $200. It took a long time, but I finally achieved a satisfying conclusion to this "debacle". AND...he said there was nothing wrong with my catalytic converter as I would have noticed it if there had been -- poor engine performance, sluggish going up hills, etc. -- and I had never experienced ANY of those symptoms. So though it took nearly a year to get resolved, it did, and satisfyingly-so, and for a lot cheaper than I was expecting. So to celebrate, I took my mountain bike out for a ride up Mormon Mesa Road, which was the original road out of, and in to, Overton and Logandale here in the Moapa Valley. Here's a panorama view of Moapa Valley and the towns of Overton and Logandale, looking west, with the colorful and jumbled mass of rocks making up the Valley of Fire in the middle-
distance to the left of center, and the dirt road is Mormon Mesa Road --
And this is the view looking east, up Mormon Mesa Road which goes to the top of Mormon Mesa and beyond; I pushed the bike up that steep grade --- I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid --
After huffing and puffing to the top -- with a couple of guys driving ATVs roaring by going the opposite direction, kicking up dust over everything -- the road levels out and winds through high-desert. I wasn't planning on staying out for so long (this was the first time I've done a bike ride like this for about a year), so I came back down the road -- SLOWLY, walking the bike, otherwise I would have ended up face-first in the dirt with the bike wrapped around me --
I zonked-out for about an hour when I got back to the trailer, took Tundra for a wash at the automated carwash in Logandale, then had dinner at Sugar's, the only "real" restaurant in Overton (there is a MacDonald's here, and Carly's, a sit-down restaurant that closed for awhile when the cook died of a heart attack --- or so I heard -- but they're about to re-open) with my neighbors Felix and Rhoda, snow birders from near Toronto, Canada. Today I'll be going to the Valley of Fire with Jim, another neighbor, accompanied by his two dogs Keeper and Riley Rose. Jim is from Kalispell, Montana and had a stroke about 2 years ago, so he's permanently partially-paralyzed, but he still managed to drive his toy hauler and ATV the 1007 miles (I just googled the mileage) from Kalispell to Overton...
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