Parliament Rally

[dale farley]

This week has been a nice time of fellowship with other POG friends at the Parliament Rally in Clearwater. As you can see by the pictures, there are quite a few buses here. We've had some excellent seminars on bus related topics, and we've had time to do some several repairs and other projects. As always, all the Parliament folks have made this an enjoyable event. A trip to the tool store and shooting range are on the schedule for today.

Everyone is looking forward to the Tampa Show in a couple days with 44 buses on display for sale.

[Denny]

Glad everyone is having a great time. We planned on being there but Ruth Ann's mom has been in the hospital or nursing home since Sept. 29 after falling at home. Her condition was such that we did not plan anything in the near future. She passed away on Dec. 20th. Hopefully we will see everyone at another rally. Enjoy the nice weather, it is 2 degrees in Northeast Ohio.

[Grizz]

Thanks for the photo.

Sandy and I didn't make it. We sIgned up and paid, but I got lazy.

We are planning to attend the next POG mini-rally.

[travelite]

Thanks for the pics Dale, looks awesome. Suzana and I hope to make it to the Tampa show this year. )

[JIM KELLER]

Denny, Sorry to hear about Ruth Ann's mom. Hope to see you in the future.



Glad everyone is having a great time. We planned on being there but Ruth Ann's mom has been in the hospital or nursing home since Sept. 29 after falling at home. Her condition was such that we did not plan anything in the near future. She passed away on Dec. 20th. Hopefully we will see everyone at another rally. Enjoy the nice weather, it is 2 degrees in Northeast Ohio.

[dale farley]

Denny,

We missed you and Ruth Ann this year, and we're very sorry to hear about her mother. Hope to see you soon.

[rfoster]

Denny and Ruth Ann

So sorry to hear of your loss. We send our sincere sympathies.

We we will look forward to seeing y'all down the road.

[CAPT MOGUL & Sandy]

Denny and Ruth Ann, I am so sad to hear about your loss. Mothers are hard to turn loose of no matter what they suffer! Our Deepest empathy is shared with you, Ruth Ann.
We sure miss y'all. It has been too long! Hope to see you very soon. Always thinking of y'all.
Sandy & Ed

[JIM KELLER]

I'm thinking one of the most interesting seminars at this Rally was the Fuel Polishing Demonstration.


Anyone have any thoughts on this ?

[dale farley]

Jim,

I agree about the fuel demonstration. It was very informative. I added a double dose (IAW the instructions) of the Desl-Shock to my tank before I left the the rally headed home, and I noticed that I have a black coating of soot on my toad that I did not get on the way to the rally. Since I was pulling a new toad, I checked the hood when I got to the rally, and I found no noticeable soot on it. According to them that is a sign it is passing the junk (including water) out the exhaust instead of leaving it in the tank. I watched as best I could in my mirrors and rear cameras and never saw any black smoke, but I am assuming there may have been some at some point. I attached a picture of where I rubbed a paper towel down the hood. You can see the film without the paper towel.

[Gil_J]

Ken seemed to know what he was talking about and he had the backing of some pretty smart folks. I haven't tasted the kool-aid he was serving, so I'll reserve judgement for the time being. I did learn a few things though.

Ken kept referring to the ethanol in diesel. I was fully aware of bio-diesel. But he wasn't talking about bio-diesel. I looked into the ethanol content in diesel fuel, and sure enough #2 diesel has about 15% ethanol content. Based on the quick read I did, ethanol is necessary in the ultra low sulfur fuel delivered at the pump. It's there to increase the cetane and to add lubricity. Outside the US there are E-Diesel markings, like we do with gasoline where we use to have E-85 gasoline (85% ethanol). In the US we seem to only have markings for bio-diesel, and then only over 5%, like B20.

Water in our fuel is one of our engine's enemies and ethanol does add to the risk of water. Before ethanol, condensation was the biggest contributor to water. In my years of boating, water could effectively be managed with Racor and similar water separation systems. I have yet to find water in the Racor on my coach, although I won't go so far as to suggesting it isn't there in some small quantity.

Sludge is probably a bigger problem. Although referred to as algae, that's probably not exactly correct given there is no light to promote the growth of algae. Whatever it is, it's obvious when you pull a Racor filter and look at it. It looks like black tar. It can be management through fuel polishing (filtering the fuel outside the fuel delivery lines), the use of centrifugal pumps, and algaecides (there's that name again). The theory on many of the algaecides is that it will break down the tar-like mess to particles fine enough to be safely ran through the injectors. There's also at least one company that believes they can break down the tar small enough by running the fuel through a small device with magnets in it. These solutions have been widely used by the yachting industry for many years.

I always used fuel additives in my boats, but have never done so in the coach. For those that use this product, or other similar products, I'd like to hear your thoughts after you've used the product for several tank loads of fuel. Dale, keep us posted.

[BenC]

We hope to see you all again this coming "No-agenda" Open House Rally, tentatively Jan 5th-9th. Details will be posted soon. The plan is basically to rent a tent and supply a fire pit and whatever happens, happens.