Day 22

Starting mileage is 17590
Miles to date: 8751
States to date: 29

 Our plan is to run across the northern states, leaving Bozeman, MT this morning and running to Bismark ND.  The route is all interstate so even though it's a longer driving day it shouldn't be too difficult.


View 20a in a larger map

Although we've run into a bit of rain along our path, this is the first day we've started in the rain.

It cleared up a bit, but it's still quite dreary.  I'm sure this area would be quite beautiful on a nice day.

Well, the adventure has begun.  About 20 miles east of Billings MT, in quick succession, we got the left catalytic convert warning followed by the right catalytic converter warning, the check engine light then a dead engine.  We coasted to the side of the road surprised that we had no real warning that anything was wrong.  I pulled out the ODBII scanner and read the codes.  We did have a limited signal on the ipad so while I called Josh Hill at Exotic Car Specialties in Virginia, Quillan was trying to find the codes on the internet.

Josh was able to lookup the codes for us which indicated that we had been experiencing misfires on both left and right sides as well as catalytic converter temperature warnings.  The catalytic converter warning lights come on when the cats hit 900 degrees and the ECU turns off the fuel pump when the cats overheat to prevent engine damage.  In discussing the situation with Josh, it was quickly determined that we got some bad gas when we filled up in Billings, 20 miles ago.   I called AAA and had them send out a flat bed to take us back into town where I was hoping to find someone who could drain the tank.

Unfortunately, it was Friday afternoon (the 13th no less), and it was difficult to find someone who would attempt to get the Murcielago on a flatbed, much less put it on a lift.  We did get towed back to Billings where we waited a couple of hours for the cats to cool off, added some dry gas and hoped for the best.

We were lucky to find a hotel, most were booked with folks heading to/from Sturges.  I wanted to make sure that bad gas was the problem, and that the dry gas had solved the problem so I after dinner put about 80 miles on the car driving around Billings.  No additional problems popped up so we'll be heading east again tomorrow.