Our exciting intentions for today were to visit Trois-Rivieres and learn about the paper industry, but this was not to be.
The cabin air fan had stopped working and with it went the cool air that it blows around while driving. With the temperatures being what they are, this makes things a bit uncomfortable. Fortunately we were in a city with a Chevrolet dealer so all would be fine, or so we thought. The dealer in Trois-Rivieres that we stopped at said they were all booked up and there was nothing they could do for us until Monday at the earliest. We left and drove to a shopping centre parking lot and called Sean at Any Transmission back home who looks after the maintenance of our van and he walked us through some steps to try and diagnose the problem. He suggested replacing a resistor pack so we walked back to the dealership to get the part. They didn’t have it in stock, but referred us to the Nicolet dealer (11kms away) who had two of the parts in stock.
We took the bridge across the St. Laurence and arrived at this dealership only to find it virtually abandoned because it was lunchtime. We decided to have our own lunch while waiting and then Martin decided to try disconnecting and reconnecting the main battery. Hurray! The fan started working again and off we went, happy as clams. That success was not to last and soon afterwards the cool air vanished again.
We agreed to abandon Trois-Rivieres for now and drive to Quebec City where there were multiple dealers. We arrived at a large and impressive new looking dealership with many service bays and thought that for sure they would be able to help us. Alas, they only had two technicians on this Friday afternoon and couldn’t look at our van either. They did, however, refer us to Auto Diagno-Centre which is a small and highly competent diagnostic and repair shop. The technician proceed to measure voltages at various points in the fan circuit, removed the dash panels to get to the control and then needed to loosen the driver’s seat to get to a fuse box located there. The issue, it turned out, was a faulty relay, likely damaged by the vibrations of the many bumpy roads we’ve been on. An hour of labour ($89) and a $24 relay later, cool air was once again caressing our faces. Pepsi could also stop panting.
After all this adventure we were ready to settle somewhere for an early evening. We found a lovely municipal campground just outside of Quebec City and fired up the generator to warm some leftovers, but no electricity was available at the microwave. More manual consultation and a circuit breaker on the generator underneath the van was found to be the problem. Once it was reset, we once again had power.
