Travel day, just pull it out

I took yesterday off to drive Cindy all the way up to St Petersburg to go to the VA facility there.  Although it is nice the VA offers free health care to veterans, it is definitely not convenient or fast.  We had to go up there to talk to a specialist that was not available anywhere closer.  We pulled out before 7:30 for the long drive.  In total we spent over 6 hours on the road, it almost felt like a driving day we would put in during one of our road trips.

The doctor we spoke to was a stark contrast to the last one who had terrible bed side manner and was just plain rude.  This guy was older and really gave Cindy an opportunity to try to express the variety of symptoms she has been dealing with for quite awhile.  The biggest problem is the symptoms  have many, many possible sources.  The doctor listened to everything but still was unable to give Cindy the clear cut diagnosis she was hoping for.  However he did lay out several courses of action that Cindy will be following up on.

On the drive home we stopped at an undeniably low rent lunch shack called Salem’s Gyro.  The inside was dirty and run down but it was the only food place I saw before getting back on 275.    Their menu was interesting with fried chicken gizzards being a feature item.  The shrimp platter Cindy got and the fish sandwich I picked was actually quite good although being very “heavy”.

So Monday night Cindy and I dropped off the Tacoma at the dealer.  Cindy had been telling me about some weird sensation she was getting while braking.  During the day Monday she actually had an ABS error flash on the screen as well as an error regarding the blind spot detection system.  Well I didn’t want to mess around with any potential braking problem so we got it in there right away. The truck was in there all day Tuesday, my hope was we could pick it up on the way home.  Around two o’clock we had not heard anything so I had Cindy contact them.  The service rep said they were still working on it so I decided to stop on the way home since it was on the way.

So I found my service rep and he told me the shop foreman took the truck out and did notice some odd behavior when braking and the error came up on the instrument panel.  At that time in the conversation I recalled that I had seen an odd airbag error a couple weeks ago that fixed itself as well so I shared that as well.  So anyway after reproducing the error the foreman went to hook up to the vehicle diagnostic connector to see if he could pull more information.  When he did he saw I had my Automatic adapter attached, the cloud trip logger I got for Christmas last year.  I had it in my 99 Tacoma and put it in my 2016 Tacoma during my first week or two of ownership. The guy pulled the Automatic out of the diag port and was unable to get the error to reappear, odd.

So the troubleshooter in me immediately suggested to my service rep the next logical step would be to run the truck without the Automatic adapter attached.  Even though it has been fine for all these months, logic dictated that this simple solution should be the first one tried.  We agreed I would take the truck and report back if I see any errors reoccur.

Later at home when I was documenting my problem for my YouTube channel I noticed something very interesting.  The Automatic adapter was rattling when I shook it.  The rattle to me indicated the possibility that some electronic component inside failed which absolutely could have unpredictable behavior when connected to the vehicle computer.  So far on the drive home last night and the drive to work today I have seen no reoccurrence of the ghost in the machine. It would be great if the problem was that simple although speaks poorly of the quality control of the Automatic adapter.

I was very excited to get a ship notice on my new Msuper wheel this morning from SpeedyFeet, located in the UK.  I am being hopeful that somehow it gets to my door by Saturday although I am probably being overly optimistic.

I would love to talk in depth about episode 1 of this season of Walking Dead but won’t because of spoiler potential.  Let me just say it set Cindy off in a near hysterical crying, screaming fit which I don’t think is the reaction the show producers should be aiming for.