I've got a story set in 1998 Idaho, starring a heroine whose magical nature makes it impossible for people to remember her long term. 60 seconds after they stop seeing or hearing her, they forget her completely. So for pretty obvious reasons she's something of a loner, living out of an RV basically all the time. An important part of the plot is that towards the start she winds up stuck in a town she usually leaves right after Halloween for warmer climates, because her RV gets damaged in some way, and due to her unique situation she has to repair it herself. I want her to be stuck in town for about a month, whether due to the parts being hard to come by or the repairs themselves taking a while to do. The main limitation though is that I want the RV to still be functional, just unable to move. I want the electricity and everything to still work while she's stuck in town (she has solar panels installed on the roof). Any suggestions for what could be wrong with the RV that would take that long to get her back on the road while doing minimal damage to the rest of the RV's functionality?
Cracked engine block? Broken axle? And maybe it takes a specialty part to fix it that needs to be ordered and will take a month or more to come in.
What would be a plausible way the engine block could crack? Could it happen off-road? Something I forgot to mention is that I want the last place the RV was to be off-road in the woods so she at least doesn't have to worry about it getting seen and towed, because then she'd basically never get it back.
1. RVs don't go any farther off-road than a parking spot at a campground, or they never come back. They are homes on wheels, NOT off-road vehicles. 2. Something like a cracked engine block is far beyond the ability of anyone -- let alone a single female -- to repair alone, in the woods, without a shop. It requires doing an engine swap. I've done a few of those -- in a garage, at home with a full set of mechanic's tools, a hydraulic engine hoist, and an engine stand. I won't even think of doing one today, even though I'm still in the same house and have the same tools. Things that might disable a vehicle for a short period of time and which could be repaired by the driver with fairly ordinary tools might include replacing a bad alternator or starter motor (but that wouldn't tie it up for a month, unless the replacement part was difficult to source), perhaps a radiator, or maybe some sort of electrical gremlin that's not difficult to repair but which takes some time to track down and diagnose.
Maybe she had to take it offroad for some extreme reason, or there was an accident? Possibly the only nearby town is a total podunk village with only about a dozen buildings? And no well-equipped mechanic shop. That would depend on the requirements of the story I suppose.
Or mice. They will eat anything, and by the time you discover one chewed component, there's usually another dozen waiting to be found. That might be kind a funny, a supernatural being ground to a halt by some pesky little rodents.
These days, a vital engine control microprocessor could take months to find and, depending on the nature of the problem, could still allow her to run the engine for A/C, etc.
What if she thinks it's broken-down but she's mistaken? It might be useful to know: has she been driving a set length of time, and is the make and model of the RV known? And why does she have to repair it herself? Speaking of electrical gremlins, I had a people-carrier once that wouldn't start because of a design fault peculiar to the model I remember it was a Renault Megane Scenic The bodywork only had one drainage hole, of ~3mm diameter, which they had put inside the front wheel-arch on the passenger side Sooner or later that gets clogged up with mud. And then it rains for a few days, and the car's fine But it starts making very faint sloshing sounds when rounding corners, or when you get into the car The radio stops working suddenly. And soon after that, the water level inside the bodywork reaches the ignition system and the car won't start The fix is to go online and find about where this tiny drainage hole is and clear it out with a length of wire Then let the water out and wait until the electrics dry out enough, after which the vehicle will start normally So my point for the OP is just that in 1998 we couldn't google these problems, so if the character can't (or won't) show the vehicle to someone knowledgeable, from their point of view it's the same plot device as waiting for a part.
Ooo, yeah. I like that. Every time she finds one wire to fix, the little beggar goes and chew another obscure wire. The side story is the search for the mouse miscreant to put an end to the vandalism. Douglas Adams would've loved it.
Exactly! My thought is she's forced through desperation (being chased by a Goon Squad or something) into desperate measures, and makes a bad turn or something, maybe even tries to go offroad (dropping down off pavement) and busts an axle or breaks off a wheel or something. Not everyone responds intelligently and rationally in desperate situations, and if they did most stories and movies would not exist.
