Bearing down on the brake pedal with the turn signal on and the broken hazard button in my hand, I cautiously steered Ruby and Tahiti, our tent trailer, towards the shoulder, uncertain how we’d stop when we got there. (See www.CarquinezReview.com for previous installments.)

Luckily, the shoulder was on a slight rise and Ruby’s brakes hadn’t actually failed: They were just ineffective because I was trying to bring more than 6,000 pounds to a stop without power assistance.

My wife called Jack on our cell phone, telling him that he might need to send a tow truck, but I was once again able to nurse Ruby back to life. I drove her slowly, in the right lane, back to Pat Clark GMC in Las Vegas.

Frank was devastated. I never would have let you go, he said, if I had thought there was a problem.

When I reminded him that Ruby’s problem was difficult, I could see the problem-solving twinkle return to his eyes. My faith was resolute.

With Ruby on life support while he consulted with another mechanic, her fuel pump quit working. He came back to the waiting room to tell me the good news. It’s the fuel pump, he said, though he looked perplexed. I tested it before, he said, and it looked fine.

A short time later he rushed back into the waiting room. He was beaming. You’ve got to see this, he said, taking me back to his shop. Standing next to me with a flashlight in one hand and a stick in the other, he had me look into the gas tank while he gently stirred the gas. Can you believe the think layer of muck at the bottom of the tank? he said, confident that he had finally diagnosed Ruby’s disease.

Bad gas in the tank had been our problem all along and may have been the reason the previous owner sold Ruby, thinking that he had bought a lemon.

Frank showed me the fuel pump that he pulled from the tank. It was new, he said, perhaps installed by the previous owner. But it was already brown from contamination. The stuff in the bottom of the tank, perhaps water and dirt, explained injector problems, a clogged fuel filter and hard starting in the morning. At rest, the contaminant sank to the bottom of the tank where, in the morning, it was the first thing pumped to Ruby’s heart. As we drove, the contaminant mixed with the gas and Ruby would run better.

After the gas tank was cleaned on Saturday, we finally camped at Lake Mead at a pretty wooded site close to the water, thinking that our problems were behind us. Sunday morning, when I started Ruby, the battery light came on and the voltage meter was low.

We drove back to Las Vegas, rented a car and dropped Ruby at Pat Clark GMC. I tried to explain to my wife that the alternator failure had nothing to do with the other problems. It was just a coincidence, I said, though after so many illnesses, it was hard for me to convince her that Ruby’s condition wasn’t terminal.

Jack and Frank were shocked to see us Monday morning, but Frank was also relieved. He had worried over the weekend that though he had cleaned the injectors, they were probably so damaged by the contaminant that they would need to be replaced a third time.

Our out-of-pocket service-related expenses were more than $2,700, and this after months of free Vallejo service. We have yet to recover anything from our warranty company.

The two-month frustration we endured resulted because service in Vallejo was so convinced that Exxon and Chevron gas were the culprits that they didn’t really try to understand Ruby’s problem. Had they not blamed others, which is always the easiest but most foolish course, Ruby’s health would have been easily restored weeks before we left on vacation.

I now like Las Vegas, not because of its entertainment and excesses, but because of the great people we met and the terrific businesses that helped us. It’s funny, isn’t it, how no matter where you are, people are the lens through which you find community, even when concrete, smog, neon lights, garishness and heat blur your vision.

Since Frank worked on Ruby, her health has been good. The remainder of our camping trip was spectacularly beautiful and automotively uneventful. And Tahiti now waits patiently in storage, ready for another exotic adventure. But occasionally Ruby’s SOS yellow eye blinks at me, and I wonder if I’ll need to take her back to Las Vegas for a checkup. Certainly, she’d enjoy her visit with her saviors, Frank Ewbank and Jack Ghan.