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I woke up the coach today.
After winterizing with RV antifreeze, I parked the coach on December 2nd in unheated, cold storage for the winter without shorepower. When I did that I turn off the 24 and 12 volt main disconnects for the chassis batteries and turned off the 24 and 12 main disconnects for the chassis batteries, turned off the WatchDog AutoGenerator start, turning off the Inverters at the breaker panel, and turned off the inverters on their control panels.
This afternoon I got the call that could move end its hibernation and get the coach out of the storage building. Fingers crossed.
Open the engine bay and turned the 12 and 24 master chassis cutout switches to the ON position. Nothing unexpected happened. Up front I set the idle rocker switch to “Low Idle” and turned the key to the ON position. Immediately I had 24 volts on the “Engine Voltmeter” (a lower lower than had I just run four hours on the Interstate and shut the engine off) and some of the panel lights lit up. After the CEL/SEL lights went out, I turned the key to START and the big Detroit fired up robustly! Success! Engine voltage meter went up to where it goes when the Detroit is running , oil pressure came up immediately. Thank you NAPA and East Penn Manufacturing!!!
The BAT light was lit indicating an imbalance between the 12 and 24 volt battery sets; in a minute or two it went out. This didn’t surprise me. After two minutes I went to “High Idle”, when I had 120psi of air on both gauges and the coach sneezed I carefully crept out of its winter quarters.
I took some photos of the coach before I started it up. It think its pretty interesting that the coach “stayed up” as high as it did over the winter in it protected, but unheated abode.
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6 Replies
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Great news, started mine last weekend all seems well.
I recall a prior post were you were worried about the ramp, hope that was uneventful.
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No problem with the ramp. Made it out from deep in the boat storage building in one slow motion without backing up and without any coach damage!
I woke up the house systems this morning. I was really surprised how well Tom Chilcote’s Lifeline AGMs held their charges during the long cold winter. One was 25volts and the other 24.7/8volts. The eight year old generator battery wouldn’t turn the Kohler generator over. I have an American made East Penn NAPA coming at 7:30am tomorrow morning.
Now I have to figure out what “Searching” means on the inverter display.
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The right hand inverter wouldn’t give me any 120. Once I fired up the generator I got 120 on both inverters and both charged. Ran the generator for a couple of hours, shut it down and now both invert 120volt AC. Four trip to Blackhawk Farms Raceway was uneventful … as it should be in a Liberty Coach!
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My good Buddy that passed recently, Told me one of the hardest thing on a Diesel engine is cold starts, He said he always runs his Aqua Hot for a couple of hours on engine pre-heat before he fires up if bus has been sitting for a while, I’ve been either doing the same with Aqua Hot or plugging in block heater before firing up. After about 4 hours with block heater plugged in the Scan Gauge reads 80 to 100 degrees when it fires up. Those with Webasto’s it will also heat engine before fire up.
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Art
Your Buddy was correct and gave you good advice, my coach sits in the shop in Canada approx 6-7 months without running, I have the 80,000 BTU Webasto, i always run that prior to any cold starts, in 45 minutes it takes the DD jacket water temp to 160 deg, then i start.
I actually usually use the webasto even on warm days just to exercise it.
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I do the same with the aqua Hot.
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