While on our way to visit a relative in TN, we had stopped at Jeff’s place, which is close-by, and he took a look at the air system. The Prevost side of the air system was holding pressure as you would expect with typical leaks. So I must have been seeing things when I reported that I was losing ALL air shortly after shutting down the engine. However, the problem still existed on the house side. Jeff and the boys checked underneath the bus and in the compartment under the driver and pinched off various air lines trying to isolate the leak. Even with the air door valves shut-off at the manifold, I still lost all of the house air overnight. A lot of head scratching took place because nobody could figure out where the problem was.
It turned out to be the aux compressor. The original Jun-Air 6 was installed inside the storage area behind the front bumper where some people may stow a spare tire. There was no reason to look there (so we thought), so the compartment remained closed and we continued hearing the compressor kick in and run forever.
I just happened to have opened that compartment to look for a tool, when the compressor came on and I heard a hissing noise.
Come to find out that the compressor was blowing back air out of the air filter nozzle. So … whatever amount of air the compressor generated when it was running, it was soon lost through that nozzle and if I had not been right close-up and next to it, we would not have found it. Or, at least, not for a long time.
I wanted to replace the Jun Air 6 with the same (at a cost of close to $1,000) but after having made several calls to distributors, I learned that nobody stocked this unit and it would have had to be special ordered with a lead time of about 3 weeks.
I found a used unit on eBay being sold by a company at a significant savings but before I hit the “buy now” button, I also happened to have a conversation with Jim McNulty who, together with his wife Nancy, was spending quality time at ETLC having a different kind of leak fixed, which had taken over a week already due to the lack of parts from Prevost.
Jim told me about a compressor which had been used to replace a Jun Air on Bill Bunch’s coach. He had found an inexpensive air cooled compressor at Home Depot. A 1HP compressor with a 1.6 gallon tank for under $2000 – He had it in use for quite a while and highly recommended it to a few people.
I ordered a newer model on Amazon (California Air Tools Model 2010A), being a 1HP with a 2 gallon tank model at a cost of about $1800
The compressor was waiting at our next stop in Nashville. Installing it took a few minutes.
This California Air Tools compressor is VERY quiet.
Bottom line is, with the new compressor in place, aux air is holding very well now for as long as 5 hours before the compressor kicks in at the low end of about 90 PSI to pump it back up to about 105-115 PSI, which takes about 3 minutes.
Yes, I do still have air leaks. Beginning with the air rams on the pocket doors. But, at least, instead of hearing the aux compressor come on every 45 minutes and run for 10 minutes each time, we have regained some control by having replaced the compressor.
Cheers,
Ronald