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Air up or down
So when stored for weeks in the warehouse is it best to drain the air from the airbags or just leave pumped up. I know over several weeks pressure will drop. I don’t like to start the bus for a few minutes just to air up the bags. How do you guys suggest I handle this?
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10 Replies
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Prevost recommends that you leave air in the bags and dont let it all the way down as the internal stops on the bags are not designed for this..
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The best thing to do is to support the coach on jack stands, and release the air from the suspension. This will take the weight off of the tires, and relieve the stress on the air bags. It will also keep from flexing the bags too much if you just dump the air. There are rubber bumpers in the air bag, and I have not seen any damage on them from coaches that have been stored with the suspension dumped. However if you look at the deflection in the bag with the suspension dropped, I believe it can contribute to premature cracking of the rubber bellows, particuarly in cold weather. If the coach is stored inside, you will want to turn off the aux compressor as well. On you Marathon, it will either have a switch or a circuit breaker in the panel above your inverter controls.
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Years ago I cut open an airbag that I took off, I still have the picture somewhere, and the internal stop on the bottom was broken. I assume dumping all the air out caused that to happen at sometime in the coaches life.
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Good information posted here on taking care of your Prevost. Here are pictures of old air bags on our 14 year old Marathon HS-45 with 145,000 miles.
Both front air bags looked just fine mounted in position. You have to make up your mind to replace bags over 10 years old. Visual exam fools you in thinking all is OK looking at the bags. The age damage is where you can’t see, In my case the fronts as pictured were the worst .
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While I respect what Prevost says, and agree with what both Jeff and Steve have said this issue goes far beyond a somple “one size fits all” answer.
Anyone that has visited a variety of campgrounds knows there are going to be occasions when we level the coach and it requires one side or one end of the coach to be down as low as it can go. When that happens the coach is sitting on the internal stops in the air bags. Some of us have had to use our suspensions to traverse obstacles and to maximize the clearance at the front or rear one set of air bags may have to be fully inflated, while at the opposite end of the coach they have had to be completely deflated. Or in my case I have no choice but to completely exhaust all air from my rear air bags to be able to enter or leave my garage. In the last two examples the coach is actually being driven while sitting on the bump stops inside the air bags.
I don’t like doing that, but it is how I get my coach into the garage. Is it damaging my air bags? I have never cut one open so I don’t know the answer. I do suspect if there is a chance of damage i have increased the possibility, and I suspect the air bag Tom saw with damaged bump stops had been traveling when the coach was all the way down.
That is one reason why I consider air bag replacement to be something that has to be done to a schedule rather than waiting for a failure. Any travel with failed air bags means the internals on the remaining good air bags are likely to be damaged, so in addition to replacing the failed air bag all others may require replacement also.
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Are all the air bags on a given coach the same?
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No coach that I am aware of uses all 8 of the same bags. Some have two different part numbers with the drives all being one number and the tag and steer another, and some use three different part numbers with tag drive and steers all different.
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Like Al and many others we recently had Jeff replace all air bags on our 2004/5 with about 85,000. This along with other maintenance Jeff performed at least gives me a little more comfort driving down the road.
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Here’s a pic of the rubber bump stop on the bottom of the inside of the bag
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