[Archived]

I guarantee I won’t be casting any stones here. I’ve had my coach for 18 months and there is never a trip I don’t learn something I didn’t know before. There’s no doubt there was a serious learning curve when I got this beast…but after some familiarization, it becomes the easiest and most liveable RV I’ve ever had experience with.

I’m crazy about my motorhome and it’s been very dependable up til now…knock on wood!!! ty

[Tim]

Chip, while I was preaching in my previous post keep in mind every single one of us was a newbie. Nobody who is experiencing a Prevost for the first time has it all figured out. There are two people responsible when new owner has an experience such as you had.

The first is the seller of the coach who did not insist you get training, either by him, or by someone familiar with the conversion. Then there is the new owner who has likely been told this is a million mile coach so nothing can go wrong, and he believes that and his training ends as soon as he finds the key.

We who have learned our coaches via the school of hard knocks can use up a lot of bandwidth telling stories about how we have learned the hard way, so when we respond to a post when someone is in trouble we often have two objectives. The first is to help the owner to solve the problem and get out of trouble. The second objective is to nudge the new owner towards developing an understanding of their coach because sooner or later everything is going to break. Like pilots we have to not only have a good understanding of the coach and systems, we also have to have a plan for when it breaks.

I disagree with your decision to disable the stop engine function. Under the right circumstances it takes very little time to convert an engine to scrap metal. If you get the stop engine light, and you know it will not shut you down you have to consider you need to get to a safe spot NOW. I think with the SE function disabled it could influence a driver to be more casual in choosing a stopping spot. Fortunately an SEL is very rare, and often there is no real problem, but there is a perceived problem or a sensor problem. I have no hesitation in over-riding the SEL as necessary to get to a safe spot when my gauges are all telling me I am not overheating or losing oil pressure. But I want the option to let the computer protect my coach.

[Rudy]

Chip, I suspect your apprehesion about auto engine shutdown is due to your long experience with gigantic flying machines and shorter experience with gigantic rolling machines. My only experience in the air is sitting in the cheap seats in the back, so I like the auto-shutdown feature, knowing I can over-ride if necessary. I’ll bet you will eventually go back the auto-shutdown default. Hopefully you’ll never experience the red SEL light again, regardless of how it is set to respond.