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Hung Up Bus At Jeff’s
How come there are no photos of my bus that got hung up at Jeff’s? My flip phone camera wasn’t working.
Not my proudest moment and I am still trying to determine if there could have been a better outcome but there were a lot of lessons coming from the incident.
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53 Replies
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Jon will have to explain, but this was not how he wanted to end te weekend at Jeff’s.
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Ouch…..
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Jon, so sorry to see this. Hope nothing hurt to bad.
Jeff and Lindsay
91 Marathon XL -
Coach has no real damage…minor things like Pressure Pro Antenna, however no real damage…..
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Im glad there was no major damage. No details of what happened have been provided but I assume it was a momentary lapse in concentration. Very easy to do. So now we have Dump Truck and Dozer Jon.
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Sorry to see this Jon. But, you have to admit, it couldn’t have happened in a better location. After all you had the folks from ETLC right there to assist.
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Jon, all I could see was a shiny clean Liberty Coach…. I barely noticed the wheels over the curb.
Thank goodness the rose petal dispenser was left in perfect condition.
Safe travels,
Mark
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I made a hard right evasive maneuver to avoid a truck that was going unusually fast while making a turn into Horne Drive from 411. From my perspective his swing was going to put him in my lane and at the speed he had I don’t think he would have been able to stop before hitting me.
My steer wheels made the turn, but the drive / tag jumped the curb.
Unfortunately the files from the dash cam were corrupted (a new one will be here tomorrow) so I could not look at the video to determine if I made the correct decision or not.
Regardless of what put the coach in that position the entire event was instructional. I think Jeff will agree that the damage might have been greater if we had not gotten the tow truck driver to get a better sense of how the suspension would help the situation if we got the drive wheels up on wood blocking sooner rather than later. The tow truck operator was going to use the tag axle to try to support all the weight until we made him understand the drives needed to be supported. The lesson there is we have to be assertive if needed to help someone understand our coach. As owners we cannot be passive.
Jeff and I are local and we know the tow truck companies but Jeff finally ended up with the one that came after five failures. BTW, this one had the worst rating on Google but Jeff had a good experience with the driver previously and in this instance he performed well. I am going to pursue the issue of how we can get roadside service with Michelin to see if their Advantage program (1-800-TIRE911) will insure a better response.
There was no way I was driving the coach anywhere after this incident until the underside was completely inspected. The damage was confined to some baffles, a dislodged cross member as a result of broken bolts and as Jeff mentioned a damaged Pressure Pro antenna. No leaks, no damage to the differential, transmission or oil pan on the engine. The bent metal relating to baffles or hangars was straightened and the baffles were restored to their original position and except for some scrapes on the underside the coach is back to the way it was. Even with the damage to the antenna, the Pressure Pro still works.
The tires were distorted to a substantial degree during the recovery as they were pulled up onto wood blocking and across the curb. I have to schedule a full inspection of them before any trip. They may be OK but I want to have experts verify there is no sidewall or belt damage.
Here is my take away:
I am going to pull the card from my dash cam often to be sure I am recording. The last file that was able to be viewed was from Feb of this year. All recording after that date was not done or was corrupted. If I had the recording I would have a better idea of if I did the right thing.
We are the one’s responsible for our coach and we have to be absolutely certain we do not allow a tow truck driver to do the wrong thing. If he pulled the coach forward the damage would have been substantial. If he pulled the coach backwards without blocking under the drive wheels as we insisted the damage would likely have been more substantial.
I now know how hard it is to get qualified tow trucks or road side assistance. If we are in an unfamiliar area I have no clue how any of us can be assured of timely and correct help. Those of us who have very limited understanding of our coaches or who are reluctant to be assertive as necessary risk expensive problems. It is a serious problem we somehow all need to be resolved.
Every situation is different but somehow maybe we can set up some means of tipping the odds in our favor if we are ever in a similar situation.
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No lapse in concentration on Jon’s part, he was avoiding a hard charging 18 wheeler making right turn onto road by Jeff’s. Probably would have been worse had he not moved over.
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Kudos to Jon. We were told there would be a towing demonstration at this seminar and then it was canceled. Admin of Prevost Community, once again, went out of their way to provide for the members and Jon made sure there was an actual towing demo at the end of the seminar. Way to go Jon!
Just glad no injuries and little physical damage.
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On my first look at the pictures it looked like the rear of the coach had caught the curb and ended up over it. After clicking on the images it and seeing the coach’s position it was apparent that it was more than a lapse in concentration and a curb catch. Thanks for the details on what happened Jon.
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Jon, ditto what Dan said. Ouch is exactly the word that sprang to mind with the first photo. I’m sure the professional truck driver stopped and apologized profusely for your unfortunate situation. Or perhaps he was one of the steering wheel holders and more than likely you would have observed the single finger salute because he knows you are number one!
I think this is likely a situation where the trucker was operating at an unreasonable speed, like most of them do, and Jon was limited in making a wide turn to miss the curb. Its easy to keep the steers from going over a curb. The problem is the drive and tag do not follow the same path as the steers. They are in fact turning inside the radius of the steers. So a wider turn is required when making a right hand turn from a limited width driveway/street to another limited almost two full lanes street.
Two ifs, first if the trucker been taking the turn at a reasonable speed from what he did the problem could have been avoided; second had the towing demo been given at the very end of the seminar Jon would have been leaving ETLC after the trucker had made his turn at the unreasonable speed. If either of these ifs were in play Jon could have cruised home and backed up the hill putting the coach away after a short mileage trip to/from Vonore.
Jon I feel your pain and am sad you had this experience. However, on the positive side it was an educational experience for all attendees that were still at ETLC. The message being, if it can happen to Jon it can happen to me too! Yikes!
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While I can’t help you with the underside of the bus, the dash cam does fall into my area of expertise.
Most people don’t realize the Micro SD cards require a bit of maintenance. While the manufacturers would like you to think it’s a plug, play and forget type of device, that is not always the case.
If the dash cam includes a card in the package, it’s probably a small capacity model and one that’s not considered to be high quality. It may or may not be able to keep up with the read/write speeds and that puts a lot of stress on the card. Considering that when the dash cam is powered, it’s always recording and it generates heat and quite a bit of stress on the card. It doesn’t take much for a file to become corrupted and when this happens, depending on the file structure, while it typically only affects a single file, it can adversely affect subsequent recordings. Corruption typically takes place when a file is not properly “closed” when recording ceases.
For this reason, it’s a good idea to add a higher quality card when you purchase a dash cam. It’s also an excellent idea to format the card on a regular basis as this gives a better chance of having a clean/readable file when needed.
My method of dash cam maintenance is overkill and after a long trip, I copy the files to a separate drive and format the card. So far, I’ve not had a situation where a specific recording was not available when needed.
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One of our dash cams makes a big deal about fairly frequent reformatting of the memory card. It also wants us to format the card with the camera and not externally. We do that every 6 months or so and have not had any problems.
We too have replaced the provided memory card with a high capacity and supposedly high quality memory card.
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I wasn’t going to post this picture but you asked for it. Not the departure of a great and informative weekend I was expecting.
Jon…does this mean your trip to the Grand Canyon is postponed or cancelled?
By the way, the image I posted doesn’t always show up on my computer. However, when I refresh the page, it does seem to appear. ?????
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