[Archived]

Harry, you are beginning to get a sense of the value of spending a considerable amount of time during the purchase process of a coach doing a combination pre-buy inspection / training.

First let me be somewhat critcal of the converters. To a large extent our coaches are custom with no two being alike so I understand the difficulty in drafting an owners manual with all the details. The problem is made more complex because the designs and systems are evolving so everything from the layout to the systems are in a constant state of flux. For what the coaches cost there should be detailed coach specific manuals but the emphasis for converters is to get the sale and move them out.

But over time, even if there was a manual things get lost, and worse, subsequent owners want to make changes and those changes are almost never documented, all of which puts the burden on the buyer to bear the responsibility to take as much time as is required to learn the coach. And yet as much as this has been preached the excitement of getting behind the wheel, and driving the coach home almost always over rides the need to learn and we see it on this and other forums all the time when owners ask questions about some very basic things.

In your specific case your best accurate answers are going to come from fellow Beaver owners because your conversion is not going to be like any other. You will share common chassis features with all other Prevost owners of your vintage, but the owner of a Marathon or Liberty or Country Coach is going to end up guessing and confusing you when trying to answer questions about your particular conversion.

[Archived]

Right after I bought our coach had a box full of literature stolen out of the back of my locked truck and lost all the scoop on what,where and how everything worked. Owner passed away before I bought it and had to stumble though the learning process. There were a few duplicates inside coach but important info was gone forever. To say it has been a learning process is a understatement. Good luck on your endeavors.

[Fred F.]

Download the owners manual from the Prevost site. It sounds like most of your questions are in the drivers area and these should help but will not be perfect.

Take note of the items in the prevost manual and compare them to your dash. My converter did not drop anything from the prevost supplied equipment but he did rearrange it all. In putting in a custom dash it all got moved around. He added his own items to the dash.

My coach came with a file drawer full of individual manuals for house components on the coach but like Jon said there was no documentation on how it was all connected and supposed to work together. And as pointed out there were 3 prior owers worth of upgrades that were – intersting shall we say.

I took a pad of 11×17 paper and started making myself diagrams of how things were put together. Especially useful was wring diagrams for the house systems. Everytime I work on a house system I add a little more. It helps me to learn to write (draw) it down and it saves time if I have to go back and work on that system again.

I also use a single log book for the coach. It documents every mile driven and when, every fuel purchase, routine maintenance, and upgrades including wiring schematics. I also have one “master” set of the Prevost Wiring and air diagrams for the purpose of marking any changes I make to the chassis systems. I think I have only made one change to the chassis wiring but it is marked on the master set and in the log book.

I’ve owned my 94 for 5 years in July, it takes a while to really get it all down withiut it being over whelming.

Enjoy the ride (once you get the starter fixed).

[Archived]

And now you know why I am in the midst of spending spending countless hours creating a Prevost for Newbies series, as I share your concern.

[glen]

Andy, please don’t interpret this as disrespect, but there is an awful lot of so called experts whose vision on how the chassis or conversion is screwed together is severly limited and while what they say may sound real impressive, it tends to make viewers think the information they are passing along is the gospel and applies to all coaches.

If you have not figured it out yet, let me be the first to tell you that both the chassis and conversions are works in progress, and what might be true for a specific coach may be completely wrong for chassis or conversions a few serial numbers before and after.

I have had 3 Liberty coaches over the past 27 years and I can generalize a little, be specific on some things and clueless on others. The lesson I have learned is NOBODY including me and everyone that works on them professionally can come close to knowing what they need to know. I am sure like me I have to look at shop manuals, look on the internet for the operating manuals for the various components and then often just keep my mouth shut because I don’t have a clue. I know as a newbie I thought everyone with more experience than me knew stuff. They did, but like a considerable number of us our knowledge is severly limited to those things we have been trained in, repaired ourselves, or studied. And you are too new to know who is real and who is pretending.

I hope your videos make the viewers realize the complexity of trying to do a universal training series.

[Will]

Remember years ago after trying to get the cruisairs a working on my coach, after I first bought it, took it to a AC Shop in West Texas and service manager said, “We don’t work on Prevost’s or Space Shuttles” Nuff said. If you’re talking about Prevost operation did coach have the manuals with it. I’ve got the Operation manuals, Parts manuals from Prevost that came with the coach as new. The house stuff, good luck. I just started pushing buttons and hoping for the best.

[Archived]

Yes I do have the books and manuals that came with the coach. I’m going through them now trying to educate myself and confuse myself in equal numbers!

Harry

[Archived]

If I can help, holler. I know , after 6 years, just enough to be dangerous.

[Archived]

Thanks Jon and of course, no offense taken.

I realize that after 27 years of Prevost ownership experience, that you look at things differently than a newbie. As we discussed when we met last year, some of us, myself included, have no desire to get under a coach and simply want to feel comfortable operating the various components properly, safely and to know when it’s time to take the bus to Prevost, the converter or a service facility for scheduled or unscheduled maintenance or repairs.

The series I’m releasing in segments is geared towards users (like me) who want to enjoy traveling in a motor coach and the theme is basic operation, not detailed maintenance tasks. I’ve also been providing write-ups and producing videos of the campgrounds I’ve visited and that’s been a fun project for me. Not all of the experiences have been positive, but I take pride in being honest with my assesments.

Yes, each converter does things differently and it’s nice there’s so many choices. Of course, in my coverage, I’m using my coach as the example and I’m fully aware that not every coach will operate in a similar manner. While I’ll agree with you that nobody can know everything about the various coaches, there are things they have in common. Because of the differences, there’s no one size fits all guide book and I’m not attempting to go that route. However, judging by the amount of feedback I’ve received to date, a small segment of the market has been appreciative of my efforts, so I’m hoping I’m doing something right. As offered when we met, I’ll welcome the opportunity to do a video together as you have quite an extensive history with Prevost and have forgotten more than most of us know.

Getting back to the topic at hand, I’ll add that I feel Harry’s pain as there’s a lot to learn just to get to the point where we can start the recreational aspect of ownership.

[Archived]

Just try to be very careful using your coach as the example. Try to realize that of all the conversions in service today there are probably fewer than 100 that are even going to be close to your chassis and far fewer similar to the features of your conversion. The differences between your vintage and previous versions of chassis would fill pages of paper. Prior to around 2007 /2008 coaches were converted in relatively large quantities and there are likely several thousand still in service, but since then production quantities at times were so low you could count them on your fingers. What I am saying is your coach and its systems looks like the H3 coaches produced since they were introduced, apart from that there are few similarities.

And no, I am not going to be on a video.

[Michael]

Jon you don’t have to face the camera. Geo didn’t in that towing video from the seminar and the video turned out great.

[Per]

Yes Jon has a face more oriented towards radio… Or smoke signals!