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Liberty Guru’s
To those Loveable Liberty Guru’s … I have a few questions:
1.) Is “Watchdog” unique to “all” Liberty conversions … both Classic & Elegant?
2.) Exactly, what do they do that the other converters don’t feel it’s necessary to incorporate into their coaches? (Why are they (Watchdog) unique to Liberty) and can it be tested during a PDI?
3.) Are they (Watchdog) hard and/or expensive to replace if they fail?
4.) Clarify: All Liberty’s use a single tank black/grey? … Which originally was aluminum, but should be upgraded to Stainless?
5.) Is there a basic checklist difference between a Elegant vs. a Classic, besides the 24v vs. the 12v and (lights in the kitchen cabinets)? I’ve read about air pocket doors vs. the manual doors, etc.
6.) Does only the Elegant Lady have the Sunmullon switches? If not, when did they become “standard” installation?
7.) Are the Sunmullon switches the same thing when one discusses that a coach has “mult-plex” wiring? Or am I confusing these two diifferent terms?
8.) At some point these switches started to turn different colors between on/off … I really don’t know, but understand there’s a difference in technology for these switches over the various years.
9.) Does the Creston automated system just come with the Elegant or, at some point, was it standard on the Classic?
10.) What’s the difference, if any, with the Creston system, and the system now being installed on Liberty’s, i.e., Mark’s & Diane’s Liberty’s that Jeff installed which are controlled by IPads? Or is this comparing apples to oranges?
11.) If a coach/Liberty still has the standard TVs, how expensive is the upgrade to HDTV, since I understand this is simply not a matter of switching out TVs?
Sorry for all the questions, some of which are not unique to Liberty, but since I’m now unemployed, I have more time to comtemplate the complexities of the Prevost product as I look forward to my first purchase 🙂
As always, I have way more questions than answers and, thus, I depend upon my brethen (or sister Diane) on the PC forum …
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12 Replies
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Tim…
I will take a shot at Question 10 …. I don’t know the difference in the Crestron system installed today compared to our system but I do know the system we have is used on many years models… I am sure as the improvements came out they installed them in the newer coaches and you can always have your system upgraded like we did.
Personally I hated the system at first especially for the TVs but since the upgrade to the ipad mini I can’t brag enough on the system… it is so much faster and responsive and has more options than the heavy old clunkers that we had that only responded when they felt the desire to do so !!
The money you spend for the upgrade is worth every cent and then some !!!
Jeff and his guru outdid themselves…
Now for Question 11…. again I don’t have all the answers here but I do know a little and that is that changing out the TV’s is not too expensive just for the TVs themselves and we found the perfect fit for ours… however for the HD signal you will have to change out your dish on top to an HD capable dish and DTV does not have an in motion HD signal so we have kept our old dish. Dish Network I believe does but I will not go with dish network. We do get lots of HD channels from our rooftop antenna when parked plus the local channels which is great. I have hd receivers installed and they work fine… as much TV as we watch it doesn’t make that much difference to us… Jeff did some rewiring and fine tuning on the new TV’s we installed and we are very very happy.
Our old TV’s were plasma… very heavy and put out a lot of heat and the living room TV was losing its color and had an awful picture… the bedroom one was still pretty good but decided to go through all the pain at one time.
Hope this helps you Tim.. What year range are you looking at buying?
Happy hunting and cheers… Diane
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Tim, briefly on your answers….
Yes the watchdog is unique and all Libertys have a version of them..classics are 12v and elegant 24v version then it plays into which gen is in the coach…the watchdogs do not have a high failure rate and have internal fuses that help to protect them. Expense depends on the coach and the generation of the watchdog. Some components in the older units are no longer available and this causes you to update the system….
Actually holding tanks were Stainless for a time and then they switched to aluminum and they tend to fail with huge variation in the time….
Yes classics have switches and elegants sunmullon style switchs, up to a period in time when crestron began to be a bigger part then the wiring of the swiches were more standard for the purpose of coach control.
Coach 500 was the first original crestron controlled coach and they are in the early 800 in production now. So with electronics there are a lot of changes during this time. Some are more profound then others…
Crestron is just a small part of the electronics and control systems of any coach converted. From the crestron processor out to all functions is where there are huge differances in control and functions of any conversion…
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I have had three Liberty coaches. Each was about 10 years older than the previous one so I have seen the evolution. I won’t try to answer the questions specifically, but will offer some general comments relative to the vintage and model you are considering.
The Classic electrical system is fairly basic with switches, relays and circuit breakers so doing things like swapping TVs is just a matter of selecting the new one and replacing the old. A TracStar satellite receiver will not provide HD so you will have to consider your options if HD is important to you. I’d rather have TracStar than HD.
The Watchdog is as Jeff points out, but there are options for upgrades that can be used to eliminate the Watchdog, including a switch to pure sine wave inverters which is a good idea.
Concerns about Crestron, switches, etc are just not an issue you need to concern yourself with on the model you are evaluating. If I were to focus on likely things of concern they would be if the coach has the aluminum tank, the version of awnings, the refrigerator (why I mentioned inverters because new refrigerators might not work well with the existing ones), and the potential A/C units may become a service issue as a result of age.
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Diane,
If the “right” coach came along, I could probably go up to an ’03 Liberty.
Thanks for the other answers … helps in the search.
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Jeff might want to comment on the cost of converting an aluminum holding tank to a stainless steel tank.
Jon wrote: “The Watchdog is as Jeff points out, but there are options for upgrades that can be used to eliminate the Watchdog, including a switch to pure sine wave inverters which is a good idea.”
Jon: How does switching to pure sine wave inverters (presumably from our older, original modified sine wave inverters) impact the Watchdog or the functions that the Watchdog performs for us.
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Dick,
You eliminate the Watchdog and then control your gen and autostart through the inverters, the same as some of the other converters have done. My 02 Marathon has the auto start controls in the Trace 4000’s as a menu item. It works well and you can make all kinds of adjustments for the various parameters.
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Thanks Tom! Now the fog on this subject is starting to lift. I think Jeff might have explained this at some point in time, but its finally starting to sink in.
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To Tim & Cindy,
Answer to the last part of #2) Yes, unhook the oil pres sensor wire(s) and/or turn off the CB for the radiator fan. There are more ways.
4) No, ours has 3 separate tanks
5) Our Classsic has 1 air pocket door
11) It was relatively easy/inexpensive on ours. I’m a DIYer
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More about #4) 2 of our 3 holding tanks(fresh & gray) are heavy PLASTIC(no corroding) and slightly transparent. Did it come from Liberty with plastic tanks? I haven’t a clue. I LOVE the no corrosion factor and being able to visually see thru the side.
I have a local friend with a Newell that had leaks in a metal tank. He had a new one made to spec locally for a reasonable amount of $$$.
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CORRECTION OR CLARIFICATION:
My friend w/the Newell had a new PLASTIC tank custom made here locally(San Antonio) to spec for a reasonable amount of $$$. -
Don,
I believe there would be a difference between a regular “metal” tank and “stainless steel” which does not corrode, right?
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Stainless corrodes too. If its made out of any kind of metal it will corrode.
My plastic tanks have stainless covers(BLING!).
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