Bill
Forum Replies Created
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Did you smell french fries with at Bio junk Mark?
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Remember the Direct tv number for RV owners is 800-769-4635. No recordings, no punching numbers and you get a real person!!!
I purchased a Winguard in motion sat. from camper World about 5 years ago and have been extremely satisfied! It was considerably cheaper than other brands.
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Tom,
I think the plan is to check out the existing batteries for service. 2011 replacement but the big question willl be how old are the battteries.
Marathon use a 4 bank 31 series set up for engine service only.
Had the exact same chain of events last year finding one of the 4 2009 batteries had crashed.
It makes good practice to pre check everything a couple of days before travel. Bill has a couple of weeks before his trip and much better in bus barn then a no start in a RV park with the family ready to go.
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Sign me up for eating Italian
Paul and Janice: Sure will miss seeing yall in that big ole Bus. What are you gonna work on now since you sold your Favorite Toy?
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Bill,
I have penetrated the roof on previous coaches a couple of times. Both times were to add an antenna. I started on the inside to determine where I needed to be so when I was routing the wire it would be out of sight.
Once I determined where I needed the wire to come through I measured and then went outside to verify the interior location did not interfere with anything on the outside, such as a seam or another device on the roof.
After marking and measuring a couple of times to be sure I drilled the hole. All the entry points were behind finished panels. In both cases I had to dig out insulation to make a more open hole to add a backing plate so the antenna was not attached solely to the aluminum or fiberglass cap. I replaced the insulation after the antenna was mounted.
I sealed the antenna base and hole with RTV sealant. After it was installed I used ProFlex on the exterior of the antenna base to further seal it.
In each case I removed enough panels on the interior to expose the Prevost sprayed insulation and all wires were run behind the panels so there was no sign of the wiring.
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Jon beat me to it, regulator comes to mind. I’m not familair with Vantare either, but do know everything goes through the inverters. Since the batteries have just been changed, any chance one of the inverters is setup wrong? I’m sure you have Trace and there is a gazillion settings that can be changed.
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The DOT guys saw that bumper sticker on the back of the King’s Liberty, “You can’t hide money!”
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Gil – Should I have my feet up high, it might be getting a little deep!:)
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Hard to find deals near Indio/Palm Springs/Desert during the winter season. We are currently in http://www.emeralddesert.com/ . Pretty nice, real grass, lots of trees, good internet, but tight for a 45′ coach plus some train noise. I had to make the dreaded 5-point turn to back into our spot without hitting cars, trucks, or trees. What is it with people watching you getting within inches of their truck without offering to move it?
Anyway, if you don’t have to be directly in the valley and close to shopping, we prefer http://www.springsatborrego.com/.
Gerald
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Tom,
Good catch. The link should not have had the “inch” mark. I’ve corrected the link in the original post. It should work now.
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Some of the sites in the forest loops would be extremely difficult to get into. One has a tree right at the transition to the site with low hanging branches (at least it did a year ago). For those using SatTV systems, check for sky clearance.
We like this place as it’s an easy bike ride to the beach and shops. Last we were there only owners had full access to the club house, so the gym wasn’t available to vistors.
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Glen,
If your coach will not come to the drive height in all positions the most probable cause is the coil for the drive height solenoid valve in the suspension system has failed. On very early coaches the suspension may or may not have been controlled by a stack of solenoid valves, but there is going to be a single valve that routes air pressure through the ride height valves. On most coaches it is the 3rd valve up from the bottom.
In the photo above the valve coil to replace would be the center (third up) coil in the stack shown at the extreme bottom right in the photo. The coils have the multi colored wires to them. You can swap coils because when driving only one is used. The others are for leveling.
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For my 2 cents (and I have said this before), I would like to add or modify to that tool list if there are just 2 and especially if only one person is working on this type of project. A breaker bar or pipe are obviously a help – if you have it and room to move it when working on a lug nut or Budd wheel stud. Even if you have access to a sufficient air supply and a pneumatic impact wrench, it may easily be insufficient to loosen a recalcitrant lug nut. An X-12 torque multiplier wrench is an essential tool, in my opinion, expensive as it is.
A 3/4″ drive flex head socket wrench handle flexed rather than break loose a nut that was close to the ground when I stood on a cheater pipe. If I rotated the socket up a flat or two, and I had to raise one foot to get on the cheater, and had the foot slipped, the potential for losing a testicle or two rises exponentially. I have seen a number of times when having new tires put on (this was the Bluebird FC), the truck tire mech have to abandon the air wrench, amid the use of some terrible language, and go get the X12. With that, a child would have no difficulty.
As for drum brakes, I have found that a long handle sledge hammer with a head weight of at at least 12# (I think) is invaluable for loosening the drum from the drive or spindle shaft flange (rust). If you do not have one, I would be curious as to how it gets done in a timely fashion. Thanks for listening.
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You are correct, Jon. Normally we hear nothing while driving. We were driving right next to a concret wall and the sound was amplified.
The sound I am talking about is when the air pressure releases when it is at top pressure. I do not know if it is the air dryer or not. I hear diesel trucks and busses with air systems do it all the time. Maybe I am not explaining it correctly. It is not air leaking or escaping. It is air being released or exhausting when the top pressure is reached, it seems to me.
The sound is near the drive axle. It has been normal for my bus for nearly 5 years. This was just louder and for a few minutes is was doing it more often.
Does that help?
DKO
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Jon has written an excellent article to which he is making some final adjustments. I forwarded some pictures to Jon and I am certain that they will appear in the article, watch for it! For the time I will pass on the following with regard to the tools that are required to complete these tasks.
1. A good set of line wrenches, up to 3/4 inch. (these are just hefty box end wrenches with a 1/2″ notch removed, we attempted to make a big one by grinding out the notch in an Indian (made) 3/4 inch wrench…the heat from the grinding caused the wrench to lose its temper, failure)
2. A 4″ bearing socket. This is 3/4 inch drive socket made out of thin wall construction they run about 500 and are a far better alternative than trying to “drift” off the large nut on the axle.
3. Jacks. We used a 30 ton, a 20 ton, two 15 ton and a 12.5 ton ( just in case) bottle jacks. I would rather have used a stand of sorts but tiime constraints prohibited that action so our pleuthura of jacks were a reasonable substitute, cannot stress enough that you do not want this thing falling on you! We were working on gravel (compacted abc) so we used run out automotive brake rotors for a large footprint for the jacks to keep the bus from converting the jacks into pile drivers.
4. A respectable set of 1/2 inch drive socket wrenches, 1/2 to 3/4 adapter, soapy water spray bottle, floor jack, breaker bar, misc screw drivers, wheel chocks, your Prevost MM Manual (maintenance), bandaids and lots of rags and 3-5 cold beers (between the two of us an an occasional onlooker) to be consumed each day only when we finished!
We used an Ingersoll Rand 3/4 inch impact wrench to break the lug nuts on the wheels and to r and r most nuts and bolts. I would call this a “nice to have” rather than an imperative. We had a 5 hp compressor although it only was a 30 gallon tank so we were somewhat challenged but patience will out!
As mentioned prior, this is not difficult. It may help to be a 20 year old body builder with the ability to press, oh say 500 lbs, but that is really not necessary. There are several precautions that Jon will mention but all in all, as I reflect, it was kind of fun. Anybody with basic mechanical skills, some patience and a few specialized tools can make this happen. I really don’t know if this saves much money but it does assure you, if proper procedures are followed, that the job will be done correctly. I am the second owner of this coach and I purchased it 10 years ago, all maintenance has been either done by Prevost or independent shops with yours truly in a supervisory position (lets call that a sidewalk supervisor)….anyway we found signs of shoddy maintenance, cross threaded components, rounded off nuts from using out sized wrenches or worse. We eliminated each of those items with replacement, mainly in air system parts. Watch for Jon’s article.