[Chris]

Carl could you give me some more info on your Knoedler seat. I am thinking of replacing mine email wilbur@mclambproperties.com or better call me at 843 272 1209. Thanks

[Chris]

What has me confused is it appears your three air system pressures track one another suggesting something common to all three is leaking. The problem I have is I cannot think of a single leak point that would cause that because the protection valves (if functioning as intended) will not allow a leak somewhere in one system to drain air from the other 2 systems.

I think verifying they function is a very good step.

FWIW I have drained the primary tank and then got interupted, and when I returned a day later the secondary pressure had not dropped. Similarly I have bled air pressure from the aux system and the protection valve retained pressure in the secondary and primary tanks but not full pressure.

[Chris]

George,

Depending on where this coach is on your short list you may want to go to an extensive inspection, or just a cursory one. You don’t indicate if you have seen and set foot in the coach, but if from an internet viewing and discussions with the dealer I decided it was one I liked but wasn’t sure of I would create a list of questions for the dealer to answer.

Remember that at some point you are going to exchange cash for title so as long as you hold the cash you can expect a great degree of honesty, especially if you are prepared to walk away the minute you realize you’ve been mislead.

Things I would ask before I started asking someone to inspect the coach and before I made a plane reservation would be have the codes been run? Has the transmission been checked? Both just require a Detroit / Allison dealer to plug up a computer. I would ask for the date codes on the batteries and tires. I would ask for the temperature differentials on the supply and return sides of all the AC units. Those are the biggies.

I would ask what condition all the records are in. In other words is there a service history, are all equipment mauals available, what documentation exists to show the age of the service items such as air bags, brake chambers, shocks, valves, etc.

Does everything work? AC units, Webasto or Aquahot, appliances, etc.

Remember, this is a dealer and if the dealer gives it a wash job and sticks it on the lot his price your offer needs to be near the bottom of the scale. If however he goes completely through the coach he is going to be happy to answer your questions and provide you with the comfort of knowing when you or someone inspecting the coach sees it they will not be disappointed. He is rightfully going to ask a price to reflect the value of a coach with all systems and components given a clean bill of health.

[Chris]

Jack is right. I have observed that depleting batteries to the 50% point takes a much longer time than it does to go from that point to the auto-start voltage so while there may be some bragging rights associated with delaying auto-start it appears of little actual value.

In a perfect world we would only have our coach electrical system set up to be optimal for how we use our coach, with some sort of modular design so we could easily add or delete batteries and inverters to make the coach suit the needs of each successive owner. But that is not going to happen so converters compromise the design to try to do all things to please all owners.

As we use our coach it is rare when we would even consider using auto-start. We are either on the road driving or plugged into shore power. When we do stop with no shore power available we turn on the generator and then we turn on all the devices we want because with the generator running we don’t ever have to worry about running loads off our batteries. If we do not need heavy loads when it is bed time we turn off the generator. If we need heat or air conditioning we just let the generator run when we go to bed.

If we dry camped for extended periods then auto-start and battery life might be a consideration, but we rarely dry camp.

The only time we ever used auto-start the batteries were down to 22 volts when the generator started. That had such an impact on me that I never used auto-start again. If I had to rely on auto-start I would modify my system as Jack has.

[Chris]

Ben, my primary wish is to disable the tank minders so they dont run all the time when the 12VDC battery main is on, which on my coach is most of the time. So the idea is to disable them so they only run when I switch them on. One Idea is to use one of the unused push button switches on the circuit breaker panel, the other was to just wire in a relay between the panel lights and the 12VDC source to the tank minder behind the panel above the circuit breaker panel where the tank minder panel is located.

I have not looked closely at the DC relay config (located in bay 2) on the schematics yet to see if there was an easy place to tie this functionality in. So if you have that knowledge, let me know what circuit to look for and I will hunt down that relay number and such on the schematics.