[Clifford]

THANK YOU ALL for sharing your wisdom. Each of your experience-based perspectives has truly enlightened me. I now have peace of mind and can clearly see which path my wife and I will pursue – there will be no “plastic” down it. Thank you Prevost Community!

[Clifford]

The 20000 miles was based off the 5000 hr bearing replacement for the off hiway engines some manuals state 200,000 miles in the preventive maintaince sections some don’t,sorta like the vibration damper replacement at 300,000 miles or must be replaced at overhaul.

Tear one down the rod bearings will look new on the lower shell and lots of ware on the upper shell as the upper carries all the load then on the mains the upper shell will look new and the lower shell carrying the load will be wore

[Clifford]

No need to make this any more complex than it needs to be.

Fill the water tank full and get a small cube heater set to 500 watts, point it at the holding tank in the water bay. The heat the water absorbs is given off slowly when temps get into single digits or below so the water bay is likely to remain 50 degrees plus or minus.

Get a 3 heat range oscilating heater and as long as the bus is protected from the wind you can protect everything in the house from freezing with the lowest setting until outside temps get into the 20’s. Then use the 1000 watt setting. When it gets to the teens or below go to the 1500 watt setting. Keep the cabinet doors open so drains and supply lines get the heat. Close all the shades to act as insulation.

As long as you are that close you can monitor the coach as often as necessary to assuree yourself there is no danger of feezing. We did exactly what I described above on our first coach when we lived in western NY. It was not uncommon to have single digit temps or sub zero temps for as long as a week. The key is to protect it from the wind.

[Clifford]

The aircraft Simple Green is actually called Simple Green Extreme. It is approved by the FAA for commercial aircraft washing.

You can find it on Amazon relatively cheap.

[Clifford]

You can’t get past that Bernie on the left coast…

[Clifford]

Larry and Pat,

You sure keep out a keen eye!

We saw three or four coming back from Asheville, NC, to Memphis, TN, in the last two days. The one that caught my attention was between Jackson, TN, and Nashville, TN, yesterday. It was white and black on the front (white bumper, black at the windshield) and then turned into swirls along the side. It was pulling a matching trailer. Looked nice!

I’m realizing how small the Prevost world is…….. everybody recognizes the buses, it’s hard to be incognito!

MM.

[Clifford]

Clifford, I don’t know the exact answer to your question. I have a good
friend that tunes 12.7s every week. Tuning Detroits is his main
business. He will not accept an ECM in the mail, he only tunes trucks he
can drive and evaluate in person. He says about 7% more fuel on a stock
500 HP 12.7 is the max if you don’t want some type of over heating
problem. My experience has been that DDEC V 14 liters will stand a
little more but not much. What does that equal in HP? I don’t know.

As
pointed out by Jon tuning a Diesel engine for performance and or power
is complex with no free lunches. More power, more heat, it’s just simple
physics. Read the link, it’s for the Duramax but it’s the same for our diesel engines. It’s the simplest explanation of the
facts I’ve every found. You can’t just add more fuel and expect optimum
results. Although adding fuel, at least up a point usually does help performance and mileage but it’s only the start of a good perfromance tune.

G-man does your Duramax seem to run any hotter under a heavy load on one of the higher settings?

http://killerbeeperformance.com/download/tuning/Timing%20the%20Diesel.pdf

Ken

[Clifford]

Orren, This bus has been sitting for quite a long time. No idea where coolant went, oil is at full mark with no indication of any water. No where on engine or hoses do I see any leaks, no smoke from engine.

[Clifford]

According to the web site the cost for a DDEC V upgrade is $2525.

So I started thinking about how important improving mileage and power is to me in the context of cost. My motivation would be improved mileage with a secondary benefit of power to climb hills. This needs to be put in perspective however. I have ample power now. As a percentage of my driving time it is almost inconsequential when I consider the amount of time I cannot maintain my set speed. I doubt if 1% of my driving is on hills that are steep enough to prevent me from maintaining my speed. Further, even if I had ample power about half of the hills cannot be driven at normal cruise speed because trucks will usually take all lanes trying to maintain their speeds compared to slower trucks. So when I think about added power it would be nice, but not very important.

Mileage is more important to me, and I can quantify its benefit in terms of dollars, but I cannot add a value to reducing visits to truck stops, although that is probably as important to me as saving a few dollars.

If I assume the upgrade can return an additional 1 MPG that can translate into savings. I’ll use round numbers just because it makes the math easier. Assume I get 6 MPG now. Assume I get 7 MPG with the upgrade, and that fuel cost is $40. Let’s assume my annual miles driven is 12,000.

That means currently based on the above numbers I can expect to use 2000 gallons or $8000 worth of fuel as I am currently set up. If I increase my mileage to 7 I expect to use 1714 gallons or $6857 for a savings of around $1150 per year. In a little over 2 years the upgrade pays for itself if the fuel savings assumption is valid.

But the Pittsburgh Power site claims a savings of .3 MPG which is not enough for me to justify the effort or expense associated with the upgrade.

I am a cynic. I don’t even believe my mileage numbers unless they are based on a substantial amount of miles and gallons. So here are some numbers to consider. For 10,000 miles of use my mileage was 5.9 MPG. That mileage encompassed every kind of driving from flat roads, to hills, tailwinds and headwinds, summer use of OTR and towing our H2 Hummer.

I then modified my coach. I added a device called “Ugly Fix” which fools the engine so the EGR does not function. With a non-functioning EGR my mileage for 9500 miles went up by about .4 MPG. That is similar to the improvement claimed by Pittsburgh Power on their web site.

The 9500 mile block of travel was the same as the 10,000 mile block of mileage which was my base. Up and down hills, flat roads, towing the Hummer into head winds and with tail winds. The mileage in both instances was calculated by the Pro-Driver, but I verified it by adding up every gallon of fuel I added to the coach and doing the math. The Pro-Driver and old fashioned method of adding and dividing agreed.

I know from experience that one or two tanks of fuel will not provide meaningful information. Our coaches are impacted to a great extent by everything from hills to winds to speed so the real information has to reflect a very large block of data. FWIW I drive at a consistent 61-62 MPG so any variable relating to speed has been eliminated.

Bottom line, the Pittsburgh Power upgrade would be very important if I lived in the west, was always climbing hills or mountains or needed improved acceleration. But I don’t live out west. Until I can see 1 MPG improvements in mileage I cannot justify $2525.

[Clifford]

Please tell me what you think and share pictures. Visiting Glacier and staying at Polson was on our bus bucket list. Just wish it were closer to Glacier.

[Clifford]

Sorry, I should have stated that after re-installing the seat I had a fully-functional, normal system and no issues on a long trip to Lake George.

With the seat out, and the bus running the engine compressor got the guages within 5 pounds of normal. It was just clear that the amount of air leaking from the disconnected ISRI seat line was significan volume that the bus couldn’t keep up. This could be totally normal but I thought I remembered reading a few years ago that the aux systems were isolated from the braking systems for safety reasons, so it surprised me.

[Clifford]

Replacing a muffler is one of the easier jobs to do on a Prevost.

Certainly easier than finding air leaks!

[Clifford]

Jon, I believe his latch is manual.

Better take good care of your fancy push button window motors …there $600 each. No joke

[Clifford]

This is what I had in the Libery and beats the shit out of me if it smokes, burns or catches your bus on fire, Liberty installed it and it worked well. I’ve also used the smaller Guests without problems.

Gil – which ones are reported to be bad?

[Clifford]

That Tom knows what twerking is amazes me. Wow.

Anyway, took it to Love’s and had Centramatics installed on steers because they only had one set, new hub covers on tags and steers.

Drove them home with the 1 inch impact wrench and checked with a big torque wrench. Only a couple needed further tightening after the air wrench. Signed my life away to recheck in 50-100 miles, knowing that there wasn’t another Love’s in that distance.

Drove 300 miles or so, past several Love’s and slept at a rest stop 3 miles past one, but am such a sucker for authority (and hearing “I told you so” from Jon) that I woke up early and backtracked to the Love’s where they rechecked the steers which, of course, were just fine, thank you.

Feeling better now, hub covers look good and still no vibration from the tires.