[Dale]

– Update –

Made it through a trip that turned into a nightmare of bus problems and finally made it back home to start figuring out where the problems came from. This all started with the BAL battery light coming on. Replacing the start batteries fixed that. The bus had NAPA commercial Group 31s in it, but they were only like 750cca. The ones I put in are 1150. BAL light went off and bus has started like a dream. I did, with the help of a friend go around and checked voltages everywhere. Everything looks good.

About the two Vanner boxes… I talked to Bruce at Vulcan yesterday. He confirmed that the reason a bus would have two equalizers would be that one would be connected to the house batteries to charge them. He said that of my bus has the auxiliary alternator, that it would charge the house batteries so the other Vanner would not be needed. I do have the aux alternator, so mystery solved.

Then I mentioned that I was getting heck and stop engine lights and losing power. I was able to flash the codes to see what the computer was seeing. I had six codes stored in the computer. Four of them mentioned the coolant level sensor. So apparently that is the culprit, I think someone did suggest that above. Thanks for the input. I’ll try to pick one of those up this week. On a side note – just as suddenly as this problem appeared, it disappeared. Which I don’t like because that means it can reappear! But at least it got me home from Talladega with no problems.

Other things that added to the nightmare weekend… Stopped at a Pilot and used the Wingfoot place there to replace a slow leaking valve stem on my right front tire. Parked at my spot in the Talladega infield at 5:30am Friday. Slept till about 7:30. Walked out to a flat tire. Not just low. Flat! Separated from the rim. It hadn’t been driven on. It went flat after I parked. Called Wingfoot. He asked me what I wanted him to do about it. I said that I wanted him to call one of their locations close to me and have them come fix it. He called me back shortly and said they would be calling me. He said that he would gladly refund my $50 for the valve stem and I could work out the rest with the other store.i explained that I didn’t feel that I should pay for a roadside call on something that had not been fixed right. So the new guy comes out to fix the tire. As you can imagine, he had trouble getting a jack under the bus. he was ready to give up and leave me hanging. I called Bob and he gave me info on Jack points and other relevant advice. I convinced the guy to try again, and with my help (and Bob’s) we got it jacked up. After he inflated the tire, he spent an hour trying to find some treason other than the valve stem that the tire went flat. He found nothing. So it cost me $350 for a roadside service. The lady from the Birmingham store suggested that if I got no satisfaction from the original store, that I should call corporate and complain. Next issue, house A/C quit working. Looks like a com sensor on a squirrel cage fan went out and the compressor would get hot and shut off. Should be an easy fix, but made for a hot weekend. Next – inverter died. I mentioned before that without the gen running, the readout a for the 110v banks dropped to 40%. Turns out that is accurate. And without charger working, gen could not charge house batteries. 12v got down to about only 8v. Just totally annoying stuff! Stuff that all worked last time I drove the bus.

When I spoke to Bruce yesterday, I ask him about the inverter. I have read here that you should not run the inverter and the generator at the same time, Bruce said my system is set so that I should always run the inverter when the genset is on. Which brings up another question. I was reading in another thread about shutting off gen for quiet time. My A/C will not run off inverter. Is that normal, or can some run off inverter? I’ve also read here about people being able to run basic lights and TVs just off battery bank for a few days. Is that normal? If I shut my gen off, I have no A/C, my 110v stuff goes off within minutes, and my 12v will be dead within hours. Of course, most of this may be attributd to the bad, and ancient inverter. Hoping to replace it this week.

[Dale]

Whoa, I take a nap and Nacy has a new bus!

Congratulations Diane and Larry! Seems like just last month how you were saying how much you loved that Vantare….

I’m in Stuart getting a few things done and yearly oil change. Talked to Frank today about some upgrades. He very politely cautioned me against doing some things, like cabinets, because I won’t get my money out of them and the usual is for people to trade out in 18 months. I may well listen! And I never say never.

I do believe I saw my next bus today, a 2015 H3 that goes by number “780”. Sometime around 2024 I will try to buy it.

[Dale]

I think I used one that had more of a rating. Problem is without the logs (from the previous coach) I suffer from CRS.

[Dale]

Just Beautiful Tom & Nancy !!!

[Dale]

Jim,

When Panterra remodeled my coach it included replacing sconces and adding a reading light for me. We also switched all the interior lights for LEDs. If you go to their site and look at Parker remodel you will see both lights about halfway thru the pictures. The reading light swivels so it can be used from the j couch or the dinette. It has worked well if you like the look. I located it searching on the internet and the sconces were from Restoration Hardware. If you would like more detailed pictures I have some I can email or post if I am lucky. One of the owners , Randy, has an electrical company and a store front that sells fixtures so he should be able to get anything you would like. There is an excellent Italian restaurent in town. I don’t recall the name but I’m sure everyone at Panterra can tell you. Have a great time.

[Dale]

Thanks all, you guys are really helpful and giving people, hope to get to meet some of you on the road in the future!

It is Coach #750, two owners best I can tell, current owner has been very accomadating in trying to work around my schedule to go over everything. Have a DMI at Prevost planned soon and will also try and take it to Detroit to look over some things and I will probably spend another 6 hours or so crawling all over it.

This bus will become my new tow vehicle so will see some miles and use!

[Dale]

After reading this post, I thought I would make a comment about my coach, I guess it is normal for the temps variate some mine goes from about 185 and gradually climbs to 200 then back to 185 cycles about every 10 minutes. This occurs on cool days hot days and hill climbing no change in temps I guess this is normal? Gary

[Dale]

Mike,

Mine was low on Freon and had a leak near the dryer. Leak fixed, new dryer, pressure tested with nitrogen, vaccumed and now working.

[Dale]

Congrats to the new bus owners. Fun ahead.

[Dale]

FWIW, I’ve given up on using my first generation iPad on this site. Even though the iPad had all upgrades it is generally not supported here. The site also requires your user name to be entered upper/lower case specific for some areas of the site but not others.

BTW, Jon is right often. It’s easy to tell when; he’ll be agreeing with me 😉

[Dale]

I’m really of good with this electrical stuff. I have never done any testing. I know that even though the gauges show only 40-50v, everything still works. They are old needle type gauges so I don’t know if they are accurate. I’ll see if I can find someone who can come test it.

The inverter is a very early Trace. Nothing like the modern stuff. Lots of push buttons on it that I don’t understand, but it works well… I think. It looks similar to this. I’m sure I need to upgrade it to run my LED TVs and computers anyway.

[Dale]

I would love to understand that as well. Phase-3 of my update is to fet rid of the big TV enclosure and the storage cabinets and have more of a “flush” look so I don’t hit my head on the generator panel every 5th time I exit the bus.

[Dale]

We have often preached about tire age and not tread depth being the criteria for replacement.

What makes that even more important is if you are not the original owner of the tires you don’t know if the tire has been damaged by underinflation. The size and capacity of the tire does not appear to make a tire safer or last longer. There have been a number of reported failures of 365 tires on the tag for example and those tires at that location probably are rated for as much as twice the load they carry. We can only presume the tires that fail prematurely at some point were run underinflated at some point in their life..

When the amount of damage a blowout can cause is considered what makes sense to me is to pull off perfectly good tires that are 6 years of age and replace them.

[Dale]

Gil

I assume the manual selector switch does switch both hots, the neutral and the ground. Don’t know, never took one apart.

What I described was how the inverter powered the 120V panel on my previous coach with two hots and a neutral. I oversimplified stating to cut one bus bar. The inverter output did not have a ground so I presume the neutral and ground were bonded. My point is by relocating the existing circuit breaker / switches to the bottom of a bus bar all needed is to separate those portions of the bar from those circuits not powered through the inverter.

[Dale]

Thanks to everyone… It’s my first time on such a forum since I’m a new owner of a Prevost Coach… I really liked all your opinion /answers, and it’s been and great help understanding how my rig works!!!

Again, I thank all of you guys with the good tips.