[David]

Tom and Jon,

Thanks for the fine rally. Barbie and I had a great time!

Getting to put actual people with names is the best!

Drivng 540 miles back home in a constant rain is the worst, but we made it.

How about doing it again? (the rally part I mean)

[David]

On a related note, for whatever it’s worth~~

I’ve just “read” Factory Girls, an audiobook by a Chinese American:

“Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

Unabridged (Audiobook)

Written by:

Leslie T. Chang

Narrator:

Susan Ericksen

Length:

14 hours 38 minutes

Summary:

An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China.”

Chang, a Chinese American, writes about women who’ve “gone out,” migrated from their rural homes to work in a factory or office. She became a trusted friend of two of these migrant workers. She shared their everyday experiences and went home to the country with one.

An important subplot is her family’s experiences during the Cultural Revolution. She visited an uncle who remembers it all.

I got some good laughs from the Making Friends Dating Club..

Though I am no more tolerant of Chinese corruption, I am less exasperated by it as a result of reading this book…

But wait…*that many* bogus Prevost Community registrations?!?!? Oh my gosh. How exasperating.

Susan

[David]

If you’re hearing noises from the engine compartment, could also be the hydraulic steering pump.

[David]

I’m in the camp that says it’s the generator, likely the regulator. When one leg drops in voltage the other should not rise. In fact, at 135V that leg’s voltage is too high. One interesting note is that your generator is maintaing 250V between leg 1 and 2.

[David]

Out the slobber tubes. That is a part missing on Series 60 coaches.

[David]

I hate to see myself write this as we were so looking forward to this rally … seeing old friends and meeting new ones, but due to family visiting from Australia first of May for a month, we are going to have to cancel this rally but will be in Branson for the PC BIG ONE !!

Larry & Diane

[David]

If your Ipad or ipod is not cellular and only Wifi enabled you need to buy the $130 GPS attachment. I wonder if this adapter works better in poor cell areas then using the cell function of your Ipad if you have it?

[David]

Well Jon , got in from my office from west texas yesterday evening and the coach still had about 65 pounds on both gauges on dash from airing it up Monday before I left but left was down. It will drop over night now ( on right side now, was left side before) with plenty air on gauges. Drivers side was still at top height after 4 days. What’s funny about this is it didn’t start this overnight drop until I had ride height problem fixed a month ago. It would settle but would take a week or two to come down. That’s the reason I had bags replaced. On ticket they side bags had some small cracks and owner said replace. Which I did.

[David]

Jon, I’ve seen a picture of your driveway. Even the picture is scary. I’m guessing backing up the hill puts a real test on the transmission.

[David]

Great! Good news!

Now how about cut and paste in posts, any progress there?

[David]

Don’t know about you Tom, but I just spool up hoses and cords, air up and head out. No need to worry about detritus causing problems on a real bus….

[David]

Rick,

Don’t let Tom try to pick on you for being awake or not. He usually is awake every day by the crack of noon and he rarely is out of his PJ’s until mid afternoon.

You should have heard him whine and cry last week when we had some traveling to do and he had to be up by 8:30.

[David]

Jeff,

One thing everyone needs to clearly understand is the air system(s) on our coaches because our safety is dependent upon everything working as designed. To specifically answer your question every Prevost, seated or conversion, has an auxiliary air system and it is in series with the primary and secondary brake systems.

Air from the compressor (engine driven) provides pressure to both brake systems simultaneously, and after reaching a pressure of around 75 PSI air begins to flow into the auxiliary air system.

Within the pneumatic system on our coaches will be various protection and check valves so that air loss within any one of the three portions of the system will not deplete air from the remaining two.

The only use of the primary and secondary brake systems is for braking. The auxiliary system provides air for everything else. The suspension is the main use of auxiliary air but it is also used for belt tensioners, door locks, air horns, etc. On conversions air is used for a variety of other purposes such as the floor slide, pocket doors, dump valves or generator air bags. Most conversions have an auxiliary air compressor to maintain aux pressure when the bus is parked.

On this and other forums a lot of posts will deal with the pneumatic systems which initially seem very complex, but with some effort they can be seen to be actually quite simple.

[David]

A couple of off-forum discussions popped up, which I thought I would share.

1. Tire pressure info with Pressure Pro and Silverleaf –

Currently the app does not attempt to display tire pressures. It is possible that the app could display tire pressures from a system which had a Silverleaf and Pressure Pro integegrations. I just do not know.

For this to work, a few things must all align:

a. The Pressure Pro interface that SL provides would need to put the tire pressure on the DDEC bus.

b. It would need to be in the J1708 format (the app doesn’t yet decode J1939. that’s soon)

c. It would need to be provided in standard J1708 spec format, not a propietary format that I can’t decode

If those three things all came together it would be trivial to add tire pressure info to the RV Dash display.

2. I have decided to add a DEMO mode to the application. A number of people have downloaded the app, without having the CANpod device. Right now it will run for about 5 seconds, attempting to contact the device, and then put up a trouble shooting dialog.

That dialog will be expanded to have a Demo button, which will then put the app in a mode where it receives it’s data from a canned file (captured from my bus), rather than via the interface. The gauges would work, and without a purchase you could see how the app works.

It would also be beneficial to customers with CANpod, because they could use the demo mode to layout their gauges, without needing to be hooked up to a running vehicle.

I haven’t got that particular piece in the code yet, but will fairly soon.

Ray

[David]

I think it’s. 8 inches from the pin that’s a 1000 pounds tongue weight . Further back the less tongue weight