[Dawn]

Next thing you know California will mandate all goods to be transported by horse and buggy. Wait, can’t do that, to many horses farts admitted into the atmosphere.

[Dawn]

Check out Venture Out on Summerland Key or Cudjoe Key. My aunt and uncle for the fifth residents when it was originally built. We stayed there a year ago for five days and found it to be a great location, the people friendly, and reasonably priced. Just keep in mind it was built before anyone even thought about a 38′ motorhome and things are a touch tight. But with some planning, forethought, a good spotter, and patience you can get in and out without too much trouble.

If you’re looking for good food, check out the Barracuda Grill on Marathon. Great place. Good food. Excellent owners.

[Dawn]

259’s are what we were told in 2010 were May West for raising the front. The 260’s the bus had didn’t raise much over ride height and previous Beaver Prevost front axle was not quite 14,00bs.

[Dawn]

Have your VIN ready and gert hold of Prevost parts. They will have what you need.

[Dawn]

Thanks for all the replies and help!

Triple Foxtrot had the right answer! Entertainment GFCI plug popped!

Wahoo!

[Dawn]

DING DING DING! Jeff you were correct. As my husband described it our front unit was wearing a sweater! It was restricted by a bunch of funk!

Thanks for all of the help!

[Dawn]

I bought a glue by DIF that was for Laminate, and what nots. And it says it will hold in heat and cold. So we shall see!

[Dawn]

When my horn stopped working it was due to gunk in the electric air valve. Cleaning the solenoid plunger fixed the problem.

Gerald

[Dawn]

The pilots on this site, especially those that have owned their own planes understand and appreciate why maintenance records are important.

A Prevost coach is no less complex and there is no way to schedule needed maintenance without some record of maintenance work that has been performed. Some items have visible date codes, such as tires and batteries. But there are service items that have no way of determining if they are due or have been done. The lack of information puts the buyer in the difficult position of either assuming no maintenance was done, or believing a seller who is going to say the coach was well maintained. Usually well maintained to a salesman is the interior has been vacuumed and the tires have dressing on them.

I have never seen an ad that says a coach was not well maintained. I have seen a significant number of coaches for sale that have the claim “maintained by Prevost” or maintained by the converter. As soon as any seller makes the claim a coach is well maintained then the seller is in essence saying he has the documentation or is lying.

If a buyer has to assume maintenance has to be done because there are no records it starts to get very expensive very fast. Our transmissions require fluid and filter changes, and the Allison recommendation is the use of Transynd or equivalent. At my last change just the Transynd was over $40 per gallon and I needed 8 gallons. Add the price of filters and the time required for a shop to do the work and $500 is not unrealistic. It is likely a coolant change is going to cost a similar amount. By the time a new owner has changed all fluids and filters, and lubed the chassis, including the generator it is not unreasonable to expect a bill for at least a couple thousand dollars.

If there were maintenance records to show those items were current those dollars would not have to be spent immediately after the purchase.

On the vintage coach discussed on this thread it has brake chambers that have diaphragms that eventually tear and fail. There is no way to predict when a diaphragm will fail. The chambers themselves are relatively cheap unlike those on later models, so the easy way to prevent a trip disruption is to just change them to a schedule. If there are no records it is unknown if the chambers are relatively new or original equipment. The same can be said of air bags. Like brake chambers they age out, but the only way to know their age without records is to remove them and if the white Prevost tag is readable you can see their date.

Then there are the scary things. I know some 15 or more year old coaches that have never had their air dryer serviced or the cartridge replaced. I would really be concerned if there was no evidence of pneumatic system maintenance because if it was never maintained the buyer can be looking at some very serious and expensive repairs to the entire coach pneumatic system as a result of damage caused by moisture. An inspection can reveal if there is a risk because around the dryer discharge a system that has been serviced is unlikely to have an oil coated frame. An air tank water and protection and check valve inspection is a secondary means of verifying maintenance, but both require the buyer to get beneath the coach.

We have hammered on this site for a long time about how valuable service documents are. There is no standard way of listing all service, but anything ranging from log books to a pile of receipts is going to tell the story of a coach. The sad part of this is I know converters who take coaches in trade will throw away all records of a coach’s history. I don’t know why they do that. Until buyers walk away from coaches without service documentation sellers will not recognize the importance of a buyer knowing a coach history.

[Dawn]

John, not only are people buying coaches sight unseen, there are buyers that never take the time to do even a basic inspection or get training.

Dealers that get an occasional Prevost to sell, but that really don’t specialize in them aren’t prepared or equipped to help a buyer with an inspection or training so until a buyer stumbles across a site like PC they are overwhelmed.

I have spoken to a number of owners who bought buses over the internet, such as on ebay or because they thought if they didn’t commit to buy it sight unseen the “other” buyer would snatch it out from under them. I have gotten feedback from owners whose training and inspection consisted of a 1/2 hour drive, and when anything was questioned, such as fluctuating gauges the salesman told them “they all do that’.

If it is any consolation the dealers who end up with some Prevost conversions are as much in the dark as some buyers so they sometimes learn the hard way why an inspection is necessary.

[Dawn]

So the way our bus is set up, is ver minimal breakers on the main panel. Then we use the ipad. If there is still a problem we go the “residential” breaker box in drivers side bay two. When we go down there some of the breakers have white posts sticking out because the previous owner had those set to not be able to be changed on the ipad. He said it overrode the ipad.

So we went down there and looked at all the breakers and they were all normal except for the ones that the posts are out. (bayoutlets, refridgerator, etc)

But you think there is a breaker in that box that will just be for gfci plugs? Or the other breaker panel board?

Thanks

[Dawn]

Which breakers have you checked ?

Have you switched the breaker to allow shore power into bus ?

Have you verified power at the pole with your protection / surge plug in ?

AL

[Dawn]

We had a two Grandkid rule. Did four once and things started getting out of control and Grandma had to lay down the law.

[Dawn]

Mine is a different vintage Vantare but it has a GFI tucked away a lower kitchen cabinet behind the trash can. It is hard to see and has several receptacles down stream from it.

Davy

[Dawn]

If that is a new coach as stated above, it had every device known for accident avoidance and stability to minimize chances of an impact or roll over. Before the driver could have reacted the system would have applied the brakes and the stability control likely would have applied braking to whatever wheels were necessary to minimize the chances of a roll over.

But as we are seeing with self driving cars some accidents cannot be avoided.