[Gerald]

was a year of changes–some had 748 atec trans–Big problem and was big changes in ddec operating systems going on then–DDEC 1 = almost non attainable. If it is a true 88 it should have a J as last letter in serial # Lots of converters used a year or two old chassi and titled them the year they were converted. a 96 would be U. Example mine is a 98 and number is W1026553/ W = 98 the year prevost built coach and 102= width .. 6553 is unit number built that year, FWIW.

[Gerald]

I have never seen this when I have called or emailed for reservations. Here is part of the canned email from Bluewater rentals (bluewaterkey.net):

At this time of year, we receive far more requests for reservations than we can accommodate. This is especially true if your request includes the time between December 20, 2015 and early March, 2016, when we are quite heavily booked. Rest assured that we actively maintain a wait list and carefully check each reservation request to see if it will match any current cancellations. If you do not receive a personal reply from us within a day or two, this means that we currently have no openings. It also means that you have been added to the wait list and will be contacted if an opening that closely approximates your request should become available. You will be emailed or called if any opening close to your dates occurs.

That may work for those who full-time or are retired and don’t care, but we can’t do that. We need to get dates confirmed. I gave them dates starting April 30th, so that is way beyond the “heavily booked” period. I guess I will see if I get anything back by tomorrow morning. If not, I will go somewhere else.

[Gerald]

I can do it for you Tim, it will be a couple days before I can get to it.

[Gerald]

I have nothing more to add to the CA subject than my one sentence above.

[Gerald]

And a very Merry Christmas to you !!

[Gerald]

I’m sure you’ve already checked that all your zone thermostats are calling for heat. For example my bathroom thermostat may call for heat, and the bathroom will heat, but there’s an additional thermostat for the water closet which works in tandem with the bathroom thermostat. So you can tailor the water closet heat a little more. Doubt this will help you but an easy thing to check…

[Gerald]

Bill, we show dogs and are looking at the Lakeland show – then your rally – then getting some body work done at Parliament… seems like we should move to central Florida!

We are scheduled at Parliament and have done the on-line entry for the A&C Concours, waiting on a call to finalize.

[Gerald]

John…

Peter is correct. We have replaced our inverters with Magnums. We were having intermitent voltage drops with one of the original inverters when we got the coach, & since I wanted pure sine wave for my own peace of mind and future electrical upgrades, we went ahead & replaced them both with Magnum MS-2812’s. The original CC auto gen start system didn’t call for the gen to start until the battery voltage reached something south of 11.5 volts, as I recall, and had no provision to start based on coach inside temps. The Magnum AGS units allow settings based on battery voltage, as well as inside coach temps (with a temp probe install). The temp settings allows gen to start, warm up, & power the A/C units for the coach so we don’t come home to fur kids with heat related problems, or worse, if we were to loose shore power during our time away from the coach. It took some head scratching on Jeff’s part because of the way our CC/PowerTech interface was set up, and the fact that I wanted to retain the gen start/stop functions at the original switches, rather than having the inverter remote be the only way to control the genset. I can’t recommend the Magnums highly enough. They have been very steady, the remotes are relatively intuitive to understand & program for all functions, & any questions I have had were easily researched over the net or with a call to Jordan at the Inverter Service Center – a PC advertiser. (I do that right, Jon??😉) I think the cost of the AGS module w/temp probe was around $250-$300 with the PC discount ISC provides, and the install was in addition to that. Money well spent, IMO.

[Gerald]

Mr. Mark……….

I’m saving my pennies hoping to buy your coach when you trade it in!!

Steve

[Gerald]

Apparently, whoever replaced the bulbs previously, could not find the right bulbs and put in 15V 150 watt halogen bulbs. These bulbs were drawing too much juice and producing too much heat. We found that when we did a search online with the original specs, we got the same results.

We ordered LED bulbs from http://www.earthled.com:

Part # 993-11496: 2x GREEN CREATIVE – CRISP – MR16 – 7.7 Watt – 75 Watt
Equal – High CRI – Dimmable – Suitable for Fully Enclosed Fixtures – Narrow
Flood / Flood – 3000K / 25 Degrees / 1 Piece for $ 17.18 each

The bulbs come with a 3-year warranty. Based on using 3 hours a day usage, these bulbs should last 22.8 years!

These focused right on the fiber optic cables. Seems just as bright as the halogen, but are drawing only a fraction of the power and little heat. No more lights out!

June

[Gerald]

Steve: Where did you get the gaskets?

Steve and Dan: How did you wire the positive wire. I bought the same lights from Bill and when I took the first couple apart on the street/pax side, it appears the positive (hot) wire comes out of the coach panel on the left and the positive wire on the light is on the right. Flipping the light I now had the postive (hot) wire on the light on the bottom and the positive wire coming out of the coach on the top (same end). Neither configuration seemed to have a good place to put the wire behind the light fixture which I’m concerned would lead to a poor seal and possible water intrustion into the inside of the coach.

Also, did you solder and heat shrink? or did you use a butt connector of some kind. Please enlighten me.

Some day I hope to find out why Prevost uses non-stainless screws on the inside pair of holes. I’m afraid to leave them the holes open for fear of moisture getting behind the stainless steel. Our coach spent much of its life for 15 years inside and the corrosion on the non-stainless steel screws is breath taking to say the least. I plan on putting stainless steel screws in the inside pair as well as the outside pair. One of those screws is the ground, I presume a stainless steel screw will ground just as well as a non-stainless steel screw. Its grounding to a stainless steel panel.

HINT, HINT: If I owned any series of XL coach I would check the screws holding the clearance lights and replace any non-stainless steel screws with quality stainless steel screws ASAP. If I was a dealer holding one in inventory, I would also change them out.

I think that Prevost probably put those non-stainless steel screws in there by mistake and they are missing from the inventory in Quebec. I’m toying with the idea of when I’ve got them all out, send them to Prevost corporate (broken off heads and all), and let them know they should put them back in investory.

[Gerald]

That project took more than a week because of the challenges the clearances created plus the fact I did not want to lose the ability to carry almost all the items we were carrying in the bay.

Now that I have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight I should have stripped both bays and started all over. For sure I would get rid of the joey bed on the passenger side also.

I couild drop the spare parts drawers onto the bay floor, restore the chair pockets, put the Libertty tool chest slide beneath the tool box and by doing that I would totally eliminate the need for ramps beneath the rear of the Cricket. But for now that ship has sailed so I’m considering the project done.

The whole project could have been done in less than a day, but I spent a lot of hours “playing” with different approaches to the issue, verifying clearances, and insuring nothing I did on the Cricket side had any impact on the passenger side. I probably ran the cart in and out 20 or 30 times, forward and backward until I had the best compromise. Even after knowing how I was going to do it, I still was playing with not only the front to rear positioning, I was also moving the Cricket side to side to make sure of both clearances as well as storage for my stuff.

Without the slide reinforcements, or in an H this entire project literally stops being a project because it is a simple matter of just driving the Cricket into the bay.

[Gerald]

I may be wrong, but I suspect that in Hearthside’s case it may be the HOA that sets an age for coaches when buying a lot. If they ask when you rent (in our case they never have),just tell them any year…nobody knows anyway.

Geo.

[Gerald]

I have enjoyed reading all of the service, times and places of our great vetrans that have fought to keep this great Nation safe. Good to see so many of our members have done so. Thanks Tom for getting post started. And again many thanks to all of our Vetrans..

Bill S.

[Gerald]

Will do, thanks!