[Kim]

Cool Peter,

I was a wrangler on a Dude Ranch in Wisconsin during my high school years. Great profession …

[Kim]

We try to take the bus out every month…..

Sometimes to family (about 2000 round trip)

Sometimes just touring( grand canyon is our favorite)

Ma got a new knee this year……..put the kabosch on travel for a while.

Plan to take off the weekend of May 9th……going south of Little Rock to see family.

I just love to drive the thing! It has a motor!

……….Ol’Ben

[Kim]

I have OTR and 4 cruiseairs. My OTR costs me 1/2 of a bay as has been mentioned above. My cruiseairs occupy space behind the front bumper where two units are located. The remaining two are stacked, one on top of another so the bay space they occupy is about 2 feet by 2 feet, full height. Other converters locate cruiseairs in different spaces or in a different manner, but the total space lost is not that important to me.

My set up is close to ideal for me based on how I use the coach. If my use of the coach differed I might consider a completely different HVAC set up. For example if I did not have OTR I would use roof airs (4) because they perform better while on the road than cruiseairs because they are in clean cool air and are not drawing the superheated air radiating from the highway through the condenser. The roof airs are likely to be noisier than cruiseairs.

If I used the coach as a second home and most of the time it was parked at an RV resort the OTR would get little use and therefore the space it occupies would be more valuable for storage. I would lean towards cruiseairs for that type of use because of less noise associated with their use, as long as the coach got limited driving. Cruiseairs also do not require roof pentrations which seem to impact all of us over time due to potential leaks.

There is no perfect way to control the environment in a coach. Every single system or combination of HVAC systems is a compromise with good and bad features.

As to maintaining a OTR system, Joe is correct in that there is a cost. The heart of the system is the compressor and it might periodically need a seal around the shaft or it might need to be rebuilt or replaced. I think a new compressor is going to cost somewhere between $2200 to $3000. The evaporator and condenser blower motors will occasionally need brushes or might even need replacement. But the bottom line is there are going to be costs associated with owning a coach and they can be expected and planned for.

[Kim]

I would say the choice is simple, if you want storage space go with roof air,if you only need minimum storage space go with OTR or cruise airs, both of these take up a ton of bay area. My previous coach was an XL40 with three roof airs,my present XLV 45 has three Cruise airs. I sure miss the storage space.

[Kim]

My Centramatics are smooth at any speed.

[Kim]

I’ve copied that so when Tom gets his next buses (note the plural, boys and girls) he can just paste that on the foum instead of typing.

[Kim]

Wow is right. My nerves could not take it. The angle of that ramp going in looks severe. I do not think my bus could handle it. Glad you made it. What a story to tell! Have a great time at Glacier.

Davy

[Kim]

Ok so here is the rest of the story on the challenges I had getting the Bus off the ferry in Bellingham yesterday.

We had a freezer full of halibut and salmon and I spoke with Leon at Marathon this is what we did.

After parking the Bus, they blocked all my wheels front and back. I used the level low system to drop the coach as low as I could. Leon suggested and the ferry folks agreed.

turned off auto gen.

I turned off the second inverter from the remote.

Then I basically turned off all 120v and 12v everything except for the circuit that had the refer on it. Techlink, all AV, lighting everything was turned off. Turned off the main Chassis switch and went to bed.

I checked on the bus 3-4 times a day when we were allowed to walk the dog and everything was great. refer worked great.

I asked for permission to access the car deck 15 minutes before offloading would happen so I could reverse the above and start it up and get everything aired back up.

Chassis and Geny fired right up… air pressure came up… for front, rear and aux… feeling really good so far. walked around the coach… checked everything and everything looked good…

Here is where the it get’s interesting…

Go to put the bus in drive… flashing 6… crap… that’s not good. try again, turned it off started it again… nothing. won’t go in gear.

Call Leon at Marathon ( thank god they were there) tried a few things he suggested nothing… bus wont move.

Ferry folks are being really cool but at this point I am totally messing them up… nobody else on the entire ferry can leave until I do… Leon thinks it has to do with the slides prohibiting the Transmission from going into gear… has me call Valid…

Ferry first mate informs me they are calling a tow truck we have to move…. nightmares of the damage that is going to cause… keep working with Luke at Valid and he is able to talk me thru disabling the safety lock for the slides… Bus finally moves… rest of ferry cheers… off we go. My wife is in the towd car on the second deck wondering what is taking so long…

I get the bus parked safely off the ferry and then notice that the air doors inside the bus are not working either… call Leon back and he figures out what happened so for the benefit of anyone else with a marathon this was the cause of the problem I had.

When I powered everything down including the aux air compressor after 4 days the aux air system bled down to a point where something in the check valve or something under the driver seat opened exhausting all the air. The Valid slide computer sensed the slide seals were no longer fully inflated and sealed and therefore not secure for travel which prohibited the Transmission to engage.

On my coach there is some kind of check valve or pressure switch with a small plastic tube that goes thru the floor under the drivers seat… i will take a picture and post tomorrow… but anyways… Leon talked me thru reseting whatever it is called by closing the valve, covering the exhaust tube with my finger and then re-opening the valve and then magic all was well again.

This whole ferry thing was stressing me out… I was worried it wasn’t going to start or something wasn’t going to be right but never for a moment did I think that the air system and slide sensors could create this much havic…

Marathon and Valid were great… Called Valid back and they helped me resore everything to normal and off to Glacier National Park we went.

Can’t say enough about the whole crew on the Alaskan Marine Highway system… First rate folks and we are sure we will travel with them again.

Bill

[Kim]

Just finished putting a new carbon monoxiced unit in. They told me that they are only good for 6 years brfore the go out. I found one at our local RV parts store for $860 the nice thing it matches the one I took out. Now I’m ready to roll to Texas.

[Kim]

We’ll work on Bryan…

[Kim]

I prefer Thomas. thanks

I checked again this morning and they all are GPL-4DL 210ah@20.

I found stampings on the side upper edge of: BJJF G with the G a little ways to the right of the BJJF very hard to read as some are very poorly stamped.

I don’t have a load tester yet but measured the voltage of each.

#1 12.97

#2 12.92

#3 12.92

#4 12.91

These are all in a tray marked 12v house which does not make sense to me since both inverters show an input voltage of 24v.

The other tray is marked 24v house with the following voltages:

#5 12.45

#6 12.48

#7 11.91

#8 12.42

So it looks like the one bank has one bad battery and is the bank that the inverter seemed flakey on when trying to turn on an a/c.

Now I need to figure out if I need only replace the 4 in that bank or if I need to replace all 8. It seems like they are split between the two inverters and if that is the case I would expect to replace them in banks. How do I find out the price being offered through our org?

Also if these are valid codes can you tell how old they are?

[Kim]

Welcome Tom & Alice !!

Sorry to hear you have had problems with your Vantare, we have a Vantare H3 and we love it, the Vantare is quite different in the way it’s wired and set up so it’s VERY important to learn the system & I wouldn’t even entertain the idea of switching anything from one leg to the other without it being done by a Vantare expert.

Once you learn the setup, you will love all the things you can do to make any power situation workable for your current circumstances… it’s quite amazing!

Ben Cummins at Coachworx is an expert in that field and always willing to help… he knows the Vantare setup backwards.

Everything on your coach runs through the inverters and is well balanced… most people that experience problems have found that the problems stem from bad batteries or even one bad battery … these inverters rely on feedback from batteries… one bad battery can screw everything up… then you have to replace them all, you cannot replace just the bad battery, so don’t let anyone tell you that you can. Find out the age of your batteries.

My advice is to use NOTHING other than Lifeline AGM batteries that can be purchased and delivered to you from Tom Chilcote (TRUK4U) … best price and service anywhere, trust me on that !!

I can’t stress enough the importance of your battery condition… you will put yourself thru hell trying to save old batteries or use a different kind.

Your refrigerator and water pump will run without the inverter.

After you learn your inverters and coach you will love it… we have had ours for 3 years now and we are still learning.

Good luck & again welcome to PC,

Diane