jimc99999

17 hours ago, toastmn said:

I found the best value to be this bushing.

Suspension Bushing Cartridge for Monaco, Holiday Rambler and Other Roadmaster Chassis Diesel Motorhomes | 01803668 (findmyrvparts.com)

Currently Veurinks (findmyrvparts.com) does not have any of these bushings. They said they're waiting on their big stock shipment but they don't have any eta.

And a truck parts supply chain (fleetpride.com) can't find any ATRO MO10000 or anything that cross-references with it. The parts guy is searching for other applications that use the same size now and will let me know. 

We might all have to make bushings with hot glue sticks...

1 hour ago, toastmn said:

A GOOD balljoint press (snapon) is needed if a real press is unavailable.

At $800 for a snapon balljoint press this might be a job for a shop. Although I'm currently parked next to my client's shop and I'm pretty sure they have a press in there. I'll check tomorrow and see what they have for impact wrenches and tools. They only work on their drag bike, not their truck, so they may not have big tools. But they did have a big press they were using on clutch plates a few years ago.

I've seen people mention using blocks of wood for suspension/frame spacer jacks for working under the vehicle, would 8-10" sections of 4x4 hold the weight? I guess 2 spacers per side, front and rear of subframe?  Once a trailing arm is pulled, the suspended frame could shift, seems like using a spacer might not actually be safe in this case?

1 hour ago, toastmn said:

My Coach has 20 of these bushings.  10 in the rear, 10 in the front.   You can't get away with simply replacing the bad one.  Once one end is good, it thrashes the other end.  Ask me how I know! 

I haven't examined the suspension that much yet, but I thought there were only 2 trailing arms per side, so that would be 8 bushings per end? Where are the other 2 bushings? Your Windsor is the RR8S chassis too, right?

I don't have a good place to work on the coach, no access to air tools at least. Is it possible to get those bolts loose with a breaker bar? 

1 hour ago, toastmn said:

They are 3" wide, 2" diameter, 7/8" bolt, and are an interference fit.   I had to freeze the bushing, and heat up the control arm, and still mushroomed a few.   Then I bought a 2" cylinder hone and that made all the difference.

Once you honed the inside of the sleeve where the bushing goes, did you still have to heat the control arm and freeze the bushing? Can you use a lubricant when installing those bushings?

Turns out at least one trailing arm bushing is gone. Are truck service shops likely to have these? Or do they have to be ordered from somewhere?

For comparison, the other side still looks pretty centered.

5 minutes ago, RoadTripper2084 said:

Ah, sorry I missed that detail.

If your air pressure governor wasn't cutting out at 125lbs you would hear the overpressure valves on the wet tank (1/2 of the front tank) releasing at 150lbs. You would also see 150lbs or thereabouts on your air pressure guage, which you are not.

It still seems likely that the air dryer purge valve is sticking, though it could also be the rear brake relay valve in that area, it also has a large purge valve on the bottom of it.  My front brake relay dump valve recently stuck open and caused rapid air loss, resulting in continuous cycling between 90-125lbs and eventually made it so my compressor was unable to keep up to the leak at all. But in my case the leak was easily heard when the coach was shut off. I'm just waiting for new o-rings for it and will re-install, though I'm certain the debris that was causing the leak is now gone.

Note that I'm far from an expert on this stuff, just another guy learning as I go. 

I had a rear brake relay valve start to leak last year on a cross-country trip, and had to have that replaced. Like you said, you could hear it leaking after the motor was turned off. 

The purge valve does leak for about 10 seconds after purging, before shutting off. Pressure stays at 120psi on the gauge, both needles the same. While idling, about every 30-40 seconds the dryer purges, the purge valve leaks a little for about 10 seconds, and then stops leaking. Pressure stays at 120 the whole time. If I use air by pressing the brake pedal a few times, then pressure rebuilds from wherever, not just 90 psi, hits 120, purges and starts the rapid purge cycling again.

1 minute ago, Rick A said:

The air compressor runs when the engine is running, it’s mechanical driven and it is either in bypass mode (exhausting excess air pressure) or engaging the system to keep the pressure at required minimum pressure. 

Hmm...if it was engaged full time, seems like either the purge valve would be venting full time or I'd be seeing pressures higher than 120. So it must be bypassing at least part of the time. Does the regulator control the low pressure switch from bypass to engaged? Or does the regulator only control the high pressure switch to bypass with dryer purge?

3 minutes ago, RoadTripper2084 said:

Yes, the regulator disengages the compressor when 125lbs is reached, and triggers the purge on the air dryer.

You were seeing continuous cycling while driving between 125lbs and 90lbs, correct?  As if the compressor would fill to 125lbs and be disengaged, but then the air would rapidly leak down to 90lbsish and then the compressor would kick back on to refill to 125lbs, etc.  ?

 

No, the compressor seemed to run continously. The air purge would happen about every 30 seconds while pressure stayed at 120psi. If I used any air (like pressing the brake pedal a couple times), the air pressure would immediately start increasing, even from 110 psi, back up to 120 and the air would purge again, and start purging pretty often while air pressure was at 120.

Edit: while the motor was running I could hear air leaking from the vicinity of the air dryer. When I shut off the motor there was no more sound of air leaking.

13 minutes ago, planodp said:

If you find the air compressor, there will be 1/4 air line running to the regulator all so know as air governor.

 

I did find the Bendix air pressure regulator, right in the back. The compressor is right behind the large hydraulic fluid reservoir so it's difficult to see or get my hands on.

8 minutes ago, RoadTripper2084 said:

I would suspect the purge valve on the bottom of the air dryer isn't sealing 100%.  Usually you can tell if you run the motor and stand outside near it so you can hear it when it purges, it will continue to leak after the purge, and not end in a crisp Pffssst! sound.  🙂

I have the same model air dryer on mine, do you happen to know what make/model it is?

The purge valve looks easy enough to replace, assuming it's available anymore. I can't see any make/model info, I can try to get a picture from a couple more angles.

I'm going to start it up and see if there's a continuous air leak from the purge valve. The purge sounds normal though, and even if it leaks, it seems like pressure should drop to 90 psi and kick the compressor on. The purge is controlled by the regulator, right? 

23 minutes ago, planodp said:

You might want to check the Bendix D2 air pressure regulator . This control the cut in and cut out of the air compressor.

I haven't found anything that looks like that. But Monaco was nice enough to put the leveling jack and battery box in the way.

I think the device in the lower right is probably the air dryer, and the air purge seems to come from this area too.

Here's a few more pictures, that's as good as I can get for now. I guess I'll have to get the thing started to find out more. I thought I had the air dryer filter replaced when I bought the coach in 2018 but that canister on top of the control unit seems to be pretty old.

1 minute ago, RoadTripper2084 said:

Sorry to hear about the rough road, sounds terrible.

The compressor is mounted to the passenger's side of the engine, and is gear driven off the engine.

On my 97 Dynasty (C8.3 as well) the air dryer/purge valve is mounted behind the passenger side rear axle. If you crawl under the coach behind the rear mud flap you will find it. Make sure you brace the coach first using jacks or some other mechanical means of keeping it from potentially dropping down on you while you're under it. 

Can you tell if the leaking sound is coming from the front axle area or the rear closer to the engine? You should be able to try fast idling until your air pressure in both tanks hits 125lbs and the air dryer purges, then shutting the motor off and quickly going outside to listen for leaks. 

 

 

The sound of leaking air (and air dryer purge) is coming from somewhere near the rear axle passenger side. When I shut off the motor there is no more leaking. 

10 minutes ago, Jerry G said:

Can't help with air bags, but what highway did that?

For 15 miles of I-81 north of Binghamton, NY, some asshole road crew recently "fixed" the broken asphalt over the concrete expansion joints with what is effectively speed bumps. That has to be the worst section of highway I've ever seen. 

11 minutes ago, Dr4Film said:

Obviously, either the top frame that the air bag is mounted to has shifted one way or the bottom frame has shifted in the opposite direction.

I would be looking at the alignment of all frame members and arms.

Or did it actually come from the factory that way?

I feel like I would have noticed that last week when the blowout took out the wheel well liner, because I was looking to see if anything else was damaged, specifically air bags and lines. 

After hitting a rough section of highway, I notice my air compressor seems to be running non-stop. After hearing the air blowoff after hitting the 120 psi when the compressor normally shuts off, I think I can hear air leaking, then about 30 seconds later I hear the air blowoff again. When using air while driving (braking), the dash air gauge starts going back up after a few seconds instead of waiting to hit 90 psi. 

When I shut off the coach I don't hear any air leaks, so the air leak I hear when running must be related to the compressor running.

I need to drive 350 miles home in a week and I guess it's probably not good for the compressor to run continuously so I'd like to see if I can get this fixed. But while I'm pretty handy, I'm not sure where the compressor even is on these motors. Is it motor-driven? A stand-alone electric compressor? It's about time to change the air dryer filter too so I guess I need to figure this stuff out.

The motor is a Cummins 8.3C (mechanical). Any tips on where to find the air compressor and pressure shutoff sensor would be appreciated. 

Btw, I'd recommend avoiding the 15 miles of I-81 in NY just north of Binghamton at all cost. Whatever asshole road crew went out there to "fix" the broken asphalt over the concrete expansion joints basically installed speed bumps, I think that's the roughest section of highway I've seen anywhere in the country.

I was looking things over after a rough section of highway and noticed my rear air bags were a little crooked. When I looked at the air bags before I think I would have noticed this. The wheel well liner is still missing after I blew a tire a couple weeks ago, so the air bags are easily visible now. 

I just had new tires installed, and I didn't really look that close after that. When installing the tires, I put the hydraulic jacks down so they could just jack up the suspension a little to get the tires off the ground. Is there something centering inside the air bags that might have shifted? Is this more likely related to the trailing arms?

The strange thing is the coach drives reasonably well and doesn't feel any different than before.

The pic on the left is normal ride height, right is aired down.

The front looks normal.

You might consider I90 through Montana and then heading south to I-10 across the Midwest. I-10 is in pretty good shape in Louisiana now and great shape in FL. 
 

I-80 through Wyoming has long grades and last year had many sections of 2-way traffic through many miles of construction zones, and lots of wind. 

6 minutes ago, Bjohnsonmn said:

Did you have strange issues at idle? Jim mentioned that that his alt fail light came on due to low idle speeds...

No, idle is fine, once the alternator is excited it stays active while it continues to spin. But occasionally it doesn’t spin high enough on startup to excite the alternator, so the alternator won’t start working until you rev the engine. 

On 6/13/2022 at 8:41 AM, Bjohnsonmn said:

I noticed that the Delco 28SI was listed as a suitable alternative for the Leece DUVAC.

Questions for someone who has made the swap:

1. Did you reuse the DUVAC (20amp fused) wire as the new alt-sense wire?

2. Which version did you buy? The long or short swing, the 160amp or the 200amp?

3. Any oddities pop up that are in your "That's just how it is" book?

Thanks!

On my 97 Windsor with C8.3, I had to install the long cage alternator. The short cage alternator I tried (vendor stock issues) had clearance issues on the top mount. It may have required a different belt and possibly a different bottom mounting bar to clear the block. 
 

I was unable to find any solid info to indicate the amperage rating of the original alternator. I was going to install a 170A, but the long cage version didn’t come on the delivery truck so I went with the 210 they had in stock rather than spend another couple hours driving there and back another day. 
 

The new alternator is self exciting, no voltage sense needed. It does require 1000 rpm to excite and the old 8.3 sometimes doesn’t hit that on startup and requires a little rev to get the alternator going. If the alternator is not excited the tach doesn’t work either and the alt charge light is on. 

10 minutes ago, veraken said:

I had my old LN rebuilt and carry it as a spare.

Where did you have it rebuilt? I haven’t found anywhere local and figured shipping both ways plus rebuild was probably cost prohibitive compared to just getting another at a shop when necessary.

I got almost 9mpg on the first 2 fills on my recent trip to FL; I had a significant tailwind and didn't have to run the generator.  Once the tailwind dropped off and I had to run the generator the whole time for house AC, I was back to 7.5 mpg. 

According to this it seems like it doesn't matter if the charger is charging from power provided by the generator or shore power while the alternator is running. If the batteries can accept power, they will, and as they fill, charging sources output less.

https://shop.pkys.com/multiple-charge-sources

In my case, I have sealed lead acid starting batteries and AGM house batteries, and I have the inverter/charger set for AGM's higher voltages (14.4 charge, 13.8 float). I have noticed that the alternator does not charge the AGM house batteries to full; after driving some distance, when I start the generator or plug into shore power the batteries can accept 30-40A charge for several minutes and then 10A for quite a while. 

11 minutes ago, jacwjames said:

You need to find a generator sense wire.  In my case I had one on the BIRD, this also provide a sense wire for the Intellitec EMS. 

If you don't have that you could come off of one of the generator start buttons and/or in my case the wiring was run through the inverter.  It was not connected to anything but it was there.

My 1997 Windsor had an old-style isolator with only house and chassis power and a central ground. It also had an old trickle charger with house and chassis power and ground. 

If it doesn't hurt the alternator to charge from the inverter/charger, then I don't need to care about isolation, it doesn't really make any difference to the generator if there's a few amps extra load, it will still run the AC. I just don't want to damage the alternator by having another charging source with a higher voltage.

2 hours ago, Bob Blackmon said:

If you remove the boost solenoid you already have the single wire needed between the dash and the ACR. It only requires 1 wire to lock on, lock off or auto. None of the other functions of the ML ACR are needed in a 20 year old RV.

If you want the remote button to also show status with the LED, you need a second wire from the ML-ACR to the remote switch.

I'd like to wire up the isolation so if charging is happening on both sides it isolates. A 12V ignition-only source is easy, but I'm curious how to find a 12V source that is only present when the house-side charger is charging (I.e. when I have generator or shore power). I believe my old Xantrex inverter/charger only has AC power input, 12V to/from the batteries, and the console harness.

When I had the generator running while driving and the ML-ACR was not connected, the charging load was similar to running without the alternator. So I assume that since the inverter/charger is set for AGM and pushing a higher voltage than the alternator, the alternator stops producing charging current. I didn't run like that long because I'm not 100% sure that charging current coming from the inverter/charger won't damage the alternator.

With the price of crude only 50-60% higher than 3 years ago, it doesn’t seem like there’s any good reason the refined product needs to be 100-150% higher. But any hint of price controls will have the refineries cutting production to cause a serious shortage to blame on the price controls.
 

We just drove from DE to FL and a TA in Georgia had no diesel. The Loves one exit north had no problems. 

5 hours ago, Jim Bob said:

Whew, so many things going on here.  I don't really know where to start.  Simple answer is yes, you can get the old one rebuilt and many times it is the best solution, but leave it as it is and just put the rebuilt alternator back in as it was.  Do a search on here.  This topic has been widely discussed in the past as many of us have faced this issue.

As it was before. The trickle charger was unreliable. The isolator was sucking battery. The battery boost solenoid had failed before I bought the coach a few years ago, for "battery boost" I had to use jumper cables. These 25-year-old components worked for many years but they were done. 

And now, all those failing/failed components have been replaced by a single modern device. And it can be wired up for auto generator sense for fully automatic operation like the original setup. Because the isolator is gone, I no longer need a DUVAC alternator. 

1 hour ago, jacwjames said:

Which Bluesea ML-ACR did you get??  Did it come with the switch, if so the switch can be used to turn the Bluesea OFF/ON/Automatic.  If you are driving and want to run the generator you can simply turn the Bluesea off and it will isolate the battery banks.

You can also wire the Bluesea to do this automatically. 

 

I got the one with the remote switch, I just didn't run another wire to the front yet. I will probably also wire up the generator isolation circuit so it isolates automatically.

So last summer I started getting suspicious the battery-related electronics weren't working properly. Along with that the chassis batteries failed prematurely while crossing the country. Previously the "Alt Charge" light had been coming on, and while crossing the country the tach started having problems (jumping around, reading double rpm). On a short late fall trip the tach stopped working altogether, and it appeared the alternator wasn't charging either. Since I had no night-time driving, I just ran the generator and hoped the trickle charger would keep the chassis batteries up. 

After that trip I replaced the isolator and trickle charger with the BlueSea ML-ACR. The alternator still didn't provide current. Recently I got back into it and made sure the duvac terminal and ignition terminal had 12V, and they did, so I pulled the alternator to get a replacement. I couldn't find any local shops that rebuild alternators. I had a trip looming for this past weekend, so when the 170A J180 short pivot wouldn't fit, I went with a Leece-Neville 210A ($350). The new alternator is self-exciting, but didn't work every startup. Turns out it needs 1000 rpm to self-excite and the 8.3 doesn't hit that on most starts. 

The tach now works again, the Alt Charge light was actually the alternator and not a bad ground, and a different problem I'd been having with the throttle also seems to have disappeared so it may have been voltage-related.  

I didn't really test the house batteries this weekend but it seemed like they lasted longer than before. Also, last summer the generator had started having trouble running both AC units and this weekend it ran both perfectly. It wasn't really that hot this weekend, so whether the isolator was causing problems or the ACs are just harder to start when it's 95F vs 75F, I'm not sure. 

The only down-side is I still haven't wired up the ML-ACR remote so I have to lift the bed to disconnect the battery banks if I want to run the generator while driving.

And now I have an old alternator that I suppose could be rebuilt. Can a DUVAC alternator be rebuilt as non-DUVAC? Is it even worth rebuilding?

On 4/24/2022 at 9:13 AM, Garage Monster said:

With generator connected to house batteries imagine the scenario. House batteries are low and you can't start generator, but you can use the chassis batteries to start the coach which will charge the house batteries and enable  you to start the generator. If the coach batteries are low and you can't start the coach the generator can be started using the house batteries and it will charge the coach batteries. Either way you're not dead in the water.

If your coach batteries can start the massive coach motor, they can start the tiny generator. There is no scenario where using the house batteries for generator start makes more sense than using the coach batteries. 

My generator is started from the house batteries and it's a dumb setup. The block heater outlet is also powered by the inverter which is extra dumb. 

On 3/3/2022 at 8:21 AM, Ivylog said:

NO, the psi on the placard equals the max rating of the axle. Sounds like you’re weights are near the max rating of your 2 axles.

Take the placard 90 psi for my 12K tag… guess how muck a single 295 with 90 psi in it can carry…12,200lbs. Same with my 23K drive…100 psi equals 23,500 lbs. Not as obvious on the front axle psi as the axle’s weight is close to its max.

Are you sure that's not axle weight limit? Individual weight limit for single 295/75/22.5 is generally around 6600 lbs @ 120psi. Which 295 do you have that's double that weight limit with 30psi less?

https://www.herculestirescommercial.com/media/1367/new_ht_h_series_brochure_1_18f1-1.pdf

From what I've seen the "cold" tire pressure is referenced to 70F. Tire pressure on the coach tires will change by about 2psi per 10F. When inflating to cold tire pressure you should consider adjusting that pressure based on ambient temperature.

I've never seen any reference to adjusting tire pressure based on elevation, and ambient pressure changes only 3psi from 1000-6000 feet elevation.