wamcneil

Have you tried grounding the bay door wire in the plug (purple) to see if it actuates the locks? Should be a purple wire on the coach side. What’s hooked up to the purple wire now? Should have the Essex 9/0 (brown) wire connected to it.

Nice. I sure wish my neighbor had one so I could borrow it for my annual oil change.

Right. One of the auxiliary wires is used to unlock the bay doors. I believe Monaco used 9/0 pretty consistently, but I’ve read posts where one of the other aux signals was used for the bay doors. https://www.a1electric.com/essex/pdf/KE1701WD.pdf About 6 of the Essex wires aren’t used in our application , so don’t feel like every wire needs to be connected Cheers Walter

The essex keypad (and also the separate wireless module) work by providing a ground "signal" to the coil on a relay for lock/unlock. Your wiring diagram shows which wires are the signal wires on p194. If you jump one of these signal wires to ground, it will fire the corresponding relay and actuate the locks. I think only 5 of the essex wires are active (12v(red), ground(black), lock(orange), unlock(white), bay doors unlock(brown)) plus the yellow programming wire. You might have more wires connected on the essex side, but the M24 (Keyless) plug up under the dash should only have 5 pins in it. So to test it, jumper each lock/unlock/bay door unlock wire to ground and this will tell you if the problem is the essex keypad or something in the wiring/relays. Just don't jumper the 12v in wire (red) to ground! If your remote is working properly, it's a good indication that the problem is the essex unit. My 2003 dynasty relays are in the front electrical bay below the driver. Cheers, Walter

And how about the radiator support bushing? Mack radiator support bushing 25121334

Nice. I’m surprised your wireless module doesn’t have the ability to use positive or negative output ’signal’ so you don’t need the relays. There’s usually a ’signal input’ wire that is connected to 12v for positive signal, or connected to ground for negative signal. There’s nothing special about the Essex‘wireless option’… If you buy the Essex keypad with ‘wireless option’ they send you an Essex keypad with a 3rd party Avital branded generic 4-button wireless system that can be used to lock/unlock the bay doors also. Cheers Walter

Ok, so that puts ALL of your big loads on one leg of the 50A power? How many ACs do you have (15a each)? And a water heater (12a?), and probably the battery charger too (10a)? All on the one leg of power ? Incoming power may be 50a, but a 10kw generator will only handle 40a on each leg. One side of your generator will hardly be used. Side note… If I were doing it again and replacing the batteries and the inverter I’d go to 24v on the inverter battery bank and add a small 12v house battery for the lights and such Cheers Walter

I don't think you'll find anything serviceable if you remove the keypad.

Look for the wiring diagram/colors on the Essex and test by grounding the Lock outputs at the back of the Essex. The Essex works by grounding a wire, which provides ground ‘signal’ to a lock relay. By grounding each of the lock/unlock wires you can determine if the problem is internal to the Essex, or something in the coach wiring. Cheers Walter

WHAT!?!?? But my digital pressure gauge measures to 1/10 psi resolution, so it MUST be right! 🤪 Off topic anecdote... I had a digital scale and needed to step on it 3-4 times to get a stable reading. So I bought one that claimed to be far more accurate and not vary from one reading to the next. It didn't take long to figure out is was really no more accurate than any other cheap bathroom scale... except that after the first reading, if the weight didn't vary by more than .5 lb it would just display the original number.

I'm pretty sure that every tire made in the last 50+ years has a max inflation figure imprinted into it, lawnmower, bicycle, heavy equipment, passenger cars, whatever... In all those cases, max inflation number on the tire has nothing to do with the pressure we need to be inflating them to... Doesn't matter if it's a riding mower or a semi truck, there's a specified inflation pressure and it's not based on what's printed on the sidewall... Cheers, Walter

Four corners is obviously more accurate, but just weighing each axle will get you pretty close. You can weigh all corners on the cat scale but you'll need several weights and need to do it when there are no truckers waiting. You're acting like the pressure being too high might be a problem and you want to limit the pressure increase. Tire pressure being to high is not a problem and will only make the ride a bit harsher. Tire pressure rises because the air inside the tire heats up. What causes it to heat up? The tire flexing and dissipating energy causes it to heat up. So the lower the tire pressure, the more the tire flexes... tire heats up and then the air inside heats up. If the heat gets past a certain level the tire will delaminate and come apart. Yes, the inside dual will get hotter than the outside dual, and will have a little more pressure rise... and that doesn't matter. Like others said... set the tire pressure by weight and don't overthink it. And don't worry about your tire pressure being too HIGH... worry about it being too LOW. Err on the high side. That hack at the tire store doesn't know how much load is on your axles. But there's a sticker behind the drivers seat that will show you the axle weights at full load. Then you can get on the tire manufacturer's website and see how much pressure they recommend at that load. Then once you've weighed the rig, you can adjust the pressures based on the scale. Cheers, Walter

Thanks... but these semi-truck radiator hangers are very different from those vibration isolators! These are 2-1/2" in diameter and have a 5/8" bolt through the middle. I found a suitable equivalent: Mack P/N 25121334 Maybe that should be added to the Radiator section of the parts list?

Yes. Mine is just like the attached wiring diagram. The front Domestic Hot panel doesn’t go through the salesman switch or battery isolation switch. It goes straight from the circuit breaker to the house battery. Cheers Walter

I don’t recall how the xantrex behaves when the batteries go dead. But I’ve let the house bank go dead couple times with the new magnum and it’s kind of aggravating … If the house batteries are dead (or in my case lithium BMS low voltage disconnect) the inverter doesn’t want to charge them. It also won’t reconnect the pass-through AC power. And my battery boost solenoid is powered from the house bank, so to get the charger to come back online, I need to physically jumper the house to the chassis. I can’t recall if the xantrex works similarly. But I would agree with the previous post about putting an external battery charger on the house bank. That might bring the inverter back online. Cheers, Walter

Nice! Looks like it’s able to be panel mounted? At some point I’d like to move my rear camera monitor up out of the dash. And that would be a nice spot for TPMS. Cheers Walter

That was similar to my failure. The connection at the end of the flex pipe wasn’t secured and that caused the rigid section of pipe to move as the slide went in/out. It would up snapping near the elbow at the back of the cabinet. Had to replace most of the drain plumbing in the kitchen slideout. I hope yours winds up being an easier fix! Cheers Walter

I guess the short answer is “find someone who wants to buy them”! I replaced mine about 2 years ago and tried to sell the old ones on Facebook. Nobody showed any interest. Then I lowered the price to FREE. Someone finally asked for them the day after I got the new tires and paid to dispose of the old ones… I even offer them to someone I know who has an earth moving company/paving company, he said no thank you I do not use that size. Cheers Walter

So here’s what I found. It’s a Mack radiator support bushing 25121334. Seems to be very similar to the old one.

I was worried about that... The old hoses are almost 8" long. I figure they only really need to be 6" though and that might make it a bit easier. Fingers crossed... The rear looks like I might be able to take the bracket loose on the pipe from the turbo and get more clearance.

Thanks. New CAC hoses are on the way... I'm hoping that a utility knife will make short work of the old ones!

Yep... When I started reading your post I was going to suggest the contacts, but you already figured it out! I did that myself while replacing my door contacts recently. Had I not just got done monkeying with the contacts I'm sure it would have taken me a while to figure it out... Cheers, Walter

Well, it's a little bigger than I thought. 2.5" OD, 5/8" bolt and fits in about 1-5/8" hole in the support. Monaco used a washer just a tiny bit bigger than the hole in the support and it eventually punched down through the middle of the bushings. It's hard to find dimensions on any stock parts, but looks to be this one: MACK RADIATOR BUSHING: OEM 20QL295M 25121334 - Bolts, Gaskets, Bushings - Radiators & Accessories (radiatorpros.com) I ordered a couple of NOS Mack parts off of ebay. Hopefully they fit... I'll need to take the turbo hoses off to get the bolts out 😞 . Probably overdue for replacement anyway. Any recommendations on where to get new charge air cooler hoses? Thanks Walter

Thanks y'all!

Hmmm. Not sure what happened to the picture. Trying again…