Bob Nodine

Ray, If your batteries are flooded wet cells then you need to check the water level once a month. If the water gets below the plates it will lead to premature failure of the battery. It would also be wise to make sure the solar charger is not over charging the batteries. The solar controller could have failed.

Do you have a Pure Sine Wave inverter?

The switch you pull to turn the headlights on. Twist that switch counter clockwise until the light under the television and the map light above the driver's window come on.

Heavens no, we leave the inverter on 24/7 and things like the Winegard Traveler, Wally, Channel Master, Samsung computer, and Samsung frig never miss a beat and don't notice when we change power sources to the motorhome. Just found that I can order replacement chargers for $9.95 from Amazon and one is on the way.

I like the Oral-B rechargeable toothbrush so purchased one for the motorhome in December. We have been in Florida for a week now and Friday the red LED illuminated indicating the battery needed to be charged. I was surprised since I leave the toothbrush on the charger all the time. I assumed the charger was bad and Saturday we purchased another toothbrush just to get a charger. Sure enough the toothbrush started to charge on the new charger. I was reminded that when the toothbrush is placed on the charger it illuminates for a few seconds. Problem solved - NOT. We were at the Florida Super Show camping at the fairgrounds and left this morning. We stopped at a rest area on I-4 to make lunch and wait a little since we could not check into our next campground until 12 noon. I noticed the toothbrush was no longer charging and it hit me that the MSW inverter was killing the chargers. So be warned that if you have a MSW inverter and a charger like the one in the photo below, only plug it in when you need to charge the toothbrush and are on the generator or shore power.

My money is on the Nason switch under the parking brake.

Scotty, I installed about 600 watts of solar on the roof with an MPPT controller. TriStar is the brand name of the controller and that is the remote display for the MPPT charger. Since the LED tank level system that came with the coach was worthless, especially after installing the SeeLevel, I cut out the tank level display and replaced it with the TriStar remote panel.

Nice job Scotty. That is where I mounted our SeeLevel Tank Monitor Display. I put the Progressive display up top where the 5 button thermostat used to be. Don't make the same mistake I did if you move the thermostat. As you can see from the photo below I first mounted the new 10 button thermostat where the black plastic cover is. Like a dumb ass I did not think to check where the pocket door would land. I had previously installed the 5 button thermostat where the plastic cover is and the pocket door cleared. Of course the 10 button is wider and interfered with the pocket door. Had to move it further towards the front of the coach and cover up my mistake.

Maybe this is what you are looking for. You can put in different widths and lengths. The slide in our coach would be about 10 x 72 so that is what I entered. https://tinyurl.com/y3zfrc7z

Sounds like you may be a Jimmy Buffett fan. I love the line "stepped on a pop top and blew out a flip flop".

We made custom blocks from four sections of 4 x 4 timbers that just fit under the jacks when they are raised all the way up. We chose 4 x 4 timber because we can saw that on our DeWalt saw. We stack the four sections and cap each end with an 8 x 8 square piece of plywood. After parking the coach in the garage we slide the blocks under the jacks and dump the air. That is the way the coach sits until we are ready to use the coach. We have a large dual stage air compressor with an air dryer and when getting ready to use the coach plug the air hose into the coach and fill the air tanks and air bags. That way we don't fill the garage with diesel fumes building up air and can just pull out with a minimum of engine time inside the garage. I have never seen anyone work on their coach while barefooted.

We got rid of the Weldex system years ago because it was so unreliable. Changed to Voyager and mounted the monitor above were the Weldex was using Ram mounts. Removed the old Weldex and covered the hole in the dash with a tablet computer running SilverLeaf.

Woody, Get a backup made of the software and firmware for the multiplex system. I believe you could get this done by M&M. Bill Groves also is knowledgeable on the subject. https://www.mmrvelectronics.com/

Be careful with that 07 end range. Everything I read tells me you do not want a particulate filter that requires regen. I think some 07 coaches may have regen. We have an 06 coach with an 05 ISL and it is so nice to pull into a truck stop and skip the DEF selection. We also have friends who were stranded because of a plugged particulate filter. Had to drive their toad back to Florida and wait for the coach to be repaired before they could bring it home. As for trying to time the market, I am the worlds worst for giving advice on that. We tend to buy high and sell low!🙃 We purchased our 2006 Diplomat when coach prices were at an all time high and then the crash of 2008 hit.

ISL-400 with 116,000 miles and the only thing we have done is replace the exhaust manifold gaskets and the tail pipe after the muffler. I was also surprised to see the rear main bearing replacement at only 70,000 miles. What is going on with that? The ISL is a 1,000,000 mile engine before requiring overhaul. CapnDean, you can get the same mileage variation between fill ups at a Sam's Club versus a truck stop. We have found that using the automobile diesel pumps at Sam's Club lets us get a lot more fuel in the tank. I attribute this to the slower fuel flow that results in almost no foam in the tank.

Being retired and on a fixed income I tend to shy away from incurring new debt. If we traded coaches we would strive for something that would keep us within our cash resources. I also prefer the devil I know rather than take a chance on buying problems someone else decided they did not want to deal with.

Sounds like the system thinks the transmission is in gear or the parking brake has is released. We have a 2006 Diplomat and if you release the parking brake or put the coach in gear with the jacks down you get an alarm and the jacks automatically retract. My first thing to do would be to replace the Nason switch on the bottom of the parking brake.

In my opinion and personal experience you would be better off to take the money you are going to spend on a steering stabilizer and add enough additional funds to put a set of Tyron bands on the front. This will be your primary tire blowout assist device. They keep the tire from coming off the rim and jamming up your ability to steer the coach. The front Watts link nullifies any steering improvement that might have been gained by adding a steering stabilizer. Its only purpose would be to assist in the event of a front tire blowout and the Tyron bands will do that for you. We installed the TrueCenter years ago prior to the Watts links and at the time could notice a slight improvement in handling. We had frequent failures of the TrueCenter and sent it to the factory once and actually went to the factory once to get it repaired. Each time we took it off and drove the coach we noticed no difference in handling and were keeping it for extra tire blowout assistance. The last time we took the TrueCenter off it actually solved a handling issue that had manifested we were blaming on a Watts link failure. That TrueCenter now rests at the bottom of a scrap metal pile and we are relying only on the Tyron bands for tire blowout assistance. And yes we had the SafeTPlus on a previous motorhome and hated how stiff it made the steering.

Myron, I was one of the first to install sway bars on a Monaco diesel pusher. When we first purchased the coach it would jump a foot in the lane from a gust of wind and when you saw an 18 wheeler approaching from the rear you would grit your teeth and whiten your knuckles. I was desperate to find solutions to the handling issues and when I ask on this board if anyone had tried the sway bars I was told they would not do any good and I had the best handling coach in the industry. That is like the guy laying in the street with a gunshot wound bleeding like a river and the EMT telling him not to worry he is going to be alright. Wayne Wells with Roadmaster (the tow bar company) had made a set of sway bars for his mother's Diplomat and the company decided to make them a product. I may have been the last person to purchase the sway bars from Roadmaster because they decided to market them thru Source. Because I was desperate I ignored the advice from this site and ordered the sway bars. After installing them the coach was more relaxing to drive and the ride improved. Wayne had noticed the same on his mother's Diplomat. He explained the ride improvement by theorizing that a single wheel event would have some of the impact transferred to the other side of the axle by the sway bar. He could not explain the improvement in handling. When I mentioned either of these improvements on the boards I was usually scolded by someone who explained that sway bars would not have any affect on straight line handling. Thanks to Van Williams we now know that because of the way the sway bars attached they partially stabilize the H-frame. The Watts link does a much better job of this and should be everyone's first choice.

I do the same as Dan. Chain vise grips: https://tinyurl.com/ycmu76nx Gear wrenches: https://tinyurl.com/y8fwum4l

I would take a close look at the slide topper and the mechanism associated with it. Also make sure there is no debris on the top of the slide or the slide topper that is causing a bind or drag.

How about this Ray - That company I have been calling about my missing ID card has the "press this number" stuff and if you want to speak to a person you select 0. When you get there it ask you if you are willing to take a survey after your conversation. The first two calls I said no and got the "you are in the que and your call is important to us" crap for over thirty minutes with the benefit of elevator music before I hung up. Yesterday I called the same number and said I would take the survey and got a real person immediately. How about that! Of course when the call was over I hung up and did not take the survey.

Getting a live human on the other end of the line is a rare thing anymore. You always get the #@%& press # so and so for so and so, I hate that crap. Just the other day I called our health insurance provider and after the number thing got a recording that said I was in the que and the maximum wait time was 3 minutes. After waiting 30 minutes I finally hung up. They always refer you to canned answers but we were trying to find out where our new insurance cards were because our other insurance runs out on Jan 1st. You need to talk to a real person for that.

Actually I did not think to look and see if there are any choices that the owner can make for things like the 12 volt outlet. We have a Chevy Silverado with the 5.3 that adjust the number of cylinders based on the demanded power. It works fine and you never notice it but I understand when GM first introduced it there were problems. My son is part owner of a Chevy dealership and drives a different demo each month. He chooses to drive the Silverado when inventory allows and has driven many over the years. The recent ones he has been driving have the auto stop/start feature. He tells me you can turn it off if desired but he seems to like it. He has often remarked about how each new generation is quieter than the previous and says the new one with the 8 speed transmission is very quiet. I have yet to ride in one but have no doubt it is very quiet compared to our 2013. You can definitely hear the engine in ours.

I believe the AC versus DC does matter in this case because the current will only flow about 50% of the time on AC. To maintain the same brightness the resistor value would need to be reduced about 50%.