gbrinck

Two different questions in this thread makes it confusing - one concerning "deep cycle" and the other "no maintenance". Those are entirely different attributes. A given battery could be one or the other, or both, or neither. Probably the best known and most respected deep-cycle brand is Trojan, but just about any brand of 6v "golf cart" (GC2) battery will give excellent deep cycle perfromance. Also, most any AGM type battery will give good deep cycle perfromance, and a top AGM brand such as Lifeline will be excellent. "No Maintenance" basically means the battery is sealed to reduce electrolyte loss through evaporation. Engine starting batteries (cranking batteries) can be maintenance-free, but few deep cycles are because the deep discharge/recharge cycles tend to cause more outgassing than typical car use. However, the AGM type of battery pretty much eliminates gassing during charge cycles and all AGMs are sealed ("Valve-Regulated" is the proper technical term), so you an AGM can be both deep cycle and no-maintenance.

Some of you who attended Indio this past winter saw a presentation by Paul Unmac on the ARP (Absorption Refigerator Protection) controller he invented. Quite a few people bought one as a result. I've had an ARP installed in my Norcold 1200 since September, 2013, as part of a field test and I've had the opportunity to discuss ARP operation and use personally with Paul. My own experience is that ARP does exactly what it claims (see http://www.arprv.com/), monitoring the boiler temperature in the fridge cooling unit and managing it to stay within a safe, normal range. To me, this represents a fundamentally different and much better approach to the problem of keeping the fridge safe and healthy over the long term. The temperature device built in by the fridge manufacturer is a fail safe device, letting the boiler run amok until it nears catastrophic failure and then shutting it off permanently (or at least until a technician can replace the fail-safe module). As part of the ARP field testing, I have a data collection package installed on mine, so I can see and capture the actual boiler temperature changes as I drive down the highway or park the coach. It's educational to see how much and how quickly the internal temperatures change as a result of fairly innocuous events such as stopping in traffic, lunching in a rest area, or parking outside a campground office for 15-20 minutes to register. It doesn't take a whole lot of tilt to send the boiler temps climbing, but the direction of the tilt makes a difference. A moderate lean toward the boiler recovery tank is not a problem, but a slight tilt in the opposite direction can quickly inhibit refrigerent flow and send temperatures climbing. I've watched Paul Unmac demonstrate this in his presentation using an actual Dometic cooling unit and it's amazing how quickly it reacts. We all know RV owners who have had their fridges fail in just a few years of use and everybody swears they never operate off-level. The fridge makers tell us that we are OK as long as the fridge is level to within 3 degrees side-to-side and 6 degrees front-to-back, but that doesn't take into account the slow but inevitable degradation that occurs when temperatures go out of normal range for even brief periods. Even moderately high boiler temperatures cause the sodium chromate corrosion inhibitor in the refrigerant to crystalize, reducing its effectiveness and contributing to clogs in the tiny tubing of the cooling unit coils. To my way of thinking, that's a recipe for premature failure. My Norcold 1200 has always worked well, but I felt that installing an ARP controller was a way to make sure I wouldn't have the sort of failure that I see happening to others.

The unvented model takes longer to dry and uses more fresh water - it uses fresh water to cool the most air, condensing the moisture out of it. I would strongly recommend getting the vented type unless it is impossible to rout a external vent from the location.

You are lucky - I put a piston rod through the block on a little Ford Aspire when I made that mistake. Cost me an engine and a radiator.

I would change them all to SD or all to AZ. You are on shaky legal ground with one vehicle registered in one state, the toad in another and drivers licenses elsewhere too. Since you are in AZ at least half the year and have no other "home," AZ will justifiably consider you a resident and insist that all vehicle be titled there unless it never comes into the state. If they catch you, that is. I'm told that CA also watches for RVs that have a toad licensed in a different state than the coach, but it seems unlikely they care if neither are from CA.

Another alternative would be to switch over to an Aquajet pump - they seem to be more reliable than the Shurflo variable speed pumps. http://www.rvupgradestore.com/browseproduc...Water-Pump.HTML

Odds are you have no power on 1/2 the 120vac load center (breaker box) when on shore power. 50A shore power consists of two 120V feeder circuits, both of which pass through the Source Manager's transfer switch and each one feeds half the circuit breakers. If one of the two "legs" of power is missing, you get your symptoms. The points of failure are the shore power itself (no power on one leg of the outlet), a bad pin or wire on your shore power cord, or a failing transfer switch (one of the two legs is stuck in the generator position). The breaker box itself is ok, since it works correctly in generator mode. Brett Wolfe already explained how to isolate where the failure is.

Counterpoint: I've read a lot about Freightliners with the ISL overheating, but that has not been a problem on my 2004 American Tradition (Freightliner/Liberty chassis with side radiator 370ISL). My temps run 186-197 just about all the time. I did hit 202-207 a couple times pulling a long 6% grade in summer weather, but never had to bump the revs up or anything like that to keep it in an acceptable range. In another words, mine cools just fine. These temps are from my TripTek monitoring system, so they are right from the ECM data bus and not a dashboard gauge. I'm thinking the coach body design may have some effect on air flow through the side radiator, enough so that the relatively small FL radiator can be overtaxed in one coach but OK in another.

Compared to a front end gas chassis, it has the diesel advantages - better fuel economy and more torque and horsepower at low RPMs. Brakes, suspensions, solid axle front end, weight carrying capacity, transmission, etc. are similar to an equivalent size gas chassis. Compared to a diesel pusher chassis, however, the front engine is noisy and nearly all DPs will have air suspension and all the middle and upper tier models will have an independent front suspension rather than a solid axle. The DPs will have substantially more weight capacity and pulling power (can handle a larger car/truck in tow).

The Roadmaster RV chassis is built by an separate company, Custom Chassis, which is jointly owned by the old Monaco and Navistar (which also owns Workhorse Custom Chassis). Unfortunately, Custom Chassis also filed for bankruptcy when their best and only customer, Monaco, ceased production. They should make a comeback when Monaco LLC gets going and starts buying chassis again. Whether Roadmaster Custom Chassis would honor a warranty on the chassis is perhaps another question, but maybe the NHTSA could look into it.