jleamont

judielarry, I had a similar problem just after we bought our coach last year (used). It started to lose power and I got lucky as I was backing into the driveway at home when it got bad, about 5 feet from my garage it stalled only cranked...no start. I pulled the fuel water separator to find a black jelly substance in and on top of the primary fuel filter when I pulled it down; the jelly had a texture like shredded rubber and Jam that you would put on toast. I thought it was Algae but it turned out to be the fuel lines under the coach were deteriorating and it was the rubber from within the fuel lines. Brett saved me (Wolfe 10) when he explained how my fuel system was laid out, so it was easy to diagnose and put my head around what was happening. My fuel system operates off of suction through the primary filter, then goes to a pressure pump on the engine, then onto a fine particle fuel filter on the opposite side of the engine bay and then to the fuel injection pump. So when the main supply line from the tank to the first fuel filter failed I was also pulling in air which is why it stalled (filter was almost empty). If you have a lift pump closer to the tank you may not stall but will push all of that junk into your filter which will cause low power, eventually you should see a fuel leak somewhere between the fuel tank and the first filter. The more I snooped around in the storage areas I could smell Diesel fuel, I lowered down the ceilings to replace the fuel lines and noticed the supply line had beads of fuel on it. My coach was plumbed with Hydraulic hose for both the suction and return lines, I measured the distance and gave myself a few extra feet, went to our local hydraulic hose store and had them make me new lines, running them was a task but I was able to get it done on a Saturday. I was a Diesel Tech for 16 years so I had the tools to complete such a task. I also replaced the fuel pump on the engine, according to Cummins it has been revised 5 times over the years for problems, I changed it just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it, depending on the year of your coach it may be the same pump as i recall it fit many years and several different engines. My experience is after an engine sits the debris will drop off of the inside of the filter and sink, after you run it and create suction it will eventually pull the debris back onto the filter element partially blocking it resulting in a lack of power .

jegall, I recommend reaching out to the manufacture, I looked over the dolly on their website and it looks pretty straight forward, no crazy designs etc. Not much different than the one we use to have. I can say I never experienced this problem with the brand we had a few years back. The other concern is we have several hundred tow dollies where I work for rentals and I have never heard of a strap breaking (other than abuse) and even that was rare. Good luck and please post back with their recommendation, I am curious to hear their thoughts, and someone else may have an experience like yours. I have a connection at another manufacture...if the answer you get doesnt work P.M. me, I will be glad to reach out to my friend at other brands engineering and ask if they have any suggestions or ideas from their product testing R&D department.

What brand dolly do you have? Are you pulling forward when this happens or trying to back up with the car on it?

jegall Welcome to the FMCA forum! Check your dolly, it will either have an upper deck that is supposed to turn when you turn or it has steering that will turn when you drive around a corner. When they are being tranported (no car) there is a pin to either lock the steering or the upper deck, I suspect the pin is still holding the steering or deck from moving. Joe

Ray, www.hrrvc.org I have posted on Good Sam in the past, never experienced any problems other than their fourm is difficult to sign in and navigate. The HR club opens their doors to Monaco owners for rallies and I believe membership as well.

Ray, I have looked through a few posts on irv and noticed the same thing. I'm am sorry to hear you were a target on that site. I joined Holiday Rambler/Monaco club. I have had little opportunity to look through the web site but the do have a forum section and a service manual section also. Joe

Rich, if you are asking me, no I took the picture after I started to disassemble it, I thougt if I took a photo with my cell phone I could see how they were layed out when the new one arrived rather than trying to reassemble from memory.....but what a difference huh? Joe

Yukiroad, did you get stopped and cited? or discover it more casually? Just curious.

I removed mine and had a local plastics shop duplicate them in wood grained plastic. The Monaco plastic was cheap garbage. Out the door it cost me $400.00 for all trim panels in the front of the coach plus no more dull dingy gray plastic, looks classy now. Before and after photos below

We have them on a few 53' trailers at work; I cannot say that there is any noticeable difference with or without them. We have another carrier in the area that has them all over their tractor fleet mostly the sleepers all the way around the cab just before the curve starts for the rear wall. My concern was washing the coach with them you would have to use a wash mitt and a ladder, the brush on the pole would probably not clean around them thoroughly.

bostonbernie, Who performs your maintenance? Do you know what weight oil was put into the engine at the last oil change? From my experience the Triton engine will have a tick on cold start ups, they all seem to have some cold start noise...worse when the incorrect oil viscosity is used. From memory I believe it was hydraulic chain tensioner noise until adequate oil flow is present to pump them up and apply the correct pressure on the chain set and start to lube the cams and lifters. I had a customer with a motorhome (when I was a dealer tech) do his own oil change and he put 15w40 in his V10... the first cold morning....you guessed it cams were dry (oil couldn't reach them) they started to seize and the tensioners were not pumped up and they started to skip teeth and bang. I will never forget when he told me "when it was warmer I would hear a loud ticking sound on start up that would go away after a few minutes". This is from the Ford 2012 F53 chassis service manual; Motorcraft® SAE 5W-20 Premium Synthetic Blend Motor Oil (US); Motorcraft® SAE 5W-20 Super Premium Motor Oil (Canada) XO-5W20-QSP (US); CXO-5W20-LSP12 (Canada) WSS-M2C945-A 6.6L (7.0 qt) with filter

Tom, funny....I called them and they were very abrasive on the phone and the response was "did you update it" I told them I just pulled it from the box and saw your company has a sticker on the screen and it tells me I do not have to, (we purchased it for a cross country trip that was two months away) "well you need to do an update if that doesn’t fix it I do not know what to tell you, your warranty has already expired". Which was frustrating since It was the first trip with it and I had only owned it for 3 months. Immediately I thought of Bill Engvall "here’s your sign" What a bad company and the worst part is the owner is one of us with a Motorhome according to the video that they use to sell these, I figured how could I go wrong he should understand exactly what we look for in a GPS. I recently purchased a new Garmin for my company car, it too had problems, (oddly enough very similar, but much more user friendly) I emailed Garmin they asked me to update it, so I did, when it didn’t fix it they told me to send it back there is something wrong with the unit, I received a replacement immediately that works great...for a car unit that is. I am also interested in hearing about the Magellan unit, that was my second choice when I bought this.

That is great news, unusual they admitted to their error, which in my book is always good, people make mistakes its how you own them and learn from them that makes you a good person. joe

Recomendation; Gettysburg campground. The owner is a camper himself, and you can see it by the condition and the way the park operates, not like a corporation. They have nice campground with level sites that are roomy and close to the battlefields. Very nice people and the owner runs a tight ship there. We go every year, although we have thought about a different place to try we love this place so much it would be hard to break away from. Just my two cents incase anyone reopens this post looking into this area.

I used it yesterday and it appears to be better, the nuisance is you have to have the zip code to get to the address where you want to travel to. I also turned around at one point and went back to where I started and it sent me on a different route the 2nd time after I pulled the previous address from the history folder...I thought that was strange. Seems like the only logic is there is no logic . I think I will continue to test it with my co-pilot (wife) operating the other GPS we keep for the car and monitor this one before it becomes the only one in the coach. Good thing my wife loves maps.

I was so disappointed with the performance of this unit I contacted Rand McNally to ask if it could be returned, of course the answer was no, we had purchased it for a long trip that was planned months before and we had the unit too long at that point in time, I struggle with throwing it out since it cost so much money to purchase and I can’t help but think there is something just needs to be fixed with my unit. Since it is designed for an RV one would assume there is logic programmed into it for an RV. Apparently not or this one is just defective. The unit does require that you enter detailed size and weight of the RV into the unit but it didn’t seem to matter or use that information when route planning. We have an old Garmin that you can select the size of the vehicle from a menu that works well but like I said it’s very old and the screen is extremely small. I was hoping someone out there can provide me with their experience with this GPS and maybe they too experienced a problem like ours and found a solution? Thank you for the information above, if i decide to replace it I now know where to look for a better GPS.

Anyone operating with this GPS? We have one and attempted to use it once, let's just say cutting through mall parking lots driving the wrong way down a one way road, turning around at a low bridge and taking dirt roads is not my idea of the "best route" especially in a motorhome. I just updated it and I am going to try it for a few days in the car to see if it's better. Anyone have any ideas, experiences with this GPS?

No experience myself...but we had friends that stayed at camp gulf www.campgulf.com They loved it, we were considering booking for next year Joe

Update: Michelins were installed, and I changed the brakes, drums and hardware. Upon arrival to the tire dealer/installer that made the error in the first place begins to tell me "these tires will be OK even though they are overloaded, each manufacture under rates them to a percentage...you would have been fine, we're just extending this offer to you in good faith, the dealer you bought this from brought it to us and they specifically asked for this size and brand tires so we installed them". Brakes; after extensive research and phone calls to Bendix, Dana, Monaco tech support, Webb, Meritor, and Westport axle, I determined what brake linings came with the coach as original equipment, and what I could do to make it better with today's technology. I installed shoes suited for fire apparatus or trash trucks all the way around and drums made for to work with the aggressive lining. I also upgraded the rear shoes to 8.62" wide from the original 7" shoes. The coach now stops effortlessly, no more panicked searching for the engine brake switch when someone jumps out in front of you. After researching the 8.62 shoe would be standard now if you didn't have air disc brakes on a coach this heavy due to stopping requirement changes that came out in 2012. So basically we're updated. I should have taken pictures of what I had found when the drums were pulled, several cracks, hot spotting, glazing and the cheapest linings you could buy that were only rated to stop 31000 lbs (our gvw is 36000, and it weighs 33800 lbs loaded). I am so surprised a person could be so careless in selecting brakes for a vehicle this size. After making some phone calls I can see how this happened. Everyone wants to sell you what they can make the most profit on, and is the cheapest to get the sale, not what you need to stop the coach and be safe doing so. I even reached out to our local rv dealer which is a Monaco dealer, they too had no clue about brake shoes and the differences in lining, nor did they stock anything, their response was "we source locally what we can get our hands on that fits and is the most cost effective for the customer if it fits it will work or it wouldn't fit" BAD ANSWER! I only use them for an occasional part or recalls, now I can see the full picture with that dealer. I called another dealer and both seem to have the same answer, and again have no clue about chassis work, my wife and I were shocked. I went through the channels I have at work for the purchase, all together I have $987.00 in brake parts invested and about 5 hours of my time for the install and research, I now have a coach that stops with little effort. I wanted to share this experience to educate everyone to be careful where you take your coach for work, and ask questions, make them prove to you that what they are installing is correct and meets the requirements of your coach manufacture, you may be surprised that you have more knowledge than a dealer or repair shop...and the parts they hang could cost you your life. Good luck, happy camping and be safe. Joe

Cd, ford made several transmissions back then, one of them I thnk it was an FMX, cast iron case, it had the pump on the driveshaft end of the Trans, which circulated fluid with the engine off, you could flat tow that, all other transmissions the pump ran off of the engine at the front,those were aluminum cases and could not be towed without a driveshaft disconnect. You might be ok with shifting the transfer case into neutral, that would be worth looking into, in fact I am pretty sure you could do it, those old transfer cases were built to last and it's unlikely you could damage it. I do not blame you for wanting to tow the Bronco, that would be a lot of fun to drive around. If you can tell me what transmission and transfer case model you have I can make a phone call to a friend that off roads these...he still works at a Ford dealer.

Well said!

We stayed here, very easy access on and off I-40. We loved it and Williams is a neat town to walk around. I highly recommend the train trip to the Canyon. Top notch campground.

Glenn, I started out with a tow dolly, it did work but it was a lot more difficult, just in setting up the car and securing it, plus depending on your site size "where do you park the dolly" always seemed to be a problem, and since the coach was so big backing up the dolly (with no car) was almost impossible for a back in site, so I had to unhook it and walk it into a parking spot which was not too difficult but I always managed to get dirty at some point in the process between that and laying on my side in the road of the campground to hook the safety chains to the car. We bought a Jeep to flat tow and a Demco tow bar, no problems with either so far; since we do not camp full time I cheeped out and bought a Roadmaster Apollo brake box that sits on the floor from Ebay for $155.00. It works fine for what I need it to do but it’s not the best design nor is it the most convenient to set up every time, on a good note and I am legal with it. One day I want a system that is hidden in the vehicle with proportional braking, in my opinion that is the best way to go. The brake system selection would depend on the coach you have, since it appears you have air brakes your options are very good...it just depends how much you want to spend and what your expectations are from the system, I would prefer proportional braking not the system I have now. Oh yea, other than the brake box install prior to leaving the set up only takes me 3-5 minutes with the tow bar vs. 20+ with the dolly, and I don't even break a sweat. Hope this helps, as the saying goes "you get what you pay for". Joe

Agreed! Cummins, Cummins dealer, selling dealer and coach manufacture would all be called onto the carpet, let the judge sort out who is going to make this right again.

dadhanke, welcome and good luck with the "new to us home". hopefully you find a better place to park that for storage. Good luck and safe travels!