jleamont

I have a friend (ex boss) that was a flight instructor, I’ll call him tomorrow, bought time we catch up anyway.

Brett, hadn’t thought about coach drag increasing. Interesting, I’ll have to read up on that. Thanks!

Something just dawned on me... Aquahot has only been on diesel for one cycle a month since it’s not used for hot water. That must consume more than I realized.

Bill, just topped off the tank for the western road trip on our way home today. Check this out; 34.81 gallons burned in 381 miles . I contribute most of these gains to the cold temperatures we have been experiencing. Colder air charge into the intake, better combustion. I have been really diligent with the a accelerator and watching my gauges.

That’s so different I like it! Nice concept!!

Bill, I run the same additive, I have a case in the basement of the coach.

Bill, GPS and the road construction speed signs, both show the same. I figured between the two I have the speed portion pretty close to being accurate. I do the same as bill, when approaching a hill, I manually drop down and just let the engine walk me up and over. I do this before it starts to lug itself. I also will turn on the economy button, just so I have full control of the shift points, not the coach. Once I loose that momentum it will recoup it, but for a expense! Rich those MPG’s are great! This old girl is just too heavy to expect much more out of. All and all I’m pretty happy with it’s MPG. The year this was built I had a couple year old Ford F-350 4x4 with a 351, that wouldn’t get anything over 6-7 mpg, so think about the size/weight different, let that sink in. No complaints here other than the factory programming.

I have been experimenting with my MPG’s this year. I have found that if I manually shift when pulling a hill, DO NOT use cruise control unless flat and most of all KEEP THE BOOST GAUGE UNDER 15 psi my mpg’s are constantly 9.3-9.8mpg. I must watch that gauge especially if I do use cruise on flat land and if I start to loose power on a grade don’t let the engine push me, drop 1 gear manually. im convinced whom ever programmed this coach between the engine brake and transmission shift points it was either a Friday before a holiday or someone drank or smoked their lunch . My favorite mistake; you cannot use cruise control with the engine brake on. As soon as it’s not applying fuel your eating seat belt then it up shifts burries the boost gauge and takes off trying to get you back to the set speed. You allow that nonsense your MPG’s are in the 7-8 range. One day I will bring a laptop home from work with Cummins Insight on it and go through this coach’s parameters. The 12R tires also lowered my RPM’s a little on the highway oddly my speedometer is only 1-2 mph off.

Yeah, ours has a feature if you hold both buttons the valve opens to the tank, I guess so you can pour water in? Darn kids figured that out, I thought they broke it

I have "RV PARKY", "PARK ADVISOR ", "Book your Site" "KOA", "GOOD SAM" app's on my phone. DW will use these or just google maps a few hours out to see whats ahead on our intended path. She will then go onto their website to make sure we can fit and call to see what sites are available. She will do the same for Walmart's, rest stops and such for overnight parking. With the new trucker Electronic log mandate of 2018, we will not park at a truck stop unless it has dedicated RV parking. We have a bunch of stuff on hand to help with this. Another great purchase is this book, it locates dump stations, campgrounds, fuel and other stuff you might need close to the exit. We also have the FMCA atlas, another great tool to help locate RV related stuff close to where you are at. https://thenextexit.com/product/next-exit-2018-edition/ https://store.fmca.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=173

The issue is warranty reimbursement from the manufacture to the dealer is often very, very poor. Most manufactures will only pay 10% or less of what the dealer has into a unit to make it correct. This is a 2 part problem, a dealer knows this going into it so they will rush through a repair and short cut it to keep their losses at a minimum. One step deeper, the poor technician is often paid by the job. Here's how that unfolds; warranty time pays 12 minutes to diagnose and make a repair, due to the part location it might take this individual an hour to complete and then road test the vehicle to make sure its actually repaired correctly, don't forget this person might have to pull the vehicle in and out of the shop as they might not have the parts. That 12 minutes is long gone by now! This throughout the week might make this person physically be "working" 60 hours but only getting paid for 30 hours. Some dealers will inflate their hourly rate to help and will often feed customer pay work to help keep the technician, this also drives up customer pay work as they are often trying to over bid cash work to offset their low hours for the week. Dealers will often push out the time they can work on it to discourage the consumer from bringing it to them in the first place. Some will refuse any warranty work unless they sold it, which they will do for THEIR customer only. Service after the sale hoping for future repeat business form a current customer, they know the consumer that went down the road and purchased elsewhere did shop at their store but didn't purchase, probably over a few dollar difference. This is why I am a firm believer, buy locally, shop the other guy first, then go to you local dealer and try and beat the other guys number, or at minimum match it. Coming from the automotive/truck business we had customers drive 2 hours away for the same car/truck to save $50.00, when they broke guess who went to the end of the line, especially if they only used us for warranty work. That work sat out back until we were slow and needed fill in work. We also had another issue, the more of a model/power train we sold gave us more warranty power, if we didn't sell many and we did to much warranty work we were penalized for it. That's were the upfront refusal to work on it often came into play. Our sales manager would drop a list of names with the service manager weekly, if that name popped back up for warranty service, they knew..... As you can see the manufactures create most of these problems for the consumer long before the sale.

YUP, that is my main reason for keeping it on. Sad to say but most new drivers refuse to use them due to stereotyping, I haven't figured that out yet but.....

Mark, great information! Our coach has a CB in it, I only turn it on to hear whats going on ahead of us, otherwise its pretty useless, even more so in today's world.

Electrical outlets (or ours anyway) the wires snap in with a crimp locking device, those aren't coming loose. I pull these two covers every year and the transfer switch cover and check all connections. I also check the two lugs on the 12v panel. Rich, generator ground is one I hadn't thought of, thanks for the tip!

Whats the issues with a FRED? I never considered one, when we were shopping I HAD to have a full air suspension and full air brake coach, so these never came into the equation.

Cute dog! Looks like hes gonna grow up to be a big dog.

Keep in mind it is all relative. Heavy coaches have larger engines,lighter coaches have smaller engines. I drove a 340HP Fleetwood Excursion a few years ago when we were coach shopping, it didn't feel under powered to me, I was actually quite impressed on how it performed.

I don't believe this is limited to Winnebago. I follow many RV sites on social media, not one manufacture seems to handle RV's in a manner to please the owner.

My friend has experienced the same, no parts availability, discontinued! He has had to have stuff fabricated to fit from other makes and his is 3 years newer than yours, very sad...

Similar thing happens in Disney, rooms and campsites people book them all up then bid them off on line and make a profit. It appears to be sold out, at the last minute if no one claims them they will cancel the reservation and they go back into the pool. Very frustrating, it seems like with technology the greed has become overwhelming.

Eric, assuming you don’t have a switch on the dash to turn it off? We have one and a switch to activate it. I will say it’s no where near as loud as the types found in construction equipment.

That is normal, mine is the exact same way. Glow plugs can operate up to one minute before it will start, some engines they will actually stay on for an additional 3 minutes after it is running to keep the air cleaner from the exhaust.