tbutler

I use economy mode all the time. We tow a GMC Acadia now and for years before that a Chevrolet Trailblazer. Economy mode simply changes the shift point slightly. In 6th gear with our coach the normal shift for 6th down to 5th occurs at 60 MPH. In economy mode the transmission will stay in 6th gear until the speed drops to 57 miles per hour. At any time if the turbocharger hits 100% the transmission will downshift. Towing a vehicle would affect the turbocharger level as it would reach 100% a little faster than if the load being towed were not there. My understanding is that the shift level for other gears is also slightly lowered but I haven't tried to determine that. The indicator on the Allison 3000 that we have simply indicates the selected gear, not the actual gear we are using at any particular time. We have a computer system that was used by Monaco for a number of years. The Aladdin system displays details of the engine and transmission performance in real time. I can watch the speed, gear, turbocharger level, instant fuel mileage statistics, temperatures and other data all on the display screen on the dash. I would guess that the display that ShortBus questions is a display showing the selected gear. Shift down manually (up and down arrows for manual shift - if you have them) and see if the display changes. When you select D, you are setting the transmission for 6th gear. If you manually shift down you would be selecting 5th gear and the display should show 5x, x being another number. Gear displays on the Aladdin system are two numbers, 12 being first gear mid range, 23 being second gear high range. So 61 would be sixth gear, low range. I may have the high and low range numbers reversed, 1 may be high range and 3 may represent low range. I believe these are pre-programmed into the transmission per motor home manufacturer data on the application and weight of the vehicle. Basically the transmission can be used in a number of different applications and Allison programs it for optimum performance for each application. Economy mode is an alternate to the set programming that emphasizes economy over high performance by altering the shift patterns. Allison transmissions are intelligent transmissions, they learn drivers habits and work to adjust to the way different people drive. If you have two drivers this may cause some confusion for the transmission computer. That may account for hard shifting. We had that condition with a coach that we bought used. We took it to an Allison shop and they cleared the transmission memory so it could learn our driving habits. I believe most of this information is related to how aggressive you are with acceleration when starting out or when climbing hills and long grades.

D*** What you are facing is censorship, not political correctness. It is legal for FMCA to regulate the language used on its web site, this is not a public forum, it is a private forum hosted by FMCA for FMCA members. You have the unfortunate circumstance of having a name which is associated with a slang term for the male sexual organ. If the computer program were "intelligent" enough, it could distinguish between D*** and d*** by analyzing how it is used in any given circumstance. Unfortunately, computers or at least this computer program isn't that "smart." So you are a victim of circumstance and the limited capabilities of the computer program. The question of calling RV's a class or type is certainly what people are describing as political correctness. I dislike the term political correctness. It is a demeaning term for what are efforts to make our use of language less offensive, more respectful. Like it or not, we live in a very open, multi-cultural society. Such a society has many potential conflicts. We manage to make it work because we can be different and still respect one another. When that respect breaks down conflict erupts. Language does convey a whole range of ideas, emotions and feelings. Words can convey love, respect, tolerance, intolerance or hate. I'm for choosing words that help us get along peacefully. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate. All that said, the first amendment of the US Constitution guarantees free speech. Everyone is free to speak in any way they want in the public forum. I along with a succession of our ancestors, politicians, lawyers, citizens and soldiers have fought to preserve that right.

Mystery solved. Thanks Todd!

Beaver and Safari were bought out by Monaco in the mid-00's. They manufactured select models up until the '08 RV crash. They have all the records that existed at the time the company was purchased by Monaco and have provided support for all Safari, Beaver, Holiday Rambler and Monaco coaches through the Navistar years and I believe this continues today. After Navistar sold Monaco to ASV, they restructured and are resuming manufacturing of Monaco coaches. There are currently two models of the Monaco line being manufactured, Dynasty and Diplomat. At the time of the ASV takeover the management of Monaco planned to bring back models slowly as the market recovered. They expressed plans to bring back some Holiday Rambler models. Now ASV has restructured and Monaco is under a division known as REV International. They manufacture a wide variety of specialty vehicles. Through it all, the phone number in my owners manual remains the contact number for Monaco and the Monaco line of products including Beaver, Safari and Holiday Rambler. If you need support, technical, service, parts, factory service centers call 877-466-6226 (they are now also listing 800-509-3417) for customer service. There are factory service centers in Oregon and Indiana and there may be several more in the works. REV also owns Fleetwood and American Coach (they also list Holiday Rambler as a separate line from Monaco but there is no mention of Beaver or Safari) lines of motor homes. Their manufacturing center is in Decatur, IN where all their coaches are manufactured along with many of their other vehicles. We spent four days at the factory service center in Oregon several years ago and the service was the best I've ever had. I had a laundry list of items that needed attention and they worked through the entire list, consulting me as they went. When I left, there was a hefty bill but I was delighted to get all those things fixed and given what was done, I was surprised the bill wasn't higher.

So now I've learned something new. It's a good day!

I have encountered several single status updates. Right now on the current forum topics on the home page there is one that shows up and when I select that topic it is a single status update between two other forum members. What is the exact function of the single status update? How is it generated? Is it appropriate to comment on a single status update between two other members? If not, why does it show up on the recent forum topics?

Wandas1, welcome to the FMCA forum! There is no reason that I know for the difference. People are type A or type B. Motor homes are class A, class B or class C. I've never noticed that it is always type A on FMCA. I'm certain you will find variations as you read more posts. The forum is informal communication and some people are not as precise as others. Be tolerant of others, be friendly and you'll find friends and some knowledgeable people willing to share their experience and expertise with you.

We've driven Highway 101 in Washington and Oregon and enjoyed it. It isn't too bad, definitely the slow route, take your time and enjoy. I've never driven the northern California section and the map makes it like a real challenge, probably not the road you want to be on from the California border to where 101 splits into CA 1 and 101. From there south we've driven it and again, great scenery and slower travel. It becomes 4 lane well north of San Francisco. Oregon Hwy 38 is my best guess where to shift from 101 over to I-5. We've driven Oregon 38 in our motor home, slow but safe. Hwy 101 in southern Oregon doesn't look too bad but there isn't a good way over to I-5 south of Reedsport, OR.

You should start a blog. Stories like this are what blogs are all about. This is the kind of story you hear in aviation safety seminars. Almost every aviation accident has a chain of events that happen leading to the eventual accident. The decisions made in that chain are analyzed and lessons learned by all. I'm going to guess that you would now make a different decision when encountering the situation you did with snow on the road as you ascended a steep hill. When I was just starting to drive I would find parking lots covered with snow and just fool around spinning the wheels or hitting the brakes hard in a turn and then applying the recovery from skids techniques that were in the textbook for drivers education. It is one thing to read about how to do it, quite another to experience it. I developed a feel for a skidding vehicle and confidence in the recovery technique properly applied stopping the skid and gaining control. Experience is the best teacher! Years later I did the same with airplanes. I took a course in recovery from unusual attitudes. After an intense review of flying techniques with fighter plane instructors, I flew two different days as part of that course. They had me put the plane in every kind of unusual position, upside down, skids, spirals, stalls, spins, inverted stalls, inverted spins and each time using techniques discussed in the classroom I was able to bring the plane upright and recover controlled flight. You just never know when you are going to experience a loss of control in a vehicle or airplane. Being prepared is the first step in a safe recovery.. In 2004 at an FMCA National Convention I took a safety course (RVSEF) for driving motor homes. Two days of instruction and I had a certificate for my insurance company. I also learned many useful attitudes and techniques for driving a large vehicle like a motor home. One of the things I remembered was what to do and what not to do to control a motor home when a front tire blows out. Two years later, after making the trip to and from Alaska in 2006, a front tire blew out. I was on the Interstate in northwest Missouri. The techniques I learned in that safety course worked perfectly, I was able to maintain control and safely get the motor home off the road and onto the shoulder. Every kind of vehicle has it's own set of rules for safe operation and best techniques for surviving emergencies. If you drive it or fly it, you should learn all you can about how to control it.

I'm curious about the shim, where was the shim inserted? If this moved the cracking from one side of the coach to the other, they may be on to something but maybe overdid it. Maybe if this occurs with all air released you should keep the coach aired up rather than releasing all the air. It will slowly deflate but can be aired up periodically by running the engine or with an external air pump using the input that a towing company uses to tow the coach. When you park the coach, is the windshield exposed to the heat of direct sunlight? Perhaps minimizing the heat of direct sunlight might help. When you say "almost all of the cracking happens ... sitting at home," where else does cracking occur? If what you have is a small crack from a rock impact or cracking that has occurred while on the road, that crack will grow larger due to stress or heat.

Welcome to the forum! Three months storage with water in the tank is an invitation for algae and bacteria growth. Empty the tank, drain all the lines and the water heater in the coach. When you get ready to hit the road again, fill the tank, add chlorine, then run the chlorinated water through all the water lines and water heater, let it sit for an hour. Drain everything and fill with fresh water. You should be ready to go!

Welcome to the forum Jamie. I read your post and can't offer any real suggestions for you but there are several people on the forum who should have some suggestions for you. One question that may come up is whether you have individual wheel position weights, that is how many pounds each wheel is supporting. Your 7800 pounds may not be distributed equally on the four wheels. This is common in RV's. I don't know how much size of vehicles affects this but things like location of holding tanks, personal goods, passengers, a slide out, other equipment may make one wheel or several wheels carry more weight while others are underweight. That can affect the desired tire pressure which can affect ride. If you haven't changed any of these kind of factors, and assuming that the tire size and the rating of the new shocks is correct for your vehicle, I wouldn't expect any significant change in the ride and handling.

Rust-Oleum makes a paint and primer combo which is described as corrosion reistant. You can order on-line, you may not be able to find it in stores. You can also get Rust-Oleum primer and use that and then overcoat with a Rust-Oleum protective enamel. These should be available at Home Depot or Lowe's. Rich has listed some that may work better. The AGM batteries are becoming more widely available. I got mine at an RV service shop, any RV dealer should be able to order them for you. Lifeline batteries are the earliest manufacturer of these batteries and they are premium quality. I'm seeing others that are sealed batteries but are still lead acid, not AGM.

This looks like corrosion caused by acid, not acid itself. Sulfuric acid which is a normal release in gaseous form from wet cell batteries, reacts with metals leaving this kind of corrosion. A little thorough cleaning with baking soda solution should remove all traces of this corrosion. Then dry the area thoroughly and either use a corrosion resistant paint to protect the metal or use a corrosion preventing battery spray. The battery spray won't last as long, you'll have to restore it occasionally. This same process is responsible for rust stains on concrete below the battery box when you park for any period of time. The battery box is ventilated to reduce this process. If the ventilation is restricted in any way, it may be causing the gasses to hang around longer in the area you show. I recently replaced our wet cell batteries with absorbed glass mat (AGM) batteries which have only very minor outgassing which eliminates almost all of this but it's a high price to pay if this is your only concern.

You mention the spark probe, but I don't see a mention of the thermocouple which functions as a flame sensor. If the thermocouple is bad, the circuit board never gets confirmation of a flame and it shuts the gas down. If this is intermittent, the thermocouple may be failing but still working occasionally. There may be a loose connection from the thermocouple to the circuit board. If none of those I would look at a fault in the circuit board, something short of a complete failure of the circuit board.

While I wouldn't expect agreement, it seems the above statements all fall within a range. My own figures varied considerably from year to year. None of the above quotes I looked at are outside the range that I quoted. It would seem that there will be years when it is more expensive and other years when it is less expensive. I bought four new Michelin tires this spring, it will likely be a more expensive year! One year I replaced two of the old CRT TV's with flat screen HD TV's. Another year I replaced our Norcold with a household refrigerator. There have been other years with repairs, modifications, improvements that add to that cost of owning the coach. I didn't figure in the cost of purchase, campground fees or other personal expenditures. Basically what I was tracking is what it costs to keep it running down the road with a fully functioning coach, repairing or replacing broken or outmoded components. I've never tried to figure a per day cost for our travel, that is another project! I have all the numbers, just need to work to put it all together. I would expect larger variation there depending on how often people travel, the type of parks they stay in and if you take meal costs into account, how often they are eating at restaurants. If you can afford the cost and enjoy traveling, I believe that there is no better way to travel. Having your house with you everywhere you go makes it possible to spend time in remote areas that would be very inconvenient if traveling from hotel to hotel.

Here is a link to a previous discussion from 2014 on cost of operation. Down near the bottom of the first page is a detailed analysis that I submitted. I'll leave it to anyone who is interested to go to that discussion and won't try to reproduce the results here. The bottom line was after 10 years, from new to very used coach, we spent $133,689 to travel 118,270 miles for an average cost per mile of $1.13. That is operating cost, not including the purchase cost. The per mile costs ranged from $0.60 and $0.70 the first two years (2004 and 2005) to $1.95 in 2011. The 2013 cost per mile was $1.15 so it isn't a constantly escalating figure. Read the full discussion for all the details.

Since my 2012 post I got my first iPhone. There are a number of apps for the iPhone, I'm sure that android phones have the same. AllStays has a number of apps including Walmart overnight parking and Camp & RV which includes Walmart and tons of campgrounds and stopping places, some free, some for a fee. There are comments from users with many of these including the ONP Walmart which has advice on where they expect you to park. AllStays also has an RV Dumps app. AllStays Camp and RV has the widest variety of location assistance including truck stops, camping and outdoor stores, rest areas, turnouts, RV dealers, and you can filter the campgrounds based on categories like military, national park, public lands, state/provincial parks, KOA, Corps of Engineers, Elk Parking, etc. The cost for the Camp and RV app is about $12, a one time fee and it updates on a regular basis. You can even see where you are on a map and let it lead you to your intended destination. Where we are located right now it shows several dozen sites of various kinds in a 30 mile radius on a map or you can search a list. If you are traveling I-80, there is a nice rest area well off the highway west of Laramie, just past WY Hwy 13. The rest area is on the south side of the highway but accessible from either direction on I-80. There are also frequent truck parking areas along I-80 in Wyoming. They are large, no facilities at all, but we've used them without any problems in the past. We have stayed at rest areas in Nebraska but they are close to I-80 and pretty noisy from passing traffic.

Thanks for the reminder! I noticed yesterday that I hadn't changed the filters in our coach this spring. Lowe's has a cut to fit filter. The WEB Products filter has an electrostatic layer for pollen and dust (MERV 8 rating) and has an activated charcoal layer for odor control. They are very effective without restricting air flow.

I'd have to learn to drive again if I didn't have a smart wheel! Life just keeps getting better. First it was sliced bread and now smart wheels! Next thing you know we'll have smart maps that tell you where to go.

We did this trip in 2006. We were coming from visiting family in California so went through Washington. We spent most of the month of June in British Columbia, traveling slowly and stopping for sites of interest along the way. We've traveled up the eastern side of the Canadian Rockies and that is a beautiful route also. Once you get to Dawson Creek, you pick up the Alaska (AlCan) Highway. At Whitehorse we went north to Dawson City and spent several days there. From there we drove to Inuvik in Northern Territories. It is an Inuit village inside the Arctic Circle so we had that experience. Being near the summer solstice we experienced the midnight sun, stayed for a night and then drove back. The road is 465 miles of gravel road with two river crossings on ferries. We didn't take the motor home on that trip, that was for the toad. From Dawson City the Over the Top Highway takes you into Alaska north of the town of Chicken. It is gravel from Dawson City to Chicken, pretty good gravel in Canada, pretty rough and narrow in the US. From Chicken we went south to Tok which is on the Alaska Highway. From Tok, you can travel a circular route in either direction, we went to Fairbanks and stayed for several weeks. We flew from there to Barrow, AK, a one day round trip flight, Arctic Ocean, Inuit village, native dances, touring, and return. It was a small plane (twin engine) and the flight was at low level (2500 to 5000 feet above ground) so it gave us lots of sightseeing from the air. We celebrated July 4 at the city park with thousands of Fairbanks residents. Then south to Denali NP, Anchorage, a week down the Kenai Peninsula, back to Anchorage and then east along the Athabaska Valley and Athabaska Glacier to Valdez, several stops in Wrangell-St. Elias NP, then back to Tok and on to Whitehorse. This pretty much covered all the main roads in mainland Alaska. From Whitehorse we went south to Skagway and stayed several days, a train ride, museums, and an RV park in the shadow of the cruise ships. Returning to Whitehorse we then went south to Stewart, CA and Hyder, US to see the bears along Bird Creek and the Salmon Glacier. We were not disappointed in either of these attractions. Returning to Canada Hwy 37 we made a side trip to Prince Rupert on the Canadian coast. Then it was back to the Alaska Highway and on south into Washington. I've deviated a little from your initial question to give you an idea of the possibilities for covering almost all of the roads that can be traveled in the trip to/from Alaska. Your best guide to all these places including the various routes to Dawson Creek and the Alaska Highway is as mentioned above, The Milepost. It is updated annually so you will want to get the current edition. It costs about $35 which sounds expensive until you consider what you are going to spend on this trip. The Milepost will be your constant reference on this trip. You can make your decision on exactly where to cross the border based on the information in The Milepost. It has information on road conditions, where to find fuel, attractions all along the route including the various routes to and from the Alaska Highway. It is truly the trip of a lifetime though we met people who make the trip every year. Take your time and explore everything you are interested in along the way.

We've been "on the road" for 16 years now. We have taken some epic trips. Louise has planned some of those and I took the lead on others. She set us on the Lewis and Clark Trail our third year out and it remains one of our all-time favorite trips. I have pushed us to the limits, the have-to trip to Alaska and the Canadian counterpart, Newfoundland and Labrador. I may have exceeded the limit with our four month tour of New Zealand and Australia in a small Class C camper. We both enjoy travel but I believe I'm outlasting her. This year she wants a low and slow trip, just family, so that's what we're doing. Along the way we might do a little exploring but we'll stay pretty close to the grandchildren. I'm still looking forward to exploring far flung places! Viva la difference! Great article, thanks.

I read a post a few years ago from a dedicated do-it-yourself-er! "It's a bad day if I haven't drilled a hole in my motor home!"

Candlestick Park is in San Francisco. The link is for RV Park Reviews. It has been many years since we stayed there. It is on the grounds of Candlestick Park which used to be the home park of the San Francisco Giants baseball team. We found it to be a well cared for park capable of accommodating large motor homes. If you are going to be primarily spending your time in San Francisco, it may be worth your money to be in town rather than driving in from somewhere else. I hate the drive into and out of the city. The park is expensive by any measure, $80 to $90. Public transportation is available or you can take your toad for trips around town. We used both while there. It is the only park in or close to San Francisco. Balance the cost of the park vs. your time and the hassle and cost of driving from 40 or 50 miles away each direction and parking your car, etc.

There are a series of ignition relays in the front electrical panel which is located below the drivers left foot and accessed through the door on the outside of the coach. The starter solenoid is located on the starter itself. I'm not an expert but in reviewing 67 pages of electrical diagrams for the Windsor, I can find no reference to an ignition solenoid.