jdonthego

Thank you all - excellent input. The wheel/tire balancing was done with the 'Road Force' machine that measures run-out/out of round so that has been checked. As far as I am aware (and can see from the chassis) there hasn't been any major damage/repair. No, the ride height has not been checked. As I noted, I asked for the drive shaft to be checked but no idea if it really was (or they even knew what to check). Lacking any confidence in the people working on the coach is very frustrating. I suppose taking it to an MCI service center is about the only remedy for that (at least I hope). I have not tried different ride heights at speed but that is easy to do - thank you for that suggestion! Ya'll have given me some ideas - thank you!

Hello all, I'm mostly looking for a sanity check to see if my thinking makes any sense. While I certainly enjoy tossing large sums of money at my coach, I generally like to see some improvement as a result. To date, the results have not been good. Thanks in advance!! 🙂 I've been fighting a fairly significant vibration on an MCI coach (102-EL3) for a couple years now. In general, it starts at 55mph is bad up thru 63 mph and is tolerable at 66-68mph. It may be better when cold - definitely bad after being in operation a while. Up/down hill doesn't matter. Coasting downhill doesn't make any difference. I won't bore you with all the details but will say that I've had every king pin, bushing, rod end, etc... replaced that mechanics have even given a second glance, all eight tires, four wheels, Road Force balanced all eight wheels/tires at least four times each (different shops), replaced tires, used Tru-Balance to mount wheels, etc... I have never tried balance beads and nobody has spent much time looking at the drive shaft. It makes complete sense to me that my problem is not the wheels/tires (given two different sets of tires and the number of times the wheels/tires have been balanced - perhaps the brake disk or ???). I was looking for a shop that would perform an on-vehicle balance and ran into the threads here about the Centramatic balancers. I haven't yet found such a shop in the NM area so was thinking of tossing another thousand $$ at it with these Centramatic balancers. Sound like a logical next step? Or, do you know of a really good shop that will do on vehicle balance in the SW (NM but I would go to PHX if there was optimism). Thank you!!

Hi Carl, My coach is all electric and I spend nearly all of my time boondocking - completely powered by solar (fulltimer). The expense to accomplish that is not insignificant but it isn't all that bad either - at least in terms of the cost of a good diesel generator and running it 4-5 hours per day, every day of the year (or close to it). However; not everyone uses their coach like I do so determining its 'value' is a very personal thing - certainly no right or wrong. I am super sensitive to noise so NOT having to listen to a generator is something I consider to be of great value. Here are a few posts I have written about solar power. http://jdfinley.com/is-solar-power-for-you/ http://jdfinley.com/payback-solar-charging-system/ If not familiar with an energy audit/budget, this might be a good place to start. http://jdfinley.com/energy-audit-watt/

Me too. Bummer. Not the end of the world though - probably just overwhelmed and need to regroup.