richard5933

The Google search you're looking for is "Houston commercial tire dealer" (without the quotes)

When checking for clearance around the tires, don't forget to figure what things will be like when the air is dumped and the coach is sitting on the bumpers. You don't want to find out that there is interference between tires and suspension/brakes after it's too late. On some coaches you can do a visual inspection once the air is dumped. On others you can't really see much beyond the outside of the tires. If you've got a scope, you can use it to see how much clearance there is with your current setup once the air is dumped. The scope I use for things like this is: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MYTHWK4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 A scope like this is really handy for many types of inspections, not just for checking wheel clearance. I've used it to look behind appliances, inside wall cavities, etc.

Still unclear on one thing...Are the outlets you're plugging into at the house a GFCI outlet? If so, have you tried to plug into a non-GFCI outlet to test things? There are a few things in an RV which can go bad and cause GFCI outlets and/or GFCI breakers to trip when regular ones won't.

Some older campgrounds will be tight for a larger coach. We're only 35 ft long and 12 ft tall and have had difficulty at more than a couple of campgrounds. They all claim to handle larger coach up to 40+ when I call and ask, but once you get there things are tight. We were at a campground a few weeks ago in Michigan, and larger rigs had to swing out over the grassy areas to back into the sites. Not a problem in dry weather, but judging by the repairs to the turf more than one coach has sunk in and damaged the grass. In wet weather I wouldn't even attempt to pull into one of those sites if it meant driving over grass of unknown stability. In the end the length of your coach will depend on where and how you'll use it. If you are going to be visiting campgrounds in the Northeast or upper Midwest, check in those areas to see what campground can handle. Sounds like campgrounds in the Southwest, South, and Florida generally have more capacity for larger rigs. Certainly not a one-size-fits-all kind of question.

Knowing that sure will help you keep from creeping up in size with each tire change. Wasn't much of a difference in the two sizes being discussed earlier, but there is a difference between those and what your coach started with.

Do you know the size tires the coach left the factory with? Is it the current 275/80R22.5 ?

Sounds good. Glad to see another solution out there for people that don't want the bumps on the roof. Could you share the make/model of the unit you're running?

Nice neat installation. Any problems with the condensing unit starving for air when you're on the road? I only ask because I've seen others go through great lengths to add ducting and baffles to direct air to it, but yours seems to be making use of the vented bay door. If that's the old a/c bay, there should be plenty of air flow, since I assume the floor of the bay is open as well.

That's similar to the tool I used for the valve stem caps. Sometimes you just have to make your own. I hadn't thought of using heater hose, but I might have to try that on mine to save from sticking my arm through all that mess to get the TMPS off. Maybe bond a short piece of heater hose to the end of a length of 1" dowel.

I'd agree that using a separate TPMS sensor on each wheel is ideal. If a tire is getting low, I want to know which one. Also, if I understand the way the equalizers work they'll double the time it takes for you to receive an alert from your TPMS. Mine is set to sound an alert when the pressure drops a set amount in a certain length of time. If both tires are joined together, a slow leak in one will be mitigated by the other tire and result in the alert sounding later. When I had our previous coach with Alcoa aluminum wheels on the outer duals, it was really tough to get a tire gauge or TMPS sensor on the inner tire. I took it to a commercial tire shop and had them reconfigure the valve stems to make it work better. They were able to carefully bend mine into a good position using a tool they had, but I imagine if necessary they could have change the valve stem to one better suited to what I needed. There is a special tool which can be used to remove the valve stem caps from the inner tires through the hole in the outer wheel. If I still had that coach with the Alcoa I'd be trying to make a similar tool dedicated to installing/removing the TMPS sensors on the inner wheels. Fortunately our current coach has openings large enough for my hand to fit through to reach the inner valve stems directly.

Rich - Any idea why the Intellitec 15-amp latching controller says it's only for use on water pumps with at least a 5 amp current draw? I understood the controller to be a simple latching relay which was triggered to switch on-off by momentary switch. Since our pump has a pressure switch built in, once it reaches pressure there will be zero current draw. Same for any modern pump. I understand putting a max load rating on the controller, but why the minimum especially since nearly all pumps will have zero load lots of the time. What am I missing on this?

Doesn't a vehicle have to be used in interstate commerce in order for the Federal definition of 'commercial vehicle' to apply? A privately-owned motor home, no matter how heavy, would not meet the Federal definition of a commercial vehicle unless it was being used in commerce (such as selling crafts at shows). On the flip side, a vehicle with a GVWR far less than 26000 could easily be considered a commercial vehicle if it's used in interstate commerce. The fact that the motor home in the original posting was licensed to an LLC is why the tax official considered it a commercial vehicle subject to the IFTA requirements. Sounded like the assumption was that any vehicle registered to a commercial operation was by default a commercial vehicle absent positive evidence to the contrary. The question of which drivers license is required is a red herring in this conversation. There are many vehicles used in interstate commerce which are considered a commercial vehicle be Federal definition and do not require a CDL. And, those states which do require a class B license for larger motor homes specifically do not require a commercial license, but they often use the CDL testing and/or study materials since they have the same content and allows them to save money by not publishing a whole new set of materials.

Thanks Rich. I'll post a followup once the parts all come in and I've got things installed. It will be nice to be able to turn the pump on from either bathroom or kitchen, regardless of where it was turned on. I'll add an additional switch in the wet bay for convenience as well.

If you didn't trip the breaker with the inverter turned on, I'm wondering if the inverter isn't taking some of the load that was being borne solely by shore power without it. That might have given you enough headroom so that you didn't trip the breaker. Some systems use the inverter to offset shore power which is inadequate to supply the needed power.

I've ordered an Intellitec 15-amp water pump controller. I've got the wiring diagram downloaded from one of the sites online. I have a few questions, and hope someone can help. It appears that the controller uses momentary switches to control the water pump. Push the momentary switch once and the pump turns on, push it again and it turns off. Is this correct? It appears that I can have as many momentary switches connected in parallel to accomplish this, which means I'll use two. The switch currently in the cockpit panel only has one conductor going to it, so I'll re-purpose that to trigger an indicator lamp on the dash for the water pump since I don't really need to control the water pump from the dash (there is a switch in the bathroom and in the kitchen). I've currently got one 12v+ wire going from the fuse block to each of the switches. The switches then sends 12v+ to the water pump. If I understand correctly, this will need to be changed. The switches will now provide a ground to the controller, so I need to change out my on-off rockers for momentary switches, and then wire them to provide a ground source. I'm planning to add an additional conductor for this ground wire, and then use the existing conductor to send 12v+ back to indicator lamps which I'll mount next to the switches. It seems that I'll also need to run a 12v+ supply line directly from the fuse block to the water pump. Should be no problem. The current ground wire going to the pump will be disconnected and will be replaced by the ground wire coming from the newly-installed Intellitec controller. Do I have this generally correct?

Spent the night at the Poplar Grove Vintage Wings and Wheels Museum. They have a very small museum, but the real treat here is that the airport is filled with vintage aircraft and they allow you to walk around and visit with the plane owners. We sat alongside the taxi lane last evening watching vintage planes come and go. They ask people to call first.

That's a great thought. Custom Coach did some weird things, one of them being using bonded neutral/ground. Even more weird was then using the 120v neutral as a ground source for some of the 12v circuits. I thought that I had identified and corrected all those, but maybe I missed one.

Yup - I noticed that when I went to research the controller. The most common ones are 10-amp, which would work but not provide much head room. I ordered a 15-amp controller so that I have room for a larger pump in the future. Good thought about the charging circuit. There is one in the old Kohler generator but it's switched off right now. Of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't a failed part in there causing the phantom voltage. The main battery chargers right now are Progress Dynamics modern multi-stage chargers, so they are unlikely culprits. My guess is that the whole thing has something to do with all the 120v and 12vdc wiring sharing conduits, chases, and terminal blocks. A gift from Custom Coach that just keeps on giving. Slowly working to remedy that whenever I'm doing improvements and upgrades.

Custom Coach didn't install anything like this - all the switches go directly to the pump. That's why I was going to install a relay, but a latching control sounds like it would be better. Thanks for the suggestion.

I've got a 12v water pump in the wet bay. It is fed by three different 12v+ feeds, one from each of the three switches upstairs (bathroom, kitchen, & cockpit). There is an LED indicator light on the dash which lights when there is power to the water pump. Helpful because we like to turn off the pump any time we leave the bus, and this indicator is on our visual checklist as we go out the door. Recently we've noticed a very faint glow of the indicator at all times. It might have been there for a while, but we just noticed it. So today I did some testing. I separated all the feeds, and found a few mV on each of them. Since they all go through the main wiring loom where both 120v and 12v live lines feed, I wasn't surprised to see this. Here's where it gets weird...When I measure with the three feeds together, with all three switches in the 'off' position, I get 0.9v from them. I then pulled the fuse from the two rear switches and disconnected the wire going to the front switch at the switch. Still got 0.9v at the point all three join together to feed the water pump. Is it possible to have this much stray voltage transmitted just by having the wires run through the loom? My concern with all this is the result of having that phantom voltage going to the water pump all the time. My immediate solution will be to install a relay in the circuit. The coil in the relay will be triggered by the current water pump switches, and I'll run a new 12v+ feed directly from the fuse panel to the switch side of the relay. This should isolate the pump from any of the stray voltage floating around in the switches. Probably should have had a relay in there from the start, but that's not how things came to me. Still would like to learn more about this and figure out where the stray voltage is coming from. Any thoughts?

That's the direction we went. We carry two folding Tern e-bikes. They have a great range of 25-40 miles, depending on what level we use, and the pedal assist makes it really easy to go 10 miles or more into town without breaking a sweat. There are other e-bikes out there with throttles instead of pedal assist. They obviously don't require pedaling, but their range will be much more limited on the same battery size as the pedal assist models. If you go with a throttle e-bike, get the largest battery you can. All that said, still won't give you the same flexibility as a pair of 50cc scooters. I had seriously looked at getting a pair of 70's style mopeds to carry with, but couldn't figure out a good way to hitch them to our coach.

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You can get an EZ Pass from any state you like, so shop around. I live in Wisconsin where we don't have EZ Pass at all, and chose to get the pass through Illinois where it's called the I-Pass. Works where ever the EZ Pass works. Some states charge for the transponders, some do not. Illinois does not, which is why I got mine through them. I believe that the EZ Pass works on the Central Florida Expressway but not on all the Florida toll roads. EZ Pass works for us all the way from Wisconsin to the east coast. I don't travel to Florida so no need for a Sunpass, but I do have a Texas toll tag for use down there. Apparently Oklahoma has their own system which doesn't accept EZ Pass. One note of importance... Be sure to set a minimum balance (for automatic refill) which is high enough to cover a day's travel. In some areas the systems will not recognize that your account balance was refilled until the next day, which could leave you with a zero balance for a short while. Happened to us when traveling west from NJ to Wisconsin - the tolls had accumulated through the days down to our $20 refill point a couple of times. Our account did its automatic refill and I got the confirmation email. As we continued to drive our balance was near zero. Then we arrived at the Chicago Skyway bridge, which is run by a private corporation. Their system didn't refresh until overnight, so when we got to the toll booth it would not accept our EZ Pass. Less learned. Now we do the automatic refill when the balance gets to $100. Some of the tolls on the east coast are high enough that only a couple of them can add up fast.

A big welcome from Wisconsin!

I was going through the "all activity" screen recently and noticed that about a dozen members join the forum community every day. That's a lot of new forum users joining which is great to see. So, a big 'hello' to all the new forum community members out there! We're glad you're here and we all look forward to hearing from you on the forum. It would be great to hear a little bit about you, about your rig, and about your travels. Feel free to post new threads or to comment on existing ones. There is a forum category called "All About You" which would be a great place to introduce yourself, or if you have a specific topic to post on you can select another category. Looking forward to meeting all the new forum community members!