Finally Fixing Things
After spending almost a year in our coach (since April 5, 2013) we have identified a number of system items that have either degraded, failed or were defective from delivery. This is very normal for new RV's or any other machine of any complexity. There are always going to be failures and defects that come to light, especially early in the ownership life-cycle. New Horizons, the manufacturer of our coach has a great warranty and provides excellent service support. The big problem we had was living on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia. There just isn't the service and sales selection in that area because the market is insufficient in size. The service providers that are here are on the eastern shore of VA are highly subscribed and therefore are very selective of who and how they are willing to provide services. As a result we were unable to enlist any professional services whatsoever for our first 10 months of ownership and residence in our rig. We were left to our own devices to investigate and repair various items the best we could on our own and coaching from New Horizons and various system suppliers. We were able to accomplish a few things and that was good, but others are just beyond our willingness and abilities to tackle. Now that we are in a larger market, northern Florida, we have a discovered a selection of service providers willing and able to assist us. We set up a mobile appointment, which was completed today, to investigate our bedroom furnace failure. That failure, and the bitter cold weather were the driving factors in our rushed January departure from the Eastern Shore.
Ironically, now that we are farther south and the furnace is not actually needed, the priority became our failed Fantastic MaxxFans. We have three of these fans. They are mounted in the ceiling and vent through the roof. These are pretty common items in RVs, although New Horizons uses some fancy fans. All our fans run on 12V power (which is the standard) and two of our fans include remote controls, one of the remote controls is wireless, the other is a 4-button keypad on the wall. These fans have thermostat settings to cycle fan power with respect to temperature and they are reversible in order to draw air in or blow air out. They are indeed Fantastic! During the coldest of weather two of our fans failed. We discovered this because a small alarm on the fan controls board started beeping. Normally this type of thing happens at 3:00 AM, but we were fortunate that it happened before bedtime one evening. Our first move was to pull a 12V fuse, but strangely enough the beeping didn't stop! We thought there must be a battery on the control board. We started taking the first fan apart but couldn't easily get to the control board so we decided to cut the incoming 12V power wire, and that did it. The beeping stopped in the first fan, but immediately started in the second fan! We knew the drill, so we reassembled the first fan and went after the power wire in the second fan, and then we were back to peace and quiet, but only our living room fan remained in service at that point. We really didn't need the fans in that cold northern weather so no big deal. Now that we are in sunny Florida we need them again. We contacted the MaxxFan company and they explained that they had seen this failure mode and had redesigned the control boards. They asked for all the serial numbers of our 3 fans and promptly shipped out replacement kits to us. We installed two kits in the non-functioning fans and we are back in business.
Fantastic Fan in living room ceiling
Wireless remote control for Fantastic Fan in living room
Replacement control board that we installed.
Quadra Bigfoot hydraulic leveling system
Perhaps more importantly we addressed a recent failure in our coach leveling system. An RV must be level for a few important reasons. First it is fairly standard across the RV industry that a rig should be level prior to actuating slides. Nowadays there are slides on just about everything out there, so you have to be level. The next critical item that requires level is the refrigerator, Although many of the newer larger RVs are going to residential refrigerators that previous standard was an absorption type refrigerator which we have. The absorption refrigerators operate with an ammonia boiling cooling cycle and can forgo a motor and compressor for an electric or propane heating element to boil the ammonia and start the absorption cooling cycle. It is also more comfortable to sleep, sit, cook and just about everything else when the rig is level. Suffice it to say level is important and good.
Like many of our coach systems, New Horizons once again selected a leading leveling system. The "Bigfoot" is an automatic four-point leveling system. Just press one button on our key fob and the coach goes about leveling itself in less than 5 minutes. The failure mode in our Bigfoot is a known problem with the rear sensor. We discovered the failure the day we left The Meadows in Pocomoke, MD. We had sat there for a wonderful 9 months! It is hard to believe how fast our time there passed. We drove a short shake down distance of about 20 miles to Trails End in Horntown, VA. When we arrived at our lot and started the unhooking process the fun and excitement began.
Since we had been sitting still for such a long time, we have not had the practice of hooking and unhooking and leveling the rig. We have done each of these procedures a half a dozen times in the past 10 months, but it had been 9 months since the last time! Needless to say we were rusty and had to think about each action we took. Gari backed the rig onto the Trails End lot while I provided ground spotting support on the two way radio. Gari is a better driver and I am a more prolific talker. When we switch duties I drive directly into a bind and Gari watches silently on the radio :)
Once the rig was positioned, which was very quickly, we went about unhooking and that's when time stood still. The first action is to drop the front hydraulic jacks and unweight the truck hitch. I pulled on the hitch handle to release the pin but I couldn't budge it. I noticed that the site was a bit unlevel so I proceeded to try and match the trailer tilt to the truck tilt... big mistake. As I tried to release the pin over and over as I adjusted the trailer positioning I was failing miserably. I even started getting the rear jacks involved and that was an even bigger mistake. We finally got the truck unhooked and were ready to finish the leveling job.
First, what we learned about unhooking that day... Use the front jacks only. Don't worry about the level, just unweight the hitch. Chock the trailer wheels. Put the truck in
neutral and let any force off the trailer pin-hitch interface. Voila, the release handle is now very easy to pull and the pin releases smooth as silk! Now you are ready to level, starting with only the front jacks on the ground.
Once again a quick call to the Bigfoot manufacturer yielded plenty of technical support and replacement parts shipped out immediately. We received an upgraded control panel on which the readout performs better in direct sunlight and a new sensor. These were very easy to install, it was merely a plug and play swap so was well within our capabilities to repair. Now we are back in the leveling business as well.
But wait, there is more to the Trails End leveling story... the part about where I almost tipped the coach over on its' side!! :0
After releasing the hitch pin and starting to level with all four jacks already on the ground and the trailer in some tilted position that I thought matched the truck tilt, I started to try and find true level for the coach. I normally do this manually by first grounding all four jacks (just touch the ground but don't lift yet); then I move both jacks on the low side simultaneously until the coach is level side to side; next move either the front pair or rear pair of jacks simultaneously (whichever end is low) and run up until the front to rear is level, and that's it. Well not this time, because of the failure mode, of which I was unaware, the system led me down the primrose path and I happily skipped along. I started with leveling side to side. The system told me the driver's side was low so I began deploying the driver side jacks, lifting the driver's side of the trailer. I stopped looked and thought the driver's side was a bit higher, but the Bigfoot system said no, it is still low, move it higher, so I did. Pretty soon I knew the Bigfoot was wrong, but the controls were confused and locked us out of the move we needed to make.... either driver's side down or passenger side up, the Bigfoot would not allow. So I tested the opposite moves 2 or three times and that's when I realized the coach looked like it was going to tip over on it's passenger side!!! :0
The call to Bigfoot got us out of the bind by getting help putting the Bigfoot into a special control mode and little by little we were able to lower the driver's side. Below are the parts we received to aviod this problem in the future. They include a new front sensor and a new control/display panel.
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