Coolant leak

[bluevost]

Good morining POGgers,

My bus has developed a coolant leak in one of the lines going forward. I can see a drip when I look in from the number 3 bay, drivers side (let's call that the water bay), but cannot see the source. Opening up bay 4 drivers side (let's call that the dump bay) I cannot see the source either. It seems like it is behind the water heaters, and above the hose reels for elec. and water. There have been no overheating issues. I drove the bus home from Casa Grande, AZ yesterday, and all was well.

Anybody have any experience with this, or any thoughts as how to proceed??
Appreciate your replys.

Ken

[Jerry Winchester]

Ken,

How about some more information.

OTR air? AquaHot / Webasto? Where is generator radiator located?

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Here is some bad news for anybody with a 10 year old bus or older.

At 10 years on our old coach all the converter installed hoses and rubber connectors in the coolant system, such as connectors between runs of copper, elbows, short sections of rubber hose to various heat exchangers etc. got pretty bad. The rubber dried out and was prone to cracking, or the rubber got that feeling of disintegrating internally, or the rubber just exhibited a leak. It was a major project to go through the entire coach. I could not believe all the places rubber coolant hose was used.

I am scheduled to change coolant on my coach next year and when the system is drained I am going to replace every hose, elbow, hose section, and clamp on every system and device such as the Webasto and any other converter installed coolant line. Nothing holds up as well as the blue hoses used on the engine and I hope to replace all of the black or red hoses I now have with that material.

My wake up call was an engine that shut down while checking into a campground and it was a hose and clamps I could get at underneath by the engine. But I did find hoses that would have been difficult to find in an emergency (such as coolant all over the floor) and some were very bad shape.

[truk4u]

Ken,

If it just turned cold in your area, welcome to the loose clamp nightmare. It almost seems like it's mother natures way of telling you to retighten all your hose clamps!:eek:

Sounds like it's a hard spot to see or work in, but my Marathon had the same problem on one of the water heater exchange hoses, but I was able to easily get to it. Hopefully it's just a clamp and you probably have a bunch of them.

Keep us posted..

[bluevost]

JDUB
The gen is in bay 2, driver side, and as far as I know has it's own system and there is no problem there. I do have a wabasto heater, I looked at it, and all hoses in sight are free of drips.

Jon
reading your post was as much fun for me, as reading my post under National Rally must have been for others. Talk about a thread killer! OK. So not many of us have the skill or facilities that you do, would you suggest a trip to Prevost Mira Loma, or Country Coach, or ??

Ken

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Ken, If you are talking about the converter installed coolant hoses the biggest job is accessing them, If you have a place to work there is not much magic associated with doing it, but it involves a lot of disassembly.

I don't want to sound like the Grinch but I really kept an eye on my coach and made sure the hoses looked OK and the clamps were tight, etc. The first sign I actually ignored. In front of and above the drive axle on my coach there are two 3/4" copper coolant hose going to and from the front of the coach. They started dripping at the rubber tubing connectors so I just tightened them and paid no more attention. When I finally got around to changine coolant hoses those two short sections (which I presume allowed for a little expansion and contraction of the copper) disintegrated as I removed them.

Several looked good, but actually were pretty bad.

I had to remove the engine access cover and get at them on top of the engine (8V92), I had to get behind panels in the LR, kitchen and BR, and I had to get at numerous sections in the engine area. I had the coolant drained, so if that is an issue for you it may be such that you need to get the coach where you can do that. The question of whether to have Prevost do that is your call. Those are converter hoses. I would look for someone that works more on the house part.

I have to tell you that it helps you understand your coach, so for me it was a nasty job due to all that I had to take apart, especially in the house, but it gave me a lot of peace of mind.

I'm not looking forward to doing it again on my current coach, but it needs it.

[garyde]

Hi Ken. Here is one of these projects which keeps you awake at night. The only good thing about replacing hoses is you will probably never have to do it again . If you have a good friend (Mike) maybe you can make it a two Coach project!

[bluevost]

Thanks for the responses everyone. I'm taking the bus back to the hanger today and will start dismantelling the water bay on Thurs. Will keep you posted over the next several days.

Kevin, I looked at the heater/blower under the sink and all is ok. I was in the compartment under the bed with Nick Hessler about 5 weeks ago (need new blower motor) and it was clean at that time. I'll check up at the dash next.

Ken

[rickdesilva]

I had a similar situation but it was water not coolant, it was the water supply line going to the refrigerators ice maker. Toughest part was pulling out the refrigerator.