King of the Webasto

[adamdegraff]

If I may submit a nominee for such an award, I believe that Jim Shoen has made a significant improvement to the Webasto plumbing system. I'm hoping he will post photos of his work for all to see. Suffice it to say, it includes ball valves, clean out screens, and lots of shiny brass parts. It was a work of art... and now, his heaters work as they are supposed to. He used lots of unique little parts, that I will group together and just call "the gold package."

So, Jim, I'm thinking, since you did like 10 hours of research and hung out on the phone with the folks at Granger all day long, do you think you could get a list of those parts together and market the gold package to the rest of us? I'll take two. :-)

~Adam

[Joe Cannarozzi]

The converters certainly leave much to be desired in terms of simplicity and user friendlyness.

Post it up guys lets see it.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

The converters certainly leave much to be desired in terms of simplicity and user friendlyness.

Post it up guys lets see it.

As a formerly employed person who made products for other people there has been one hard earned lesson.

"Give the customer what he wants."

It does not matter what your product or service, if the customer wants something specific you need to provide that, or start making plans for closing your business.

The few on this forum, compared to the market at large don't represent enough of the market to influence the construction of conversions. The converters have fine tuned their products based on their knowledge of what the market wants. If I were to hazard a WAG I would say that $100 in brass fittings to substantially improve the Webasto will never get spent unless the same amount of money will not improve the bus curb appeal or unless the customer can see it and brag about it.

If a converter is trying to figure out if they should add $100 of fabrics, trim, or some decorating tidbit versus $100 to make the Webasto function better i will guarantee there will be another $100 spent on the appearance items.

Sorry Joe, that's real world,

[jimshoen]

Jon,
I agree with your analysis. There only a few crazies, like us, who even seem to care. Of I course I like a beautiful coach, however as the Maintenance Tech the mechanical is critical. Little things go a long way on keeping these older coaches operating and easier to maintain.

[Joe Cannarozzi]

It's a good thing Jon.

They gotta leave room for improvement for some stuff, to give Jim and Adam somthin ta do:)

Reminds me of a guy with a Liberty with custom inverter switch gear.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Inverter by pass switches, fuel priming tube, backup water pump, shutoffs for all accessory air lines, shutoff valve for toilet plumbing, relocated flush valve for access, different CB antenna, removal of fancy stainless steel engine shroud and of course the ever famous green rope lights.

[BrianE]

Is that ALL? Com'on Jon, yer holdin back on us. :D

[rfoster]

Let me help him out a little Brian, Try 10,000 watts of light in the engine compartment to show off his highly polished air intake and OTR a/c brass fittings, his water pressure gauge, his anaconda back flow preventer, additional map light for ole fart eyes. This is in addition to the green rope lights with sound synthesizer (that means they dance to the music by Lawrence Welk), dual water pump, inverter switch, and el quicko fuel primer.

I don't know what he has done lately, there maybe more.
Good thing he has a couple of airplanes to tinker with.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Roger's got a better memory than me. He has most of the stuff nailed.

He hasn't done too bad either. I spent today and a bit of yesterday with Jim C helping him understand the blingmobile. I had to wear sunglasses because if there was a surface on that bus it either had LED lights, mirrors, or stainless steel.