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Not to pick on boater Al or Marathon I am not surprised the setting needs to be at max firm. A coach that has less weight on the front may find that setting unacceptable. What is your front axle weight Al, not what Marathon says, but what the scales say?
Jon,
I went with the setting that I heard from other owners. Asking the question of Marathon on weight, around 16 K. When I get some extra time I'll take your suggestion to the scales. Just for grins has anyone weighed the front end of an '05-'07 Marathon XLII double slide with or with out the family dog ?
AL
05 Marathon 2s
When in Spearfish we saw one that topped the charts at somewhere around 19,000.
There you go, was that porker an XL II or HS-45 ? At that weight there speaks for the setting for full firm or you will be prematurely wearing out your front end parts. I did notice that the up and down seemed a little excessive on the trip to Omaha. I had 2 sets of Koni's on my Affinity with the setting oppox 1 turn off max firm. That seemed to work best. Concern was the heavy weight of the XL II and with input from members was confirmed max firm was probably be the setting. After about 500 miles I'll know for sure about this current setting.
TIRES....I also had that minor pulling problem on the Affinity. Seemed to be aggravated by excess road crown. I decided to cross the tires before driving on to the alignment rack. There were 20 K miles on new Michelins , no visible wear, no cupping. On Country Coach the problem tire is the right front. That solved the issue immediately.
AL
05 Marathon XLII 2S
The Marathon weighed in Spearfish was an XLII.
I'm curious. My coach really hates the cross-cut cement roads that we have here in CA. I feel every separation, and at times it can be really annoying to almost bone jarring.
I get a little (but not a lot) of what I would consider to be bouncing type of motion that I would associate with bad shocks. I've asked, and have been told that 45'ers tend to oscillate a bit more than the 40s (my 40ft didn't bounce at all).
So, I'm curious if new shocks might help with this cross-cut type of roads?
Ray
Al,What is the Koni part number?
The correct tire pressure combined with a shock set for the particular coach or driver's needs will do what can be done, but I don't think our suspensions can make all roads feel like a magic carpet.
If our coach requires a lot of air pressure for its air bags, by its nature the ride is going to be compromised and if the shocks are bad the coach is going to have very little dampening.
I am not sure what you mean by cross-cut, but there is a stretch of I-59 from the northern AL state line towards Birmingham that has expansion joints or some variations in the slab heights at the joints and my coach just gets hammered going down that road. I do not experience anything like that anywhere else. But I won't look to make any changes in my bus because of that road. It is just the way that road feels and I suspect all vehicles are affected.
You are correct about the stretch of I-59 in AL. One of the worst sections I have traveled too. I ride the left lane and you do not get beat up quite so bad.
I do ride the left lane and let everyone pass on the right. I-10 west through Louisiana used to be like that many years ago, but last time we were on it it wasn't bad.