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Dale,
Your coach came with 12 tires, and not the 315 size. His advice is probably sound because it is not only the width of the wheel that has an impact, but the amount of offset on the wheel. I think you came standard with two 8.25 aluminum wheels on the drive.
On coaches that come with the 315 tire such as mine we have 9.00 aluminum wheels on the outside, and 8.25 steel wheels on the inside, and 315 tires at all locations. Newer coaches have 365 on the steer and tag and 315 on the drive.
Is anyone currently using a wirless tire monitoring system? We are using Pressure pro by DORAN mfg. www.doranmfg.com and this is one of the best options on the bus. The sending unit is nothing more than a oversize valve stem cap that incorporates a pressure guage wirless antenna and small battery, one for each tire, including the toad. It gives me an audible alarm, marks tire position and pressure automaticly when any tire goes 10% down. We run 100psi in our tires and being a trucker for 25 years I can tell you there is no way you would even notice a tire so slightly down on pressure by sight or feel.To us this is great insurance and also a great sence of security. Unless we directly drive over something it almost completly elimanates the risk of blow outs. If your torn on how much to put out for tires this could be had with savings from going with lesser brands. This is not too much money, easy to install and pays for itself the first time it goes off. When I leave town Ive got almost everything thats important to me in this world, Debbie my grandchildren my dogs, my 04 HEMI, and having been through blow-outs and sitting on the shoulder on an interstate with traffic zipping by at who knows how fast it has become my intent to never put my family in that situation again.
Here is another old thread, maybe worth updating.
Ray, I know you just got a new coach, maybe you need tires already ?
I just bought 8 315/80R22.5 Michelins. After a lot of shopping , and being frustrated more businesses were not interested in my pile of money, I think I ended up with a fair deal.
I went to Les Schwab in Springfield Oregon. They do all the work for Marathon. They know their stuff on tires and Prevosts. Less that $700 a tire installed out the door. No sales tax in Oregon helps. With fuel prices rising tire prices rise too. This one store bought 220 of this size tire so they would have a good stock on hand. Everywhere else I called they said they would have to order them in.
Which brings me to the next issue brought up earlier in this thread. Speedometers. I have observed that most coaches before about 1998 have had the speedometers replaced, obviously because the original VDO mechanical looking but actually electronic units fail. These had a seperate trip odometer window as well. They get an electronic signal from the transmission computer to display the speed. They are very easy to program if you need to adjust them to make them read correctly.
The new sppeedos are a newer design and have an electronic odometer, with the trip odo in the same window, and the numbers are printed a little different, and the bezel is a different shape.
I bought a replacement speedo ( $250 from Prevost, found one for $30 on eBay). But I did not like having the tach look different, so I ordered a matching replacement for $100. Now that is all nice, but the ODO does not show the correct vehicle mileage.
I have rigged up a device that is presently rolling the miles onto my new speedometer at the rate of 84 mph. It will eventually read the correct coach total. Eventually being in about 7 weeks. Brian has asked to run his to the correct setting too, when mine is finished. Perhaps others would like to do the same?
You can also send the unit in to the factory through a speedo shop, and they will then set it electronically for $125. I thought that was an absurd charge for a simple programming job, that is kept secret only to reduce the false odo readings.
As they say, your mileage may vary...no pun intended.
Peter et al,
I sure agree about the speedo reliability. There are some messages here for buyers of coaches and current owners.
The clear message to buyers is that if you are looking at mileage on the odometer as to the coach condition it is likely wrong. My 87 stopped recording miles but intermittently would run in spurts. So buyers beware. Having said that however, I still think a coach that is 10 years old and has 150,000 well maintaned miles is a better coach than one the same age that has 50,000 miles. I think miles are only good as reminders of when to change the oil.
If the coach has Pro Driver that is recording the mileage, as is the DDEC (I think). An owner or buyer can rely on that.
I have a new speedometer to install in mine, maybe Peter can help me with setting it if I promise not to do a search and repost his assertion he was going to run his tires until they were ten years old.
Good post Peter, I sure enjoy reading post like these.
Hey Jon,
Just a final note on the tires, my old ones were made in September 1997, and I replaced them in February of 2008.
None of them were ever removed from the wheel during their entire life. I would say it was a successful run.
They all had lots of tread left, a couple had minor rubber checking on the sides. They ran about 65,000 miles.
I agree with your comments on the ODO being good to remind about oil changes, but the Pro Driver is not a foolproof way to know the coach mileage either. If you open the pro driver up, remove the memory battery for a few minutes, then reinstall it, it will reset the Pro Driver ODO to zero. You can then reset it to match it to the dash ODO.
The DDEC brain keeps track of miles also. But my DDEC was replaced a while back and the new one started at zero when the coach had $70k miles or so.
The very best indicator is if the owner(s) have kept a detailed maintenance logbook with dates and events in chronological order. That will corroborate the truth. Just like we do with airplanes.
When my old bus odometer quit I did not immediately replace it. So what I did was use miles from the truckers mileage between cities book as the distance travelled and added those values to my log book.
(For those that can't wait to get all over the fact that I have a log book, it goes back to when the bus was used for business, and it was to satisfy the IRS requirements......so there!)
When I did replace the speedometer, I noted it in the log book and added the miles listed in the log to the zero reading, like we do if the tach is replaced in a plane.
But I like your idea of putting the mileage value in the new odometer. I will not wait 15 plus weeks however for it to get where my mileage is, but will just add 200,000 to the value. Tell me how you did it.
Jon, did I read you post right about the IFS. Did you say you drove 300k in your 87 bus? and 30k in your 97?
If I did I misspoke. 300K total miles. I have about 50 I added to this one, and I did about 250 in the first one.
No, that just seems like a lot of driving. We have logged close to 97k on ours in almost 10 years.