I've Got The Bug/ Buying Newer 345

[Jon Wehrenberg]

My point Bruce is that there are Prevost guys that eat, sleep and live with these problems. I'm talking guys from the techs that do the actual repairs to the managers and executives. Unless every single one of them is lying, they are not yet able to say with certainty why or when some coaches will exhibit problems, or what the underlying cause of the problems has been.

Right now they are dealing with the problems as they arise, and I will bet that the serial number range of affected coaches is widespread. I would wager that the only way anyone at this point could safely buy a H3 or XLII would be to get a Prevost serial number spreadsheet with repairs to the slides, skins and windows noted per serial number, and then research to see where each coach had been used and stored geographically, and only then make some assumptions about coaches that fall out of the serial number range of affected coaches, as long as you could conclude what impact age has on the issues.

This is heavy duty stuff and really bears watching.

[jack14r]

Does anyone know when Prevost changed to the current adhesive on their production lines?

[garyde]

Prevost keeps records on issues like skin replacement. The question is , can we get this info. Of the several thousand XLII s built since 2000, what is the failure rate. Ten or twenty in a given year, and which year has the highest failure rate to date. Additionally, as the XLII get older, is there more failures? These are legitimate specific question which Prevost should be able to answer.
I think it would help to take the fear and worry out of this subject.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Just as an aside, bonding issues can crop up at any time. The adhesive used on coaches may not have a time related failure, but a failure due to the number of heating and cooling cycles mitigated by storing a coach indoors. The failure could be occurring from a chemical reaction, or it could be related to atmospheric conditions such as humidity.

Whatever the problem causing delamination is, I suspect at this point Prevost still does not have enough information or data to take a proactive position on this. Until they are in a position to share the data they have thus far accumulated this problem is a huge unknown for all owners and it does affect all owners including the owners of rivet coaches whose prices track the market and are generally going to be lower than XLII coaches.