New owner of Vintage Bus 1980

[freds]

I was under the front of the bus this weekend adding a temperature sensor to the fresh water tank for the home automation and happened to pay attention to an air tank that was visible.

It is located up behind the front wheels in the exact center of the bus and has a manual drain valve on it.



Given it's location and the manual valve I wonder how many times that it has been drained in the last forty years?

[Joe Camper]

Well.....if u service your air dryer and have a correctly installed water separator on an aux air pump if u have one there will be no water there.

Now the million dollar question. When u opened it what if anything came out?

If u did open it u may have loosened it now to the point it leaks when it gets cold. If it feels real free replace it. I see U have a 4 bag front axle thats good stuff.

I'm not sure if thats the brake tank for the front axle or the aux tank. Chad in KC participates here he has that vintage he may know. Open it and see if 1 of the gauges drops or not could do that to find out too.

[freds]

Well.....if u service your air dryer and have a correctly installed water separator on an aux air pump if u have one there will be no water there.

Now the million dollar question. When u opened it what if anything came out?

If u did open it u may have loosened it now to the point it leaks when it gets cold. If it feels real free replace it. I see U have a 4 bag front axle thats good stuff.

I'm not sure if thats the brake tank for the front axle or the aux tank. Chad in KC participates here he has that vintage he may know. Open it and see if 1 of the gauges drops or not could do that to find out too.

In answer to the million dollar question I was afraid to open it and I have seen videos on Bus Grease Monkey with all sorts of NASTY stuff coming out. I don't have a proper pit so I would be right under it when I open it.

It's on my to do list to get the air dryer cartridge replaced. I have found some other air drains of the screw in type that are either frozen or wings that just rotate. So will need to replace them. Heck I even found the alcohol bottle with dried crustiness in it.

Would you recommend installing a cable pull valve on this tank?

[Chad Speer]

Pretty sure that’s for your front brakes. My 1984 has the accessory tank in the steer compartment.

[Joe Camper]

Fred what does or doesn't come out of that tank would dictate how to proceed. If its clean just put a fresh drain as is. If a bunch of crap comes out put a cable pull but remember lots of debre and gunk will unseat the cable pull when it goes to close and thats another problem.

If u get a volume of crap it will continue for a certain period of time even after u put a new dryer. If its really awful pull the tank and flush it.

Don't be skeert open it. Buk buk buk buk....chicken. lol I bet u have a clean tank maybe a few bits of rust.

Just in case there is lots of anything in it put a bucket under it before opening it. I have gotten in the habit of doing this after seeing astonishing large amounts of water come out and wanting to see just how much.

[freds]

Pretty sure that’s for your front brakes. My 1984 has the accessory tank in the steer compartment.

Thanks so does mine and it has a pull valve...

[freds]

Well on this last holiday weekend I had an unexpected detour which seems par for the course with my bus.

As part of my home automation system; I wanted sensors for shore power/RV camping lots where it could detect the difference between a 120V and 240V external feed. I.E. on 120V it would need a user input over-ride to know that the external feed was 30 amps verse's a simple extension cord in someone's driveway; to know the maximum power that it could draw for air conditioners or hydronic tank heating.

So anyway I removed the cover from the power transfer switch to add wires for a 120V shore/eternal power presence sensor and discovered the following:



Some previous owner had totally bypassed the entire transfer switch functionality; which seems to a major theme on my bus. I.E. If you don't understand it, just bypass it!!!

My buses transfer switch is an Todd Engineering PS2-245S which has the following power input modes:

1. Inverter power input
2. Shore/external power input
3. Generator input

I can see from the physical damage evidence what more and likely lead them down this path:



It looks like the switch had been used extensively in shore power mode and had a loose connection for the neutral wire, which heated it up to the point that it melted away the connection from the plastic mount on the external power input bus bar. Look at the orange box in the picture, for where the neutral connection should be.

It seems that whoever tried to fix it, couldn't read the electrical diagram that was inside of the cover.



Future note, be sure to use the cell phone to take pictures before you muck with things!!!!

Anyway what was expected to be a 20 minute task; turned out be a full day of figuring things out, but hey I fixed it and didn't have to spend $600.00+ to replace the power transfer switch.

It turns out in attempting to fix the melted neutral connection problem; they had rewired the generator input connection and shorted out the HOT2 to the neutral connection.

Which might explain why I also found both air conditioners in the bus wired to the HOT1 connection which had previously puzzled me as to why someone would do that!!!

They had probably ran for sometime with a blown generator fuse on HOT2 input lead, before taking a second pass at the problem.

Anyway functionally in this transfer switch is as follows:

1. The default connection is for inverter power input. Which initially confused me in decoding the circuit diagram; as I had thought that the power cord/shore power input would be the default.
2. When in power cord/shore power input mode; two relays are energized with one light showing on the top time delay board, after a 30 second delay.
3. When in generator input; all the relays are energized with both timer delay boards showing lights. The first timer delay light comes on after a 30 second delay and then the second after an additional three minute delay; before generator power is passed through to the house systems.

So anyway on to the next problem....

[Fratto]

The ATS in my dads coach burned up the other day from a loose connection. Makes you want to put checking the torque on all connections on your yearly maintenance list.

[Joe Camper]

Sometimes with some inverters that aren't pure sine wave if u don't use default for inverter on the switch the modified sine wave will chatter the switch going in, if it can completely lock it down at all.

[Joe Camper]

Stupid question..

Could someone explain why these ac switches do not also have ac coils instead of dc coils and when they r dc coils what else is needed? some form of transformer to make that happen??

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My stuff is only 30 amp This is a used removed component

I was going to seporate and use the switches independently and install one in mine but do not know how to correctly turn ac to dc to trigger the contacts down??

Is it something to do with the delay? I need the delay even if the dip switch will be off it still needs to be there?

Can someone lead me to a similar switch with ac coils or is that the wrong thing to do? Very confused help educate me here.