Good morning Jon,Originally Posted by Jon Wehrenberg
I may be able to shed some light on this question. The system may in fact be isolated from the rest of the coach, but at the moment I brought the coach back up to the ride height when getting ready to leave the campground is when we think we sheered off the fitting. The black plastic lines that came from the valve to the rear connection to the toad ran in two different locations. One black plastic air line was routed under the drive shaft and one was on top of the shaft, both found their way to the valve that was attached to the small tank. I think the noise I heard was the air being drawn out of the small tank when the fitting was torn off. What I cannot explain is the difficulty getting up to full air and when I used the brakes the air would drop quickly to about 95lbs and have a hard time getting back to 125/130 range (hovereing around 105), and they fluctuated at times, one gage higher or lower than the other. Here is the odd part, and maybe its a green banana. During the Prevost service process they could not make the dryer blow off at full pressure, when it was working fine before. More questions than answers I guess.
I was pleased to see that Peter has taken the time to share his thoughts with us, and wants to make certain that all of our installs are done correctly. It is also gratifying that Peter has contacted the folks at Jacksonville Prevost to get a handle on what went wrong and how to prevent the problem in the future.
A couple of thoughts come to mind when thinking about what Prevost found and what steps were taken. The problem was found on the evening shift by one of their best techs, "Jasen" who is a outstanding tech, a detail nut and is extremely talented found the exact location and made the fix. He did not exactly reengineer the system, just rerouted the black airlines and placed the unit in a slightly different location after he tapped out the broken fitting and put the valve back together with the tank. It was not rocket science, just common sense and the advantage of being five feet in the air looking directly at the problem.
After this experience I decided to take a better look at my toad to check the install here a little better. First thing that I have noticed is that when I start the vehicle now (2008 Saturn Vue) I no longer need to place my foot on the brake before turning the key on. I can easily get used to this new feature but have to wonder how Saturn will feel about the modification to a federally mandated requirement. Also in my engine compartment is the controller, it is hanging down at a 45 degree angle attached to a bunch of wires next to the engine block, very close to other wires that if ever need to be serviced will surely be in the way. And finally my plastic air cleaner was not reattached, was loose inside the engine compartment. I do not want to place blame on anyone here, in fact I really like the father and son team who did the install, great people. I think the problem is two fold. 1. These rallies are time limited and to make the numbers work and to satisfy the customers who want the product now, not later these guys must work from 8am to 8pm to make it happen, and this can create install issues. 2. This may be the most important issue. Engineering. It is difficult for a company like "Air Force One" to have been able to spend the time and money to do the necessary engineering that would be required to be able to make these installs in different coaches and different vehicle types. My saturn Vue is brand new and has been redesigned with very small spaces, lots of engine packed in there.
I think that a better plan would include some more detailed engineering in advance. This would of course drive up the cost and delay the release, it is always a push pull in the real world.
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