All kidding aside regardless of who works on our coaches it takes many, many hours to keep them in first class condition. Will's hint that it may be theraputic is very true. When I did my first work (apart from oil changes and lube jobs) it was changing air bags. Time was the motivator because I quickly calculated that just the driving time to the nearest Prevost service center (Lyndhurst NJ at the time) was 8 hours I decided I would rather just do the work myself instead of investing 16 hours plus the cost of fuel just to get there.

What an eye opener that first foray into doing some serious work on the coach was. I had the tools so my only investment was the purchase of air bags plus time. Every night after dinner I went out and changed one air bag. By the time I finished, despite having to do this in a cold barn on the floor I had a great sense of accomlishment, I learned something, I gained a lot of confidence in my ability to work on the bus, and I began to sense the bus was not so intimidating as I first imagined.

From that point on I just never considered taking the bus to anyone for repairs or maintenance. The only exceptions were things I just could not do because of physical limitations or space. For example I could not change a failed alternator on my 8V92 because for a single man to try to heft a 130 pound alternator up over a bell housing while on his knees is not real easy. So Prevost got to do that. Luckily my choice was correct because by the time I finally had one that worked Prevost had replaced two and found a third bad one they did not try to install. It also took them 2 men and they actually used a bus lift as an elevator to make the job easier and the lifting less a part of the job.

But except for stuff like that I have bumbled through a lot of maintenance work and repairs, spent a lot of hours working on my buses, and like Hector and Paul point out finding things that need repair before they became serious issues, and fixing things before they failed so our use of the bus was as trouble free as possible. Stick's recent issue with loose alternator wires is a good example of why owner's are less likely to make that kind of mistake. They take pride in the work, are more cautious so simple stuff like that is less likely, and the only down side I can think of is sometimes we don't recognize some mechanical problems before they become a problem due to lack of professional skills.

But by considering my time spent working on the bus as pursuit of a hobby I have treated the insanity of buying such an expensive depreciating asset as actually paying me dividends by giving me a lot more pleasure than I would get just by using the coach for travel.