Anyone familiar with this bus for sale

[dolson]

http://www.rvt.com/rvdetail4800756.htm#.TrnMFIgQ-dg.email

Does anyone have any knowledge of this bus.  A friend is somewhat interested in it and just curious if any bus nuts know anything about it.

thanks

[luvrbus]

Yep it belonged to 5 States Helicopter in Royse City Tx

[dolson]

clifford

do you know if it is any good or should I advise him to keep looking? 

[viento1]

My friend had a 98 and it is certainly pretty but the entire system ran on Windows 95. They upgraded to XP and pretty much spends 15k per year working out the bugs. Just saying that the older ones are not as tinker friendly as what I was used to. all those NODES and mystery compartments. the local shop refused to even work on changing out the 8 lifeline batteries - too complicated for frieghtliner I guess.

Those marathons are sure pretty.

[luvrbus]

 Doug,I haven't been around the coach in years Brad the owner of 5 States offered it to me for 70 last year after he did some interior work I don't think Brad owns the coach now he had it listed on Ebay then pulled it.

I can call him and see what he sold it for or if he still owns the coach it had some electrical problems like all Marathons,Outlaw Coach was working on those at one time


good luck

[dolson]

The dealer that has it told him that they had owned it for about six weeks.  Were the electrical problems serious or just a nuisance?

[Busted Knuckle]

YUP!
  BK 

[longjohn]

While this is a great looking coach ,this did Jump out "With only 172K miles and an 8V92 500 HP Detroit, this bus is road-ready! The engine has been rebuilt about 70K miles ago and runs perfect!"................Perhaps someone with more dd experience, can chime in!

[viento1]

Electrical problems were just a pain. turn light on, heater shuts off. Turn AC on, left turn signal turns off.

[Joe Camper]

Longjohn.

See it often with Prevo motorhomes with 8v92ta. Ours had had the same treatment. When we got ours it had 205000 on it and I found recipts for a factory rebuilt engine install at 115000. Now we have 240000 and IMO still very solid reliable and not getting close to another rebuild. Cinda contradictory but

IMHO these engines are very misunderstood by many who have them and because of owner opporator error that results in premature engine rebuilds for a number of reasons.

Incorrect oil, exessive idle time the infamous drip of the air box tubes.

Take a big shiny bus put it in a imaculate garage run 15-40 oil let it ilde to warm up and it will be ugly. To the average guy with the resources to keep things up it becomes not that unusual.

[Joe Camper]

I did some pretty extensive electrical repairs and upgrades on a 95 marathon. A 45 with a 60 series but the house side stuff between the 2 buses is very very close.

Marathon did some things with the a/c power service that nobody else did. As I understand it due to local codes where they manufacture the campers they were forced to add additional legs of a/c in addition to the 50 amp that would otherwise be more than sufficient.

You can identify these buses a couple of ways. First you will have 2 not 1 50 amp cord outlets one will say main 1 will say aux main. Marathon gave the original owners an adaptor that then brought both back together so you could actually USE the bus without needing 2 sites to do it LOL You can see the 2 50 amp plugs forward of drivers side drive axle in the photos.

The other indicator is the way they meter and identify things at the a/c distribution panel in the coach. Aux and main the same.

Many of these buses were rewired to eliminate the necessity of the adaptor after the fact. Could be done acouple of ways at the J-box downstairs or at the panel. If you have or are looking at a Marathon with these 2 plugs and always wondered what that Aux plug was for because you use only the main you camper has been rewired in one of these 2 ways.

Another item with this vintage Marathon is the panel meters they were digital and ran thru a motherboard the manufacturer is no longer around if there is something wrong there you will have to retrofit new different metering. Because of the 4 legs there is 16 meters between them all and if any of the meters fail there is no replacement. I took the 95 from digital to analog meters it was really a fun and educational process. Granger had everything Beware  of a set of original digital panel meters broken or not.

Another thing is the inverter circuts. They also constitute another 2 leg of power . Power to the inverters comes from the j-box and the a/c output powers a string of gfi outlets buried in the coach that everything is plugged into. None of the  inverter  circuts go thru the a/c panel. If you look you will not see a breaker for the fridge at the a/c panel The circute protection is the breaker at the inverter itself for the inverter powered accessories.

Besides that. Marathon did an awesome job on the d/c side accessability to everything on a Marathon is superior. If you have all the camperside schematics that belong to the bus even if changes were made you can identify that too. They are great buses.  

Anytime I hear of "electrical Issues" on one of these early 90s Marathon I would tend to believe they may be refering to these items.

Hope this helps.

[Joe Camper]

Bet if the original autostart is still in the bus it will not work either  

Dick Wright to the rescue LOL

Doug your homepage on the bus construction ends in 2009 what happened. Looked like you werent missing much to that point.

[Joe Camper]

Sorry cant help it.

Another thing.

This is a non OTR A/C coach with cruisair and as discussed in other threads not a good combination. However Marathon combines the Prevo dash air with another 2nd engine driven a/c compressor powering 2 additional evaporators 1 in the kitchen and 1 in the bedroom. Usually Red Dot very serviceable and reliable and actually frees up 2 additional bays that would otherwise have been full of those components from the factory.

If I were looking at a bus without OTR A/C and cruisair for the house this would be a nessessity or it would be a deal breaker.