End of bus season - sad...

[bevans6]

 So, after buying our bus, working on it relatively constantly for 6 months redoing wiring, plumbing, fixing little things, adjusting big things, taking it for a couple of little trips and one big one, and being rewarded for the effort by an virtually flawless trip of over 2200 miles with not only no failures, no work at all on anything on the bus (except I bought it a new TV antenna and installed that - and even that went perfectly!) - I have just about put it to bed for the winter.  How sad...  I go out and it seems deserted somehow.  The front suspension has even lost all it's air - for the very first time - and it looks like it's kneeling down like a camel getting ready to sleep.  The only things I really have left to do is hook up the trickle chargers for the batteries.  I am really surprised at how much I enjoyed working on it and how much I will miss it.

I've got a race car to finish in the shop, but other than that no winter work to speak of.  I may have to get used to having a few weekends actually not working for a change!  Looking forward to spring and a planned trip to Virginia International Raceway (Danville, WV) in April for a vintage race and hopefully pick up a car to restore, that will help pay for some of this!

Cheers, Brian

[cody]

Brian, I'm just not sure I agree with your idea of this being the end of the season, I'm kinda thinking it's just early into the beginning of the next season.

[bevans6]

Well, I do agree - Winter Solstice is Monday morning, so not only do all the pagans among us have a reason to celebrate, the days start getting longer...

[gus]

It all depends!

My 4104 doesn't know that the bus season is over, it is right now 90% loaded for a 1200 mi trip south for the holidays!!

[Chopper Scott]

Tomorrow is supposed to hit 40 degrees here and I hope to get my bus out of storage and over to my shop to begin changing out all the suspension air bags and numerous other projects. It has summer blend and I need to get some 911 in it and closer to electricity for the block heater.

[cody]

I had the bus all ready to roll to jacks when we got the word that libby was going to have her surgery so I unpacked the bus, since then I've redone the living room carpeting and bedroom carpeting, not to bad for a slacker in less than a couple of weeks lol, normally that would take me a whole month just to come up with excuses to delay it further lol.  I'm afraid I may damage my reputation as a slacker tho cause I'm looking at a couple of new projects in the bus while the snow is flying and the boss is healing.

[rv_safetyman]

Brian, I wonder about using trickle chargers.  I really don't have any experience, but I think some folks have commented that their use is hard on batteries.  Maybe someone with REAL knowledge will give us the real skinny. 

My approach is to use a regular battery charger every couple of weeks for a couple of hours.  Not sure that is any better.

As I recall, someone made the comment about the fact that some trickle chargers can over-voltage a battery.

Mainly posting to see if we can get good information.

BTW, thanks for posting a POSITIVE trip report!!  These boards tend to make folks afraid, since folks write in asking for help and it looks like there are buses beside the road everywhere!

Jim

[Dreamscape]

If you haven't found something to do on your coach, ya ain't lookin' hard 'nuff!

Don't ask OK!

Paul

[cody]

I agree jim, it's nice to hear about the trips that went witout problems, too often we hear about the trannys, tires that blew, and stuff like that and that scares people into dismissing buses as vialble forms of recreation, we have a lot of guests that go thru here each day, how can we give them grief if they become too afraid to leap into the deep end of the pool lol.

[expressbus]

Jim,

Several members of POG use Guest marine battery tenders. Unit #2611A is the one most use. It is a three stage tender. The first stage is a full 90% charge of the batteries. It then transitions to the second stage which allows the batteries to retain the majority of the 90% charge. The final stage is a trickle charge level which keeps the batteries in optimal charge. You should have asked about this while you were in OKC this October. These units are available from Amazon.com - yea I too was surprised at that. I had tried using a vendor from the northwest with pitiful results. I won't be using them again.

I installed one about six weeks ago as I got tired of running to the bus barn every week or so to start the big motor just to charge the batteries. Besides, I've heard that what I was doing is not good for the big engine unless you can get it fully heated.

On another matter, UPS is oh for three in the shipping department for me this year. The first of the year I sent one piece of my two piece Entertainment/HVAC dash panel to CIP in CA. CIP chose UPS for shipping the replacement and the old piece back to me in NC. CIP put both pieces in the same package, I do not recommend this be done. Well it never showed. I sure was glad CIP had saved the dash panel layout in their CAD files and that I still had the second piece for use in locating the screw holes. I am now requesting items be shipped by FedEx or even USPS. Brown has not done anything for me this year. They won't even discuss the status of the shipment - only with the shipper! That really sucks!

Will

[bevans6]

yeah, I use three stage computer controlled chargers.  I have an Iota converter for the house batteries and a 24 volt charger for the chassis 8D's.  Both are specifically designed to be connected indefinitely.

Brian