Absolutely everything that each of us owns must be maintained. It is an unfortunate fact of life.
If you neglect your house for a few years, it will begin to disintegrate right before your eyes. Our house, the BoggsMobile is no different. It requires regular maintenance and repairs to continue serving its purpose and rolling down the road.
Even though I do a lot of work on the BoggsMobile, most of the repairs require someone with more knowledge than I possess and with access to tools and parts that I do not have.
The go-to guy for the BoggsMobile is Jeff Rowe at East Tennessee Luxury Coach near Vonore, Tennessee.
1995 Prevost XL Vantare Conversion
On our early May visit to our dear friend Jeff Rowe, the BoggsMobile needed a lot of attention. I gave Jeff a long list of things in no particular order of priority. They were all urgent in their own way.
Oil change for the engine with an oil sample collected. (The sample came back great. YAY!)
-The air system that is used for suspension and brakes needed a few things.
-Dryer cartridge replaced
-Ride height adjusted. It was a little low on the driver's side.
-The suspension was leaking down on both sides in the back when parked.
-The generator voltage was low on both legs.
-The 27 year old commode needed to be replaced. It was in bad shape and I had not been able to find a replacement in stock anywhere.
-The generator bay door was missing the rub rail. I brought a previously used replacement that I had in the barn.
-The AC that is driven by the bus motor while traveling needed to be charged. (It has a small leak somewhere, but definitely needed to be charged going into summer.)
-The fan clutch that controls the radiator fan has intermittent stuff going on.
-The #2 roof AC needed to be replaced.
-The #3 roof AC needed a fan motor.
There are other items that need attention, but they can be put off a bit. The things above were "now" things. I was hoping to get everything completed, but prepared for a few items to be left out due to lack of parts availability.
I was not sure if six or seven work days would be enough because there are lots of other buses there waiting for various repairs and updates big and small. The BoggsMobile is only one small piece of the pie there at any given time.
We left with almost everything on the list either taken care of completely or at least investigated by Jeff and a plan of action in place. Thank you, Lord and Thank you Jeff.
Jeff found a commode that works in the space available. They needed to reengineer the wall behind it, but it looks like it was installed that way from the factory. Perfect.
All the other routine items were checked off one by one. As a bonus, Jeff was also able to get to the root of a long term and occasional glitch in the tag axle brakes. You can read that HERE if you missed it.
There were only two stubborn items on the list. Jeff was not able to resolve the generator problem, because it may not be a generator problem. It was putting out the proper voltage and he let it run for hours.
Somewhere between the generator and the output of the inverters, the voltage output is dropping. He adjusted some settings on the inverters and we will wait and attack that another day.
The only other incomplete item was the roof air conditioners. There were still no parts available. Ouch! That really hurt, especially with summer coming on strong and summer already in full swing in Arizona and California. But Jeff did everything that he could do. He and one of his men went through old used parts to no avail.
KJo and I really regretted scheduling the early summer months in some of the hottest places in the USA. We were in Arizona in late May, 2009 when one of our original Cruise Airs went out so we knew this could get crazy.
We are surviving the extreme heat in Arizona with some creative workarounds AND we have made progress on the roof ACs too. This post is already to long, so I will tell you about that another day. It is really good news.
Thank you for spending a few minutes with us on Mile Markers.
Davy
