Bus Prep & Annual Maintenance

To get the Bus ready for our planned trip to Florida with Ronnie and Kathy Woods, I started the task the day before Christmas Eve.  Since our family Christmas celebration was completed before Christmas, the work did not interfere or have a negative effect on our celebrations!

I had items around the house that needed to be completed, including taking down and storing Christmas decorations, annual maintenance on the Bus, and repairs & modifications on the Bus.  For readers without a diesel motorhome, here is a list of annual maintenance on the Bus…..

1. Change engine oil (28 quarts) & filter
2. Grease the chassis
3. Change two fuel filters
4. Change engine air filter canister
5. Check and top off all liquid levels, battery, hydraulic oil, etc.
6. Repeat above list for on-board Generator

Modification and Repairs included…….

1. Replace broken break-away cable on Brake Buddy
2. Air up Motorhome and car tires for trip
3. Change bulbs and add ‘strobe controller’ to 3rd brake light
4. Install PULSE TPMS(Tire Pressure Monitoring System), including monitor, coax cable, and antenna.  This was a new Pressure-Pro TPMS that I negotiated with the Press-Pro folks after my tire blow-out discussed in a previous posting!! 

I wanted to post more detail about the PULSE system because I am very pleased with it……… so far.   If it is reliable, it will be great!  If not, I will be at the vendors booth at the Tampa RV show letting them know about it!!

Here are pictures of the install.  My son, Rick, helped me to run the wiring and cables…. We have always worked well together doing this stuff.

The monitor:

The coax routing front to back (sorry about orientation):

My home-made adapter for the antenna, and the antenna:

This is the feature that impresses me the most…… all of the pressures and temperatures of each tire on an axle are shown for that axle!!  I’ve posted them in the following order:  Rear Bus w/Duals, Front axle on Bus, and the front axle of the towed car.  You can tell by the solid color on the diagram on the left.

Note that I took the last three photos at night, but they are pictures of the monitor in the first pictures.

We left on our Winter Florida trip on Thursday, Jan 5.  We met the Woods in Vidor on I-10 on Friday morning and headed to Betty’s RV Park in Abbeville, La.

More on our trip in the future blogs.