Further adventures of Ziggy

[p_a_lazar]

As you now know, if you read my post about air leveling you would have
to know that there's always an adventure whenever I do anything to Ziggy.

After leaving HWH to visit our son in St. Louis, we decided to stop in
Hannibal, MO. Foolishly following the signs directing us to bus and RV
parking, when we got there we noticed there was a short steep rise
over the RR tracks to get to the parking lot. Having bottomed out a
few times in the past, I thought I would use the "raise" feature of
the newly installed air leveling. Hit the raise button and all hell
broke loose!

The rear jacks went down SOLIDLY and the air dumped. No matter what
button I tried it would always dump air and *NOT* raise the jacks. We
were now solidly parked in the middle of the street in what passes for
downtown Hannibal.

A rather hot and excited call to HWH, 150 miles north, got me routed
to a tech who was extremely helpful and knowledgeable and equally as
baffled as I was.

The logical thing to do, if you read the manuals for the jacks, is to
release the "T" handles and pressure so the jacks would retract.

As it turns out, BB, in it's infinite wisdom and quirkiness places the
manifold with the solenoids and T handles (on our series of bus) in
the right front corner of the coach up high. The only way to reach the
T handles is by lying on your back and reaching blindly as high as you
can to feel them and hopefully turn them. While doing this, keeping
your fingers and toes crossed that the air doesn't dump or jacks come
down quickly crushing your chest. Since I am not keen on hospitals or
death, I decided "I ain't gonna do it".

Plan B:

Since the problem with retracting the jacks was caused by the pump
coming on anytime any button was pushed, which would force the jacks
down (why only the rears?), HWH suggested I pull the fuse for the
pump. This fuse is located in the control box located dead center of
the first compartment on the bulkhead. Remember, we are in the middle
of the street....Emptied the compartment to gain access, pulled the
fuse and the jacks retracted. Reloaded our "stuff" and headed back to
HWH for redo the next morning.

The next morning the service manager tore into our problem. As it
turned out the electronics decided to puke itself and was replaced. No
one had ever seen this type problem there before, and they brought the
EEs in with their scopes and test equipment looking for feedback
loops, or noise spike or whatever they could find. They found nothing.
Put everything back together and off we went without further problems.

Please read my next post on the T handle solution.

Paul
97wb43