Service Bay 40: Atwood Levelegs

Camp Tiffin — Red Bay, Alabama

A lot was accomplished on our first service day, including replacement of the fogged-up driver’s window — one of the two things for which we had made our February 4 appointment.

After a full day in Bay 10, we left not knowing what was next. We weren’t in the the dark for long. Around 5:00p, we got a call to report to Bay 40 the next day for the installation of the new levelers — our second appointment item.

Bay 40 is a welding shop; it is one of the bays equipped with jacks to raise the coach.

Camp Tiffin map marked up to show the bays we have visited to-date.
(Hints at some of the other things already taken care of that I will be posting about.)

I’ll intersperse pictures from today with the history of why we needed to replace the system.

When we bought our gently-used Phaeton in May , the Atwood levelers were functioning. But there seemed to always be a hesitancy with the way they worked, and we never felt we were quite level. In the fall of , we started having problems with the jacks not retracting as they should. Distrustful of the finicky system, we had the levelers disabled until we could get a qualified mechanic to look at them.

In November we went camping at Pohick Bay Regional Park in Virginia. Sometime during the night there was an electrical failure. I won’t go into the entire story; you can read about our “roughing-it-not-so-smoothly” experience here. This hastened our visit to a local service company to have the levelers looked at.

It turns out that whatever caused the power failure also fried the control board for the levelers … at least that was the technician’s diagnosis. We had the board replaced, but the system never really functioned well after that. Each time we brought the legs down, we held our breath. And, in fact, we often opted not to use the levelers unless we were in a particularly “unlevel” site.

The fried control board of was replaced with an exact duplicate.	The new levelers come with a much more robust control box.

Fast forward to April . We went camping at Bull Run Regional Park in Virginia to prepare the coach for our spring trip to the Smokies. Mui went to extend the levelers, and they extended, and extended, and extended. We tried to shut down the system to no avail. Soon we were listing to starboard with our rear driver’s side tires way off the ground. (Sorry, no photos … I was too concerned about what was happening since the coach looked dangerously close to tipping over.)

We called CoachNet for help; they consulted with Atwood. They had us try a whole bunch of things, and we managed to get all but one of the legs up. The rear driver’s side jack was stuck. A mobile service tech was called in, and he tried and tried to get the leg to retract. Nothing. Nada. The stubborn “so-and-so” was not budging. In the end, we had to get that leg ‘amputated’ just so the coach would be drive-able. (The full story is here.)

The jacks are in place. Hard to believe four of these can lift our 30K+ pound coach …

… but they do, and the Phaeton reaches new heights here in Red Bay.

Mui had been researching our leveler problem since the incident in November . Once we were back from our spring trip, he went into overdrive to find a solution. We even considered replacing our electric levelers with an HWH hydraulic system since we had no trust left in the Atwoods.

Then came a ray of light to brighten our day. Apparently, Atwood had been beta testing a re-design that had seemingly resolved all of the systematic problems. After communicating with several people on TRVN (Tiffin RV Network), and privately corresponding with other Tiffinites, we decided in late to stick with the Atwoods and have the new and improved levelers installed.

This is one bay where there are safety restrictions in place;
this is the closest we can be to watch the new levelers being installed.

Mui worked with Sue Noyes at Atwood to come to an equitable arrangement. At the end of November , we ordered the replacement system — which consisted of four jacks (legs), a wire harness kit, and a control kit. Atwood built and shipped the new system to the Allegro Tiffin Service Center in mid-January so that it would be ready and waiting when we arrived.

Before they close the bay doors, I sneak a peek under the Phaeton’s skirt.
You can see one of the old legs just behind the rear passenger side tires; the
amputated leg would have been located just about where the technician is standing.

The installation today (February 5th) went smoothly and took about 3½ hours. At the end of that time, we had a fully functioning leveling system that we were anxious to test out. Sure, it worked great while we were in a level bay, but how would it work at our less-than-level site. Since we were given instructions to report to another bay after we were done in Bay 40, we had to wait until the end of the day to run our test.

A team of three do surgery on the leveling system and program the new control box.

The old (rear leg) and the new (front leg).

We have since extended and retracted the legs multiple times as we continue with the “Tiffin shuffle” from one bay to another, and I am happy to report that everything is working as intended. An improvement to the system is that the air bags deflate before the legs come down (this reduces the distance the jacks have to extend), and re-inflate before the legs are retracted.

The new control panel in the cockpit has a few more verification lights
as compared to the one previously installed.

It feels good to know that the sites we choose to stay in the future are no longer leveler-dependent.

P.S. We’ve been told that we should not spray the legs with anything as this could cause dirt build-up, which could lead to problems with the way the leveling system functions. This is contrary to common practices we’ve read about, so I thought I’d add it as a postscript for the benefit of others.

Thoughts and Quotes on Art

As I see it, the world is made up entirely of photographic subject matter...with pictures you can say what you can't with words. Peter Sekaer

It seems that the artistic personality has a certain contrariness
to it. If you are conventional, than perhaps there's no impulse to create. Author unknown
Art comes from a desire to make sense of the world and one's experience in it. It's intended to make up for the separation that we feel between us as humans and beauty. The artist tried to recreate beauty...to make the world whole again. Author unknown

Back at School

This week I'm at the John  C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina to take a watercolor class with my good friend Katy.  We only have one more day.  I don't want to return to real life!  I'll write more after I get home about our experience.
This is a photo of the red barn at the school that I took on another trip.  I took a weekend course on Medicinal Herbs.  Great stuff!  
More later!

Game Cam

Some recent game cam photos:

A sleek bobcat (Lynx rufus).

Murphy's law of game cameras:
You get mostly southern views of northbound animals. (Coyote, Canis latrans.)

Looks like she barely escaped that bicycle pump. (Virginia opossum, Didelphis virginiana.)

Finally, our first shot of a beaver in action. (Castor canadensis.) Click to embiggen!
We nearly ruined the game cam, trying to get a photo of a beaver. Positioned it too near the creek last spring. The heavy rains came, and... well, it's not meant to be an underwater camera. It still works, but not as well as it once did. The batteries used to last forever; now they need replacing every two weeks or so.
And this was the only beaver pic we got out of that sorry situation:

Smile!
If that's the miscreant who gnawed down the only white-blooming redbud in our woods, I wouldn't be too sad if that flash gave him a mild heart attack. I really miss that tree.
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Sirens from emergency vehicles screaming down the highway roused us in the wee hours last night. Jasmine howled, which she almost never does. It sounded so funny, I couldn't help but laugh, even as I was trying not to wake up too much. But then every coyote in the woods howled too. There are a lot more of them than I'd thought. I had imagined the population somewhat reduced, since our chicken flock has stayed intact for the past year. Now I'm worried.

The arch

I have to be honest and say that being sick totally sucks. I have basically done NOTHING for the last five days because of a nasty case of bronchitis according to my doctor. I think I would have been better off with swine flu -- at least then I could have seen the doctor for an OINKment. Still it does give me a chance to catch up on some of the posts I haven't made lately (or in other words, crap on about rides I did last week or the week before). When I'm back on the bike, hopefully tomorrow, I'll then have something more interesting to talk about.

The previous weekend I headed for Numinbah Valley again, as I didn't really have the time or inclination for a 200k epic, and I had to back up and ride to Brisbane the next day. This area is always pleasant for a quick 115km, especially when it's combined with a crossing of the Wunburra Range at Springbrook, then a climb out of the Tweed Valley at Tomewin (more on that later). This day was going to be slightly different, however, because I decided to visit the Natural Arch (pictured at the top of the page), hidden away in the rainforest.

Last year there had been speculation in the local tabloid that the Natural Arch was actually closed to the public, due to the fact that the cave roof was about to collapse. Everyone else seemed to think so, because there was nobody there on the morning I visited. Yet there were also no signs indicating any closure of the area. There was nothing to stop me from walking right into the cave itself. It is, of course, entirely possible that the whole story was a media beat-up (it wouldn't be the first time). I doubt the National Parks mob would have allowed anyone to do any work on the cave itself, but either way, it was just as beautiful as I remember it, even if the walking track was/is a little over-developed.

All that was left now was to finish the climb over Numinbah Gap, drop down into the Tweed Valley, and then climb home over Tomewin. Throughout the morning I had been hammered by a southerly wind that forced me to ride through Numinbah Valley at a touring pace, now it was payback time. I responded by setting a fastest ever time for the climb over Tomewin -- 23.15, 45 seconds off my previous best. Once again, I thought I'd blown it on the steep mid-section, and once again I realised in the last kilometre that I had it beaten. I can only assume that the "mid-section" is closer to the summit than the bottom. A great way to spend a morning if ever there was one.

Northern Lights Moonrise over Wauswaugoning Bay

Well, the aurora made a pretty good showing last night! It sounds like most everyone had cloudy skies but lucky for me the clouds didn't move in up here until after the aurora faded. The lights put on a pretty good show from about 11:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. Here are my favorite images from last night!

Lupines at Sunrise

Lupines at Sunrise, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

The wildflowers are in peak bloom across much of California. These lupines were no exception - fields of the flowers coated hillsides in Las Trampas.
Sorry for the recent hiatus - been very busy!