Well, I was hoping that this wouldn't be my first ever post in the forum, but it is. My coach caught fire on May 12th heading back from a weekend trip on I-70 in Indianapolis. The slideout decided to start going out while going around a tight system interchange ramp from I-465NB to I-70WB on the east side of Indy. My co-pilot indicated that the slide was moving out on it's own, so I pulled over, shut off the engine and tried to retract the slide using the electrical switch. This must have energized the hydraulic leveling system pump, which I believe also provides hydraulic pressure to the slide actuator and sprayed the hydraulic fluid (Automatic Transmission Fluid) onto the engine and turbo thus igniting it. My son noticed smoke coming from under the bed, so I grabbed the fire extinguisher and my wife and I lifted the bed up....bad idea. The flames instantly shot up with the addition of new air to the engine bay and we were consumed with flames. The bed was quickly dropped and neither of us was burned, miraculously. We called 911 and started evacuating from the coach. I tried to access the location of the fire, but I think that once the ATF burned off there wasn't much left to burn. Some wire jacketing and misc stuff was still burning, so IFD showed up (a big thanks to them) and extinguished the fire completely. We were flat towing our 5-sp Subaru Forester, so we moved as much stuff as possible to our new life raft and waited for the tow truck to arrive.
We made it home to West Lafayette a bit later than expected, but everyone was safe and the coach was towed safely to a yard in Indy. Later, in working with the insurance company I discovered that we would have to cover the cost of repairing the initial cause of the fire...which brings me to this question. Does anyone have a schematic of the hydraulic hose routing? I'm working with very experienced and knowledgeable folks trying to replace the hydraulic hose that was the cause of the fire, but we cannot find the end of the hose and where it connects to the manifold (of which I assume there has to be one to control the slideout actuator). The basement of the coach is extremely well finished and carpeted, so they don't want to start doing exploratory surgery with a sawzall, and they have even tried to drop the fresh water tank, but it wouldn't drop down and come out of the coach, as there are flanges that prevent it from defending from between the frame channels. I have done a lot of research on the forum and read many of the posts about various issues. I also found the SMC Leveling System manual, which provides excellent information on the electrical side of the levelling system. However, I cannot find any technical information on how the slideout ties into the levelling system hydraulically. If anyone has replace hydraulic hoses on a similar coach with the Magnum Chassis I would greatly appreciate any information you have.
Sincerely, Tim W.
