Air Loss, undriveable

[Gerald Farris]

Keith,
Terry said that he mistakenly hooked a ground wire to the battery positive terminal. In such cases, the wire can turn red hot almost instantly, and burn or melt anything that touches it. If the wire ran through the bundle that he is referring to, it could have melted the air line in the center of the bundle.

Gerald

[Terry Melot]

Gerald, you were right. Bill Sprague and I found the bad leak and replaced the 1/4" tube where it ran thru the frame/bundle. A melted spot about an inch long, no doubt from a hot wire.
Marty and I looked and found the second, not so bad leak, in the same bundle but could not isolate it.

Marty, it was the 1/2" red line running to the air tank. Very small "melted" hole in it. Either we never had it pinched off completely or the line took a long time to bleed all the air off and we never waiting long enough.

Took the coach to Kaiser Brake. After they looked for an hour or so they said they would need to remove the fuel tank to isolate it. I said no thanks and picked it up.
We went to Bend where Jim Sizemore (RV Outfitters) installed a new induction cook top and removed the LP tank. Then took the coach next door to Bend RV Repair and Jeff had the leak located in 30 minutes.  Another hour and a half and we were out of there on the way to Newport. We knew we'd be in after 10:pm and thought the guard would not let us in that late. A call to Vicky Warren and she informed us that "owners" can get in until the guard leaves at midnight.  We pulled in at 11:30. The stars were out and it was a beautiful night.

Thanks Bill and Marty for all the help. Thanks Vicky for getting us in late.  Thanks everyone else for the suggestions.  This forum has been really helpful to me on many occasions, I really appreciate it. Glad to have our Beaver road-worthy again.

[Terry Melot]

Hi Mike, I sure could've used your help changing the chassis batteries.  Made the mistake of not taking a picture of the cables. I caused all my air leak problems.
We are changing coaches. Pick up our Marquis later this month.  We have our Thunder on the market. The previous owner of the marquis installed a K&N air filter on the Marquis.  I guess everyone is always trying to get more air to their engines.  I'm getting 51 psi on the turbo gage, 1750 rpm, 4th gear, going up a long hill.
I'm not sure the engine is made for more.  I know in hot weather it doesn't have the cooling capacity to put out that much horsepower for very long. More HP wouldn't do me any good if the engine won't stay cool.

Happy travels.

[Bill Sprague]

...... it was the 1/2" red line running to the air tank. Very small "melted" hole in it. Either we never had it pinched off completely or the line took a long time to bleed all the air off and we never waiting long enough.

..... Then took the coach next door to Bend RV Repair and Jeff had the leak located in 30 minutes.  Another hour and a half and we were out of there on the way to Newport.

........Glad to have our Beaver road-worthy again.

Thanks for posting the end of the story.  Did Jeff show or explain how he identified which of the several lines it was?  

The Beaver related resources in Bend never cease to surprise me!

[Edward Buker]

Terry,

I have been an advocate of Donaldson Endurance Filters. The technology they use is to place some Nanofibers above the traditional filterface to capture contaminants above the filter so to speak, so that the capacity to handle particle load over time is significantly increased without decreasing air flow. Beyond that they have about the best filter particle capture rate of all particle sizes on the market today. This filter design makes sense to me and the design was born out of a need to better handle filtration in military applications in the extremely dusty environment found in the desert battle fields. I do cringe when I end up in one of the really dusty roads and a huge cloud of dust is all I can see in the mirror :-) One of the worst in our travels was the access road to the Borax mine visitor center in Boron CA......looked like a dust storm all around the RV when we pulled in there.

http://www.donaldson.com/en/engine/support/datalibrary/000165.pdf

This is a good test report that compares K+N filters comparing them to other available filters. The net of the results is that K+N filters do a very poor job of keeping dirt out of your engine when compared to other filters. With the expense of these engines I would never go there. If you have a restrictive air box filter design issue which I believe some of the Beaver coaches had (not sure on yours), changing that system and using excellent filters would be my first choice. Not sure what the reasoning was behind that change to K+N on your upcoming Marquis. K+N has excellent marketing and maybe that is how this coach ended up with a K+N filter.

http://www.nicoclub.com/archives/kn-vs-oem-filter.html

K+N filtration has their fans and I am just sharing my personal choice based on the test data that is available. Your choices may be different...

Later Ed