Spent the last couple of days cleaning all the dust, dirt and grime off the engine and drive line and re-connection many wires that have either come out of the crimp connections or broken. Of course, when I washed down the engine, afterwords, the tach didn't work, the speedometer was jumping around and the oil pressure gauge was reading "0" Connection on the back of the oil pressure gauge had come out (I was tying down loose wires back of the instrument panel), went for a short ride and the tach slowly started to work and the speedometer settled down, That will be another investigation as the speedometer has always been jumpy on start-up and settles down as things get up to working temp.

House batteries were loose and they got tied down and rewired.

Crawling under to check things at the rear, I found the reason for my "funny" brake feel. The left rear wheel bearing seal has failed and the disk and pads are saturated with diff oil! Brakes have been effective but had a "dragging" feel when first starting out, wasn't bad when we first picked up the Barth but has been getting worse. I guess this is my first priority before adventuring out on the next trip!

Hope you all don't mind these rambling posts just sharing and hope that my findings are interesting and helpful!

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Ed
94 Breakaway

quote:

Originally posted by MWrench:
Hope you all don't mind these rambling posts just sharing and hope that my findings are interesting and helpful!

What motor do you have? What size coach? FYI: You should edit your profile that includes some basic info on your coach, that way when you ramble we can at least know what your talking about. Oh, and keep rambling cause someone might be helped or offer help on something your doing!

When I ramble on about my coach and someone doesn't know what I have they just look down and figure it out. See, look below...

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1991 Barth Regal
460 EFI C6 Transmission
33' Oshkosh/John Deere Chassis

http://www.TruckRoadService.com/


[This message has been edited by Bill (edited January 31, 2006).]

Good suggestion Bill, I haven't figgered out how to post a picture in my signature yet, advice? Maybe I haven't posted enough yet.

Is this better?

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Ed
94 30' Breakaway side entry
230 Cummins, Alison 6 speed
Sparton chassis

Ed,

Is your 230HP Cummins a 5.9L or 8.3L?

With the jumpy speedo you may be able to prevent future fixing by lubing it. If you have the patience and room:
1. lay out a bunch of papers several layers thick
2. disconnect both ends of the cable
3. put on 2 layers of throw away plastic gloves
4. Pull out the cable, wiping and coiling on the paper as you go.
5. Clean the cable by wiping again.
6. Squirt cable lube into the sheath and start feeding the cable back, periodically adding lube as you go.
The jumping is lack of or old hard lube in the sheath and as it flops around it warms up the old lube and settles down. Eventually it will break. Eventually may be soon or two or three more owners down the line.
Best of luck and have fun with the winter projects.
Tim

quote:

Originally posted by Rusty:
Ed,

Is your 230HP Cummins a 5.9L or 8.3L?

It is a 5.9, pull very well up grades and in my older unit (91 Rockwood 27' w/454) where I would go up grades at 55, the barth will do it at 60. With the 6 speed it cruises effortlessly at 70 @ ~1850 RPM. Been getting over 11 MPG but-- this is only for 700 miles with only three grades/passes, the rest is mostly flat and at sea level.

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Ed
94 30' Breakaway side entry
230 Cummins, Alison 6 speed
Sparton chassis

My speedometer is all electronic, has no cable, there is an electronic pickup in the rear of the transmission and sends signals directly to the head unit.

The cruise control stopped working yesterday, Hmmmm, it will control but acts as if you wouls be holding down the resume/acel button. something is stuck or wire is broken. one more to the list.

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Ed
94 30' Breakaway side entry
230 Cummins, Alison 6 speed
Sparton chassis

quote:

Originally posted by MWrench:
Good suggestion Bill, I haven't figgered out how to post a picture in my signature yet, advice?

[img] remote pic link [/img]

The trick hear is to make sure you have a picture that you can link too. If you already have a picture that you have posted somewhere then just place the item's link between the [img] and [/img] tags. You must make sure that the image link touches the two tag brackets like you see up top.

If you don't have an image up on a site send it to my email address and I'll set it up for you. It also helps if the picture is not so large as to take away from your post so if that's the case I'll resize it too.

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1991 Barth Regal
460 EFI C6 Transmission
33' Oshkosh/John Deere Chassis

http://www.TruckRoadService.com/

"Without Trucks,

America Stops"

"The cruise control stopped working yesterday" Wiring for cruise control and other functions go throug the Tilt wheel. They chaffe and short out giving all sorts of wierd problems. Your Speedo & Tach are a loose bundle of wires hanging next to the trany. Thats where you'll find most of the intermitent problems.

Thanks eric. I have checked the wiring for the cruise control and it is OK, basically the unit when set to a speed will take over and keep accelerating, I think one of the valves is stuck. Haven't gotten to that yet.

I am systematically going thru the wiring and cleaning all the connectors and contacts and using proper grease to further illiminate future problems.

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Ed
94 30' Breakaway side entry
230 Cummins, Alison 6 speed
Sparton chassis