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 2009 Phaeton in May 2010, 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 2010, 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 2010 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 2010 was replaced with an exact duplicate.	The new levelers come with a much more robust control box.

Fast forward to April 2012.  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 2010.  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 2012 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 2012, 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.

‘Amputation’ Successful

Friday, 6 April

We’re back at Bull Run Regional Park (for Russ and Donna — that’s BRRP) for another weekend stay through Sunday with a late check-out on Monday.  Once again, we’re in site 109 on the FHU loop.  Yes, Paul — we snagged your favorite site for the second time in a row, but we stacked the deck in our favor by making reservations several weeks in advance of our stay ;-).

It doesn’t look all too different from the picture I took last week.

My recent posts have been filled with all the prep-work we’ve been doing for full-timing — our upgrades and changes, and the fun we’ve been having working on these projects.  Lest you think life is always rosy at our condo on wheels, during set up this week we ran into a snag.  One that could have been a major headache.  You see, the rear driver-side leveler leg overextended itself and then refused to budge despite all of our efforts to retract it.

Some of you might recall that we had electrical issues in November 2010 that ended up frying the controller board.  That problem was actually preceded by the same leg that was acting up today being uncooperative at times.  Once the controller board was replaced, we were back to business as usual with the levelers extending and retracting normally.  At the time, the tech did tell us that the leg in question looked slightly bent and cautioned us that it might present a problem again someday.

Well that someday turned out to be today.  Now bear in mind that we’re in the same site we were last week.  We have no idea why the leg decided to overextend itself this time and worked perfectly well last time.  Anyway, there the Phaeton sat, it’s rear driver-side tires off the ground by nearly two inches, and the leveler leg refusing to retract.  We tried all the emergency recommendations in the manual and some of the tips we’d gleaned from the internet last time.  No luck.

So we called Coach-Net for assistance.  I have to say that we were very impressed with the service.  After we spoke with a tech, he contacted a mobile service on our behalf.  But before dispatching the guy, he notified us of the hourly rate and how long it would take for the repairman to get to BRRP (one hour).  At the end of the hour, we received a status-check call from Coach-Net.  When we told the operator that the repair guy had not yet arrived, she called for an update and advised us of that conversation.  The guy was stuck in traffic, which came as no surprise to us as rush-hour traffic is notoriously bad on I-66.  At the end of the second allotted time for arrival, Coach-Net called back … just as the tech was pulling in.  Great customer service.

The tech guy had us try a couple of things — which we had already done on our own, but this time he was under the vehicle banging away at the leg, hoping to jiggle it back into alignment.  Nothing, nada, zip.  That leg wasn’t going anywhere.  So, Mui gave him the go ahead to jack us up a bit more so he could remove the leg.  I have to say, seeing the Phaeton at what looked like a precarious angle sent my stress level sky high.  But it worked out OK, and the amputated leg was soon lying on the ground next to the coach.

Too frustrated to take pictures of the removal process, but here’s the problematic leg.

Our gimpy leveling system (they are Atwood electric levelers, by the way) means that we won’t be using it until we get a replacement leg.  That was on the punch list anyway for when we go to Red Bay next year as we start out our full-timing life, so we’re going to just stick to that plan.  In the meantime, Mui will continue to research electric vs hydraulic levelers and we’ll make a decision to either do a full-blown system replacement or just get a new leg to replace the amputated one on our existing system.

With a sigh of relief that we were at least operational again, we paid the $178 for the two-hours the repair guy was here and sent him on his way.  Finishing up the rest of our set-up procedures, we had a quick dinner and settled in for a quiet evening to decompress from the stress of dealing with the levelers.  Now to enjoy the weekend.