2007 Voyage 35A - Any concerns ?

[John Canfield]

You are increasing risk a little with any kind of extender, but I think with a quality braided steel extension the risk is very minimal.

[WhiteEagle]

That's my understanding so I talked with tire specialist at local truck / tire store...they maintain several fleets of trucks for local companies so they have quite a bit of experience with tires, duals, etc...  ended up putting solid straight 5" extenders from inside duals through the outside rim hole to outside of dual - got rubber sleeves that fit the rim hole and hold the extender in place......all the outside tires/rims  have the solid curved valvestems facing towards the inside of the rim... but in all cases, I can easily get to the nozzle with the two way 45degree guage and air line nozzle.... Also, in all cases, the Pressure Pro sensors will fit on the valve stem and not vibrate against anything......
Believe I'll be all set when I get it done......

[BernieD]

I just installed some extenders so that I could add air and check pressure without bashing my knuckles/fingers trying to get the valve stem cap off of the OEM valves. 

If you had a good Tire Pressure Monitoring System you'd be able to do that without even having to take the caps off

[taoshum]

If you had a good Tire Pressure Monitoring System you'd be able to do that without even having to take the caps off

yes, yes... and then I'd get to deal with all the false positives, false negatives and 10 sensors that will fail from time to time as well as the display, the power supply for the display, the batteries for the sensors and the cables and the connectors and the LCD and the various circuit boards and so on, so on... plus the cost of 3-400$.   I think I'll stick with the mechanical pressure gage, a trained visual inspection and a good thump on the sidewall from time to time.  And, we are actually considering the power company's offer to run electricity to our house next year. LOL.

[utahclaimjumper]

Taoshum, Your avatar and others like it allways creates a question in my mind, Have you been to all the states that are colored? or the ones that are white??>>>D

[taoshum]

Taoshum, Your avatar and others like it allways creates a question in my mind, Have you been to all the states that are colored? or the ones that are white??>>>D

Well, you know I have this CRS virus so I'm guessing but I think it's neither.  The MH has been to the states that are colored, I've been to the ones that are white as well as the ones that are colored plus some that are not shown.  At the FMCA show I saw a map with all of the US, the Canadian provinces, all of the Central American countries and all of the South American Countries.  Some of these maps caused me to wonder about the same question, especially when I looked at the MH.

[BernieD]

yes, yes... and then I'd get to deal with all the false positives, false negatives and 10 sensors that will fail from time to time as well as the display, the power supply for the display, the batteries for the sensors and the cables and the connectors and the LCD and the various circuit boards and so on, so on... plus the cost of 3-400$.   I think I'll stick with the mechanical pressure gage, a trained visual inspection and a good thump on the sidewall from time to time.  And, we are actually considering the power company's offer to run electricity to our house next year. LOL.

Taos

As I said, "if you had a good TPMS system", then you wouldn't have to worry about all of those issues By the way, tests have proven that an experienced trucker with a thumper cannot discern lower tire pressures (I'm not talking about flat or very low and I don't have a link to those tests). And none of your 3 checks work very well when you are driving down the highway where most blowouts occur. And it sure is nice to be able to check tire pressures when it is raining without getting wet

[taoshum]

Taos

As I said, "if you had a good TPMS system", then you wouldn't have to worry about all of those issues By the way, tests have proven that an experienced trucker with a thumper cannot discern lower tire pressures (I'm not talking about flat or very low and I don't have a link to those tests). And none of your 3 checks work very well when you are driving down the highway where most blowouts occur. And it sure is nice to be able to check tire pressures when it is raining without getting wet

Hi Bernie,
I can tell that you bought one and trust it.  I'll wager that even a "good" TPMS will fail from time to time, likely when you are driving down the road in the rain and get hit by lightning.  If you get a false positive, what do you do?  Probably get out, look at the tire, thump the tire, pull out your manual pressure gage, check the pressure and either call for road service or continue the trip?  If you get a false negative, you still have a problem and don't know it and won't even bother to do a visual, mechanical and thump check when you stop for gas or lunch. 

NASA has every safety system, monitoring system and technical gizmo known to man and they still lost two.  A $2B AF jet has every known montoring system available and they still lose several every year.  These systems are quality checked minute by minute (or milli second by milli second), monitored by a herd of engineers, technicians and maintenance folks and they still crash.  The "best" TPMS is mass produced (probably in China) and sold at a huge profit.  It is, maybe, tested once at the factory and then installed by a technician that does maybe two per month.  My "trust" level would not be very high... maybe it is better than nothing but how do you know, for sure?   I don't get it. 

Rigorous manintenance and "passive safety systems" like "Run flat tires" as a backup... that makes lots more sense to me.  I believe "passive" safety sytems will save more lives than "active" safety systems every time.  In My Humble Professional Opinion.  Thanks for your discussion.

[Ned]

If everyone bought only products that had no possibility of failure, we'd all be living in underground bunkers with none of life's amenities.  Perhaps we should stop driving as every vehicle has possible catastrophic failure modes.  Don't stand under a tree as you might get hit by lightning.

I would rather have a TPMS that occasionally gives a false positive (usually due to pressure drops in cold weather) than none at all and suffer the consequences of a tire failure.  I've not heard of any false negatives with the Pressure Pro and I do know of many incidents where it warned in sufficient to avoid a bad failure.

[taoshum]

If everyone bought only products that had no possibility of failure, we'd all be living in underground bunkers (except in earthquake zones?)with none of life's amenities.  Perhaps we should stop driving as every vehicle has possible catastrophic failure modes(as the wreck statistics prove beyond any shadow of doubt).  Don't stand under a tree as you might get hit by lightning.

Any thing can be taken to an unrealistic extreme I guess...as Lee Trevino said "if you're in a lightning storm, hold up your one iron, even God can't hit a one iron" LOL

I would rather have a TPMS that occasionally gives a false positive (usually due to pressure drops in cold weather) than none at all and suffer the consequences of a tire failure.  I've not heard of any false negatives with the Pressure Pro and I do know of many incidents where it warned in sufficient to avoid a bad failure.

 That's the "sales pitch" for the PP system.  It is very convincing.  When it works, it's great and those are the only stories that are repeated.  You probably won't hear of any "false negatives", i.e., it shoulda warned you but didn't... it's hard to notice a faulty bulb that doesn't light up when it should...unless yet another monitor system is available to test the bulbs. Many systems have a "built in self test" that basically tests the bulbs, like the bulb display on the dash when you turn on the key.

I guess this dead horse has been beat enough... thanks for the discussion
[edit]Fixed quotes.[/edit]

[John Canfield]

Okay - I have avoided contributing to the off-topic adventure, but I can't hold back any longer  

We have the Doran TPMS system and once early in our coach ownership I managed to run the right-hand side tires of the coach and Jeep onto the non-paved shoulder on a narrow two lane road with quite a drop-off from the pavement to the shoulder.  The metal valve stem of the Jeep hit something on the shoulder and broke off the valve stem and then we had a flat tire happening.  The good news (I suppose) in all of this was the Doran said we had a problem in the Jeep's tire; of course the problem wouldn't have occurred without the sensor screwed on since the end of the valve stem is normally behind the plane of the tire sidewall.

Be that as it may, I still use the Doran even though it has its inherent issues (like leaking gaskets and I think I now have a bad sensor), but I don't rely on it exclusively.  When we stop for lunch, I use my non-contact thermometer to check the temperature of each tire - if they are all within about 10-15 degrees of each other, we are in good shape.

Edit - if we want to keep going on the tire pressure monitoring tangent, that's perfectly okay but I'll need to split this off from the thread.

[Tom]

John,

FWIW it isn't a "Doran" system. It's made by Advantage PressurePro. Doran might have been a distributor at some point. Today, the units can be purchased through forum member Bernie at Dobco Products.

[John Canfield]

Tom - I was always mystified by the relationship of Doran to Pressure Pro and for a while the two brand names were synonymous.

[Tom]

Yes they were John, and I too was confused for some time. But Bernie straightened me out 

[BernieD]

Tom - I was always mystified by the relationship of Doran to Pressure Pro and for a while the two brand names were synonymous.

John

When Advantage Pressure Pro started, Doran was probably it's biggest distributor and was able to get PressurePro to put the Doran name on the monitor of the systems it (Doran) sold. Otherwise, the Doran and PressurePro systems were identical. A couple of years ago, Doran decided to produce it's own model of TPMS and current Doran products are completely unrelated to and very different from PressurePro's.

[millsrv]

Hello,
We  purchased our 2007 Voyage 35L (W24 Chassis) new in Jan of 2009. The price was 35% below MSRP, the dealer was very anxious to sell the rig since it had been sitting on the lot for well over a year. This is our third class A motorhome, the previous being a 1998 Southwind Storm that we also purchased new. The difference between the two is night and day, the quality of the Winnebago is far superior.

I replaced the two stock 12 volt deep cycle coach batteries with two Trojan T105 6 volt batteries connected in series. I did this only because it provides more capacity than the stock set up, not because the original batteries were bad.
The only issue so far has been with the Kwikee leveling jacks, both of the rears were leaking slightly . The service center replaced both under warranty.
We received a one year warranty on the coach from Winnebago and a 3 year 36k warranty on the chassis from Workhorse. It turns out that many of the other manufacturers, Kwikee for example provide a two year warranty.

We live in California and purchased the coach here with 2200 miles on the odometer, which I assume is the distance from Forest City IA.

Time will tell how this coach holds up, so far so good.

Happy Camping 

[WhiteEagle]

Sounds like we have the same MH.except this one is the Ford Chassis with 6.8 V10 Titon engine ....
Am getting this one figured out - now have 4500 miles on it.... Never had one or ever camped before...Also like it but the water pump placement has got to be the worst engineering and design in the universe......
Had it winterized (northern WI) and it will remain as such until Feb for trip to FL....When we get somewhere safely south will flush and load the water system. Then I'll have to winterize it in route back somewhere 1/2 way......
I had it winterized at dealers in Oct... can see the pink antifreeze in all lines and sinks and bowls - except the screen cartridge next to waterpump which appears completely clear..... hoping they blew that out or it's empty.... almost impossible to even see it the way it's tucked back behind the water service front wall....
Will have to get some advice on winterizing the ice maker unit on way back...
The ice maker has never been used yet but dealer winterized it and there's antifreeze on it and in refrigerator....
Would you know .. If I don't use the icemaker at all in Feb, is it possible that i'll not have to worry about re-winterizing it when we come back ?? OR... is there a way to isolate it / disconnect it for the winter so the rest of the system can be safely used and the icemaker stays winterized ??