RE: Galley faucet replacement question
Bar faucets will usually fit well, that is what we put in our 07 C190P Roadtrek.
It has a high spout (very handy), single handle, soap dispenser all separate, so they go into the close spacing in the Roadtrek very well. We used Delta.
RE: Campgrounds Custer, SD
Our first trip to this area, Custer looks like a good point for all the local attractions.
Looks like there are several campgrounds,
Any recommmendations would be greatly appreciated.
If you want to stay in Custer State Park, you may be too late to get a site, it fills very quickly. If you do go to the park, we prefer Stockade South campground. Smaller, quieter, very peaceful. There are also a couple of campgrounds between the city of Custer and the park, which looked pretty nice, but we didn't stay in them.
RE: RT 210P Refrig/Propane Mode Q
Have a 2011 RT 210P and up to recently have had no problems with any mode of the Dometic Refrig. Now having a problem in the gas/propane mode. The flame comes on but after a while (sometimes as long a a couple of hours) it goes out on its own without any apparent cause to me. The propane mode is not reliable and not consistent.
Anyone else have a similar experience and any remedies? Appreciate the expertise of forumland. Safe travels.
GC
I have heard of several cases where the gas pressure was low on newer Roadtreks. As part of the check out, make sure they check to see that the regulator is set properly. Low pressure is a very common cause of blowout.
RE: Overpriced Roadtreks
My understanding is that NADA uses a % depreciation based on age and original MSRP. This would make it totally independent of market forces, and way off on pricing, especially for older, good condition, units. The depreciation % were probably originally determined for A's and C's, which do depreciate very rapidly.
That said, we bought our 07 Roadtrek C190P new for less than the NADA used price. It had been on the lot for 15 months and was just into being two model years old in October of 2008.
RE: Update on newer RoadTrek Chevy Chassis & House Batteries
As Marco says, the separator takes a bit for its electronics, the alternators always have slightly leaky diodes, the radio uses some for its memory, if you have a Scangauge it also uses some, if it has a factory alarm they use quite a bit. One thing that will kill it off pretty quick is if you go in and out of the van regularly, as there are a bunch of timers that run every time you open any doors. I have seen over 3 amps for up to 20 minutes. The folks with the 2008 models seem to have had more trouble than most, based on complaints posted, particularly on the Yahoo board.
RE: Update on newer RoadTrek Chevy Chassis & House Batteries
Whoever told you the chassis battery in a Chevy Express goes down after 10 to 14 days because it's a cargo van has been smoking something strange.
Unless of course if Roadtrek installs something on the coach that puts a small drain on it all the time for whatever reason.
I think the fact that it is a cargo van is insignificant,. but from what everyone seems to say, they do go down that fast. It appears to have gotten much worse when Chevy went to the chipped key security. Our, non chipped, 07 will go 3-4 weeks on the factory battery. My guess is that it is going to be that way with most every vehicle, with all the power toys they have now, light timers, alarms, fancy radios, gps. If we want longer time without killing the battery, we will have to rewire or increase battery capacity, IMO.
RE: Update on newer RoadTrek Chevy Chassis & House Batteries
The easiest way to increase the time to dead is to replace the tiny Chevy starting battery with a group 27 deep cycle. We have a Trojan SCS200 in ours at 115 Ah, which is about double what the factory one is. Because it is so much oversized, it still has plenty of starting power. We are also setup to run our compressor frig off its extra capacity, if we want/need to.
RE: Roadtrek introduces the RS E-TREK
In the photos at www.lakeregionrvs.com I could only find one under the hood (most likely the engine battery). Most of them are all behind the rear wheels, at the very back of the E-trek just in front of the rear doors under the floor. Not a location I would have selected for great handling and towing.
The pic of the underhood appears to show two 6 volt batteries
http://www.lakeregionrvs.com/new_galleria.asp?pov=3082045
RE: Roadtrek introduces the RS E-TREK
Quick question, where are the house batteries on the E-Trek?
Since there are 8 of them.
The one we saw at the Mpls show had 6 in the rear, under the floor, and two under the hood.
RE: Buy, or wait until the new vans are out?
What makes it so a 20 foot Transit would have more room than a 20 foot Chevy. If they are a unibody like the Sprinter, they won't be able to cut the body, so you don't get the outside storage of the Chevy The only space you gain is if they are taller, and the fact that the AC will probably be on the roof. One of the big features of most of the Chevies is that they are under 9" tall. Unfortunately, almost all the new models are giving up storage space for openness, so you may get lots of space, but little space to put stuff.
RE: Interesting USA Today article about diesel
It will be very interesting to see how the direct injection gas engines alter the past/current balance of power, especially for heavy vehicle. DI gas engines handle boost better, have much lower tendencies to detonate, and are more efficient than the normal fuel injected gas engines. They also run cleaner. They don't have the issues (that we know of yet) that the pollution controlled diesels, like Sprinters, have with plugged up DPF and EGR systems. We will see.
RE: Roadtrek introduces the RS E-TREK
kendall69 - more info please
Is it an RV? Do you idle it and then drive it?
Do you idle it for an hour at one time or throughout the day?
If you describe what you do then it might help others who are considering extended idling.
I agree, even the strickest idle rules could have an hour a day idling, as long as it was driven in between to heat up the DPF and EGR systems to keep them clean.
RE: Finding it increasingly difficult to park overnight
I wouldn't lay low and not answer the door. If overnight parking is not allowed, it is very possible the next thing you feel is the van being pulled onto the flatbed for a trip to the towing yard.
You're missing the point I made. It's not about parking in a place that has signage that says "no overnight parking" It's about sleeping in your rig when there's a no camping or sleeping ordinance in effect.
Again, if your rig is legal and the can't see you you're gold.
Actually, I guess I don't get what you are saying. If there is no ordinance in place, and/or you are on private property with permission, you shouldn't be bothered anyway. Private property is private and does not need to be posted. Neither do all parking places. Many do, but it is not necessary. I don't have my house posted, but if folks chose to use my driveway or yard for something, I would take issue. If you are on public land, it is highly unlikely there is not an ordinance, as nearly all places have them, as others have mentioned. You also need to remember that it is up to you to make sure there are no rules against what you are doing, not some else's responsibility to let you know after the fact. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" applies here, and it would be really tough to check out every place you may want to stay to be certain. I doubt that you are doing complete check of all rules, everyplace you go, and are hoping to not get caught.
RE: Finding it increasingly difficult to park overnight
I wouldn't lay low and not answer the door. If overnight parking is not allowed, it is very possible the next thing you feel is the van being pulled onto the flatbed for a trip to the towing yard.
RE: K&N air filters
Very interesting, and not overly suprising, when you look at the filters themselves. K&Ns look like you could throw rocks through them, although I do use them on our limited miles hotrod where power is the biggest item.
A number of years ago, I ran across an "air filter sizing calculator", that was extremely useful. You put in your engine size, max rpm, any boost if you had it, altitude, etc, and it told you have many square inches of filter area you needed (of their filter media). All the filters listed the square inches of media, so it made selection pretty easy, and if you had space, you could go much larger to gain service life. I did the calculations for all of our drivers, and found the factory air cleaners to be quite a bit bigger than the minimum size it recommended, which is good. As you might expect, the larger the engine, the less oversized the the OEM filters were. This probably isn't as bad as it seems because the big engines usually run at a lower % load than the little ones, so are using less air as a % than the small ones. Heavy vans, though, would be using a lot of air compared to an empty one, and our 6.0 air filter is not all that much bigger than the one on our 2.0 liter Ford engine, so it will need more often changes, I think.
A side point would be in relation to the data they gave in the article concerning the pressure drop across the filters. In the days of carburetors, this was a major concern, and that is when K&N got their reputation. The air cleaner pressure drop, shows up directly as lower pressure in the throat of the carburetor, and directly affects the air/fuel mixture, less restriction-higher pressure-leaner mixture. Since most carbs tended to be set on the rich side, putting on a K&N very often showed a significant mileage increase (along with the moderate power increase). People really liked that. Modern fuel injection systems monitor the intake manifold pressure and the air volume going into the engine, so you don't have that kind of issue. The only mileage gain you would get would be from the tiny gain of less force needed to move the air (pumping loss), or if it was so plugged up, you had to have the throttle wide open most of the time, which makes the computer richen the mixture.
RE: Fresh water pump - works but loud
Walk through a campground at supper time and listen to all the pumps running, especially if there are a lot of popups, that use the same pump. They are loud, and pulse on and off. Only way to get rid of it is to go to one of the variable speed, quieter, models.
RE: Roadtrek introduces the RS E-TREK
Anyway, I don't think that Roadtrek is suggesting that you park it for a month and just run it a half hour a day. My take is that it is a back-up for that rainy day when the solar can't keep up with your usage.
This is from the blog that is written by a guy that most certainly has ties to Roadtrek, so he is not unbiased, but it is a quote from Jim Hammil of Roadtrek.
"Hammill told me if you run the engine 20 minutes a day, everything is charged enough to keep you out there for days at a time… until you need to go get some more diesel for the engine.
RE: Roadtrek introduces the RS E-TREK
Back to the idling question... I found this on another Sprinter oriented board from a poster who usually makes sense and gives good advice:
The most authoritative answer I got was through the shop manager at the MB dealer. He contacted MB USA. They directed him to MB Germany because they could not find an official policy(!). MB Germany finally replied and said:
"A limit of one (1) hour idle time at the stock idle speed, or 1.5 to 2 (two) hours with the 'high idle kit' is recommended."
That is direct from MB Germany.
This would suggest that Roadtrek had confirmed that their idle time recommendation to top the batteries follows MB Germany's advice.
Technically, Roadtrek conforms to that spec, but they keep saying that all you need to do is run the engine 30 minutes a day to stay charged up. The spec you quoted is missing a vital piece of what, from what I have read, MB is saying. MB doesn't want you to go beyond the idling amount stated without subjecting the engine to a full heatup cleaning cycle, which means a sustained drive. This puts you into taking the van for a full drive every day of boondocking, which is not what Roadtrek implies in their statements.
The spec doesn't mean you can idle the engine every day, without driving it, as long as you stay within the time limits each day.
