Last nights post!

Even though Blogger is down tonight, I will make this post on the text editor and post it later when they come back on line.

It was so pleasant to get back to our sticks and bricks bedroom and the bed that we know best.  If we were full timers, that would be our motorhome, but since we spend the majority of our time here at home, the bed here is home.  But we are off of the business end of the airport here in Overland Park, and it is only 2 miles away so screaming jets at 6:30 AM are a rule of thumb.  Not airliners, but rather private jets, but they are loud enough.

But today was the try and figure out what is wrong with the motor home jack system day, so I went and got the coach.  I disassembled the dash and followed the wires underneath, but could not find anything that looked wrong.  Giving up, I called Tiffin again!

This time I got a different customer service fellow, and he had the exact experience in my problem.  Since I had it apart he began to instruct my testing procedures.  Like me he surmised that the problem was not under the dash, but rather at the other end of the cable connected to the control panel in the dash.  But I had no idea where it went.  Well, to the locker behind the front passenger wheel of course.  The same locker with all the circuit breakers that I was scrambling around it out on the highway.

But this time it was a different box, or panel if you like, that was fastened to the roof of the compartment behind the Xantrex Inverter.  I haden't noticed this little box before, but it was right in plain sight, once you looked up there and studied what it was.

He rang off while I took the thing apart, thinking I just had a loose wire.  And yes I did have that loose wire, but not like we susspected.  One of the individual wires had come out of the back side of the connector that was plugged into the panel.  The plug was all there, but the wire was loose out of the plug.  And it is soooooo small, that I had no way of putting it back in.  So I called him back and described the problem.  He decided to go talk to his friend out on the repair floor, and he would call me back again with what they decided.

I went out and tried to get this little plug apart, but the tiny metal thing that was no longer crimped on the end of the wire would be wrecked if I just punched it out of the plastic.  I did jamb the wire back into the part long enough to make the control panel work as it should have.  First deploying the jacks and then retracting them to their upright position.  That proved that I had indeed found the trouble.

Eventually I did get called back from Tiffin, and they had a plan.  They said that removing the cable from the engine compartment was way too time consuming and difficult, but rather they were having a cable end made by the cable manufacturer.  I should cut the old cable end off of the wire and I was to "butt splice" the new cable end onto the wire.  He copied down my address and said it would take the manufacturer a while to send the custom made end out to me, but that he would turn it around immediately.

I inquired about paying for this part, but he would have none of that.  He said the part should not fail, and that the cable manufacturer had agreed to make it for me.  Ah, the power of the big purchase order!!  But anyway Tiffin held my hand all the way thru this, and guided me on the phone, returning my calls within an hour or less.  It was not something that was related to the work they completed this past week, but rather a completely new broken piece.  But still all of this is still no charge??

His parting thought was for me to call him up when I got the part and installed it.  He wanted to know how it went even if everything turns out ok.  Said he would note the follow up in my file, so it could be referenced at a later date.  (And probably for the next owner as well, when the memories of this repair were completely gone there would still be some trail.)

I put it all back together and drove the motor home back over to storage tonight before dark.  But I have much more peace of mind tonight knowing that I don't have to run out and buy a new controller brain box.  I have read that they are priced in the thousands.  That would not have been good!

Retired Rod