The next item on our long list of Prevost inspections and repairs involved taking the transmisison out.  While making a thourough inspection during the purchase of our bus, we noticed the transmission was leaking from the front seal area.  We negotiated the repair of this seal into the purchase price.  I can't stress enough the importance of a thorough inspection before negotiating the purchase.  This repair is a major job but is made much easier when you have the right tools.  It took two mechanics here at Prevost about 40 minutes to drop this transmission.  That has to be a record but having the knowledge of exactly what to take loose makes this job very easy.  When the tranny was out I wanted the tranny taken apart for a thourough inspection so we found the cause of the leak.  With only 68,000 miles on the seal I figured something must be wrong for it to be leaking.  I'm hoping all that is wrong is a seal that has set too long and dried out.  The mechanics are suspecting a bushing has failed as well since the leak comes and goes as we travel.   

The transmission is apart and it's not good news!  Before I owned this bus, someone that had no business working on this item has assembled it wrong and messing it up pretty bad.  It is now painfully apparent that they have made some novice mistakes that is going to cost me a new transmission.   Not only had they destroyed some of the external wiring harness connections but they have left parts out of the torque converter that has caused excessive wear in the transmission internal surfaces & sent catastrophic metal filings throughout the unit.  Since taking this unit out is a time consuming & expensive process, it makes sense that the tranny be perfect before it goes back in otherwise it will be a roadside breakdown time bomb.  I've decided to have a certified remanufactured Allison transmission sent in and installed to ensure dependably for a long time.  What a shame that someone hired a inexperienced mechanic to work on such an expensive and sophisticated part of this beautiful bus.  A good lesson here is never allow price to be part of your decision in picking a mechanic.  Find out what they know before they touch your bus. 

The new transmission arrived just as promised and while we waited for it, the Allison tech spent his time rebuilding the Transmission wiring harness, flushing the cooling system and cleaning up the transmission cavity so it will all go like it should during installation.   As the tranny went in I was very impressed with the methotical way the Allison tech performed the task.  Every bolt, brace, hose brackets and such we routed exactly like it would have been when the Bus was manufactured.  When the job was done, they cleaned up all the hand prints and inspected their work.  After filling the tranny with new TranSyn fluid and resetting the Trasmission ECU to quickly adapt to my driving style we were ready for a test drive.  The test drive threw some weird  shifts out of the gate but soon it learned how I like it to shift and began shifting smoothly.  Well, another project is done and it's back like it was when Prevost build it in the beginning.  We will take it out for a 400 miles jaunt and see how it peforms.  I'm glad we didn't have to be brought into the shop on a hook just to learn this was the problem.

We finished a half a dozen small jobs on the chassis to make everything perfect and hit the road.  We traveled a couple of hundred miles from Nashville and stopped for fuel.  I went out anbd checked for leaks and everything is dry as a bone.  The transmission ran 200 degrees temperature and shifted smooth so far.  Finally, the bus is road ready!

Another project to conquer is the outdated inadequate design of the entrance door latch and handle used in early XLIIs.  Although there is not much difference in appearance between the original and the heavy duty model, there is a big difference in feel when you use them.  The original handle design has a bad reputation of failing at the wost possible moment meaning you are  outside and can't get in top your bus!   I've read whre some owners have figured out how to drill a hole in the handle and reach in to unlatch the door.  I'de rather have it fixed before it breaks and not go through that.  This repair is a painful one when it comes to the price of the parts.  The complete handle kit comes with all new linkage, brackets and even a new body gasket.  The new handle is held in place so it won't move around in the door with a heavy bracket and screws.  This means trimming the hole in the door to allow for this.  The handle itself is made much heavier than the original.  I can certainly see why this handle has more leverage than the old one.   

When we purchased this bus it was our fourth large diesel pusher RV.  Having came from a four slide 45 foot HR Navigator with more room than a gymnasium, it was an adjustment to go to no slides.  This has been a surprisingly enjoyable experience and we now are in love with the consistent space we have available and how roomy this bus actually feels with the huge windows.  The one area that still feels cramped is the Kitchen.  The original design must have catered to dining out because the cooling facilities were limited to say the least.  I made Karen a promise to make the kitchen more user friendly so it makes sense to start there.  

Since Karen is a great cook and I love to eat this was a win-win project.  A bit of planning along with extensive research various cooktop styles and technologies left me certain on the number one priority of this project.  make the best use the small amount of counter space.  The various styles of cooktops the list is endless and Karen had asked for a larger cooktop than originally had been installed in the bus so this narrowed the number of cooktops to three burners or more.  Since the couter space was already in short supply I decided to search for a three burner instead of a four.  You see, the problems with the old two burner cooktop was it was slow to heat or cool and with it recessed into the counter you had to cover it to use the counter and couldn't while it was hot.  We also were disappointed with the cleanup of the old style two burner because food would lodge down in the cracks in the recessed area making it a Q-tip cleanup job that was a headache.  To us, that meant it must come out of the recessed whole be flush mounted in the counter top and be knobless.  After much searching I found a Seaward Princess Lite touch three burner cooktops that could and would double as additional kitchen counter space.  With it's knobless ceramic cooking surface it was perfect to mount flush into the counter so it could be used as a place to prepare food as well as cook on it. Of course with the addition of another large burner and instant heat and cool technology, it would need another ten amps of power which meant a new wire from the electrical box.  That was the toughest part of this job but without slides to get in the way, running this wire wasn't all that bad.   With the countertop prepped with a larger hole to the proper size, the next step was to install a junction box with the new electric source on the back wall of the cabinet below the cooktop.  The new lighter & more efficient cooktops are really simple to install using the included waterproof industrial two sided tape.  This not only holds the cooktop in place but also provide a water tight seal to the countertop.  Once it was down in place the only thing left to do was connect the power pigtail to the previously installed junction box.  Now when you want to energize a burner you simply touch the ceramic surface at the designated spot in the lower right corner and set the temp.  Instantly the temp rises and in a few seconds the burner can be at full power.   When you shut this new cooktop off it only takes a moment for it to be cool.  This will be nice for food preparation and the touch panel can be locked by simply by holding the off key for 5 seconds.  This will prevent you from accidently turning the burners on while having things set on the cooking surface.  With the cooktop locked there is no way to turn any heat source on.  When your ready again hold the off key for 5 seconds and the controls spring back to life.   Only your fingers are recognized by the touch panel so objects won't inadvertanly turn the unit off or on when set on that control area.  Karen loves her new cooking surface as well as having more space to prepare meals.  Total project was under a thousand dollars!

With the Kitchen ready, the next honey-do was getting the tank sensors working accurately.  The original headhunter sensor system was stll in place but like most I have talked to, the measurement you get as the tanks fill up is inaccurate at best.  This called for some heavy research to determine what system was best before proceeding.  After studying all the systems available, I decided none of them were high enough quality to bother with.  I went in search of someone that knows how to build electronics and have found an electrical engineer that was familiar with what I was looking for and went to work building a good system.  He designed a complet system called the Phoenix Monitoring system, made up of a Sensor box, and two display panels.  The sensor box contains all three tank sensors and neccessary hardware to make them work and it is now located in the everhead of the bay with the tanks.  This box was designed to work with the existing headhunter air tubes already in the tanks.  This box then sends an extremely accurate measurement of each tank to a pair of display panels, one located in the utility bay where you dump & fill the tanks, the other inside the bus so it's convenient to check.  He even included the ability to control the fresh water tank auto-fill.  Now when the tank hits 20% it fills and shut off when it reaches 95% full.  What a nice convienience when you busy and not checking the water tank.  This is going to make the tank management much easier in the bus.

With the honey-dos done for now, it's time for some entertainment upgrades.  Although the existing Sony Trinitron TV and Bose Lifestyle 30 surround was somewhat state of the art in 2002 it is antiquated by today's standards.  Since technology changes so fast, it is smart to find the best and latest technology possible and include an easy way to make upgrades the next time it's neccessary into the upgrade plan .  That means all the cabinets surrounding the current TVs are going to need a major facelift to accept the new 16:9 Flat panel HDTVs so popular these days.  All supporting equipment will not only have to be changed but relocated closer to the TV to make HD & component changes later the best it can be.  Since Karen and I sometimes watch TV separately that means upgrading the bedroom and living room is neccessary.  another concideration is that TVs are evolving into glorified computer systems and it won't be long until we never make a trip down to the store for a DVD or music CD.  That fits nicely into RVing since carrying all the DVD and CDs are a room hog.  Taking all this into concideration made me decided to include a media server to store all of this content on a massive hard drive and serve all the pictures, music and recorded TV programming up to be seen on the beautiful HDTV displays that are now available.  My research on all the HDTVs has convinced me the Samsung's UN32C6500 internet ready LED HDTV panels are the best for the RVs .  An added bonus is with their 1 inch thick light weight and slim design I will be able to make them hang on the doors to the entertainment cabinets at each TV location.  This allows full access to the rear of the TV but also easy access to the Samsung HT-C6500 Blu-ray theater system and Satellite receiver in the bedroom and the same components plus the Mini Mac server and Autonet Mobile internet device in the livingroom. 

After much research I determined the Macintosh  Mini Mac was the best media server for the job.  It seemlessly inferfaces with the Macintosh Time Capsule containing a powerful wifi network router as well as a terabyte network storage capability.  The beauty of this combination is it will serve up all our content to not only the HDTVs but all of the computers on board such as my windows based laptop and Karen's MacPro laptop, Ipod touch and IPad.    

One of the lessons I've learned along the way is make the remote controlled components the same brand in each location so that the remote for each location is the same as well.  It's nice not to have different remotes to have to learn.  I also like the ability to have one remote operate all components in that location.  Staying with same brand TVs and theater sound makes this possible.  This was another reason to go with Samsung.  They have what is called BD Wise technology that allows the TV remote control the hidden components behind the TV automatically.   So now that the entertainment system is complete it is mighty nice to enjoy all of our store content on every media device in the bus wirelessly as well as watch TV when, where and how we want.  Of course it doesn't hurt the watching experience when the sound shakes the room and the picture quality is better than most theaters out there today.