New Member

[Ernie Ekberg]

I would like to welcome Jonathan Fine-"Jusfine" to the group. I have known Jonathan since before the 9/11 attacks as he was a member of my old wanderlodge forum. Now, he owns a fine looking Prevost

[davidbrady]

Thanks Ernie! Welcome Johathan. It's been a busy Thanksgiving Holiday and I just now saw Ernie's welcome post. We're mostly a small band of ex-wanderlodge owning prevost owners. My goal is to bring some of that old fashioned wanderlodge resourcefulness to the marque. Prevost owners are mostly known for having only one plastic tool in their toolboxes! I'd like to change that. What year and converter Prevost do you own?

[cmillsap]

David,

Al Perna said it best in a recent conversation we were having about bus repairs. Paraphrasing, he said “Chuck, I was just at Parliament having some repairs done on my Wanderlodge and the place was also full of Prevosts having repairs done”. Obviously, a Prevost needs maintenance and repairs just like a Wanderlodge needs maintenance and repairs.

The availability of Prevost and Converter Service Centers across the country just makes it much more convenient to let readily available skilled & knowledgeable techs and mechanics perform the repairs for you. However, that convenience is not cheap. Having spent a lot of money and a full month’s time at Prevost and Marathon getting service and repairs done on a newly acquired Marathon XLII, I can personally attest to that.

Conversely, finding competent and available Wanderlodge repair facilities is difficult particularly in the Northern and Western states. This has been caused by the closing of the factory in Georgia and the subsequent loss of Wanderlodge service facilities nationwide. As a result, many Wanderlodge owners such as myself had to resort to learning how to repair many of the components on their Wanderlodge themselves.

As I become more familiar with the Marathon, I am realizing that there is a lot of similarity between a Wanderlodge and a Prevost, especially in the chassis components. That being said, there is a lot of difference between them also, particularly with conversion items. Some positives and some negatives. I think some of the technical items such as the Crestron and Techlink/Techlon systems are probably more trouble than they are worth and have to be fixed at a service facility. So, there is plenty on a Prevost (regardless of the conversion) that a knowledgeable Wanderlodge Guru would be familiar with and can repair without having to take their bus to a service facility.

In the month I spent at Prevost and Marathon, I was amazed at the number of Prevost owners that I met that were previous Wanderlodge owners. The common reason that most switched to Prevost was the inability to find competent and convenient service facilities for their Wanderlodge. Adding to that, most owners that were looking to trade up to a newer model found that the later Wanderlodge models M380 and M450 were even more technically complex and dissimilar to the traditional earlier models which made them more difficult to fix at home or find a service center that knew how to repair them.

So take heart all you Wanderlodge Gurus, you can easily use your knowledge to become a Prevost Guru.

[davidbrady]

Hi Chuck,

Congrats on the new ride! Prevost ownership can be nonsensical at times, but I'm always grinning ear-to-ear when I'm behind the wheel.

The Achilles' Heel is the Crestron, AMX, and RTI control layers that some converters like to use. For those who aren't familiar with these products, Crestron, RTI, and AMX are home theater control systems. This equipment normally consists of a handheld remote, a central processor, and a distributed set of control boxes which offer infrared or rs-232 control over A/V equipment. They like to tout their one button push philosophy where a sequence of events can be programmed to occur. For instance the lights dim, the shades are drawn, the dvd player, AV receiver, TV, and surround sound systems are turned on with a single push, while the proud owner nestles into his easy chair for his favorite viewing. It is impressive and it does provide that Prevost Wow factor that customers look for but there are drawbacks. 1) the stuff becomes quickly outdated, 2) any new A/V components need to be programmed into the system, 3) the systems are closed and proprietary, and 4) the vendors typically work only thru a dealer network. All of this means inconvenience and cost. If an owner wishes to install a new TV he has to hope that his system isn't obsolete, he has to find a dealer willing to lend support, he has to pay the dealer thousands of dollars to program the new AV component into the system. There's no hope of wanderlodge-style resourcefulness in this area because of these limitations.

My bus is a case example. It's equipped with AMX but the system is old, obsolete and no longer supported by AMX. If I go to one of the old AMX dealers for support their answer is to sell me a new system such as Crestron or RTI at an exorbitant cost in the tens of thousands. What do I get for this new supported version of a closed architecture? More of the same... I need to see the dealer every time I install an new A/V component and I need to give them thousands for the programming required to support the new component. This just isn't feasible for me nor is it feasible for many others. Many folks have chosen to simply do away with their control systems and instead reach for the untold number of remotes required to manual orchestrate their A/V equipment. To make matters worse, many of the converters have worked the home theater control into controlling other aspects of the coach. On some conversions, the only way to control some aspects of the bus is via the Home Control System; i.e., there are no manual wall mounted switches. These owners have no choice but to spend the money to have their systems upgraded to new closed proprietary but supported products (at tens of thousands of dollars)! Eek!

Vantare uses AMX but it doesn't need it. I have manual switches that do everything the AMX does. I'd like to upgrade my A/V systems to the latest technology but I don't want to lock myself into more of the same. I'm looking at alternatives in home theater control and bus control that put the power back into the peoples hands. Look for a new thread on that topic.

[CC_Guy]

Years ago, and not that many years ago, integrated control systems were not that prevalent. So, in some cases, converters needed to develop their own systems for some functions. One that was needed that comes to mind was a system for automatically starting the generator. Today, such a development would be a waste of time and not likely to be as robust as current off-the-shelf systems. Most modern inverter/chargers have add-on generator auto-start systems that are far superior to the ones developed by the converters. A standalone unit today that’s far superior to any of the converter developed system can be bought for barely $200. In most cases, a worthwhile upgrade to accomplish now unless you plan on upgrading to new inverter/chargers at some point.

Then there’s the integrated coach control systems used by many of the converters. At the time, these were probably pretty cool and helped market these million dollar plus coaches against the rest of the RV industry. Unfortunately, the approach taken was shortsighted, costly, and locked the owner into total reliance on their converter. Personally, I wouldn’t care if my coach had a Crestron or any other proprietary integrated control system if I knew I could operate the systems independent of the integrated control system if it were to fail. If they took the approach of the master remote controls available today, they would have been fine. Most did not take this approach.

A prospective buyer or owner should ask themselves what they would do if they lost their Crestron, AMX, Tech-Link, or whatever system they have. Maybe you couldn’t control the satellite receiver from a different room. Of course, that’s just an inconvenience. What if you couldn’t control your heat, air, lighting, water pump, or other systems that are critical to a good trip? For some conversions these systems are nearly impossible to control without the control system, regardless of the system used.

Support is another big deal. Who can service these systems? Keep in mind that in most cases the main system has been supplemented with custom designed subsystem controllers for our 12V systems and anything that wouldn’t typically be controlled by which ever system the converter selected. Worse yet, and already stated by David, how do you reprogram your system when you change out a TV or other piece of AV gear? In the case of Crestron, once the programming has been done it is compiled in its operational form. That means that if you don’t have the original programming any changes pretty much require a programmer to start from scratch which is time consuming and costly. Some converters are overly protective of their build data, to include Crestron source code. So, you are pretty much held hostage to the converter for any reprogramming and those cost too can be hard to understand. This probably explains why so many really nice coaches are still using ATSC (digital TV) converters rather than upgrading their antiquated TVs or dedicated monitors.

Not all converters went overboard on integrated control systems. Some kept lighting and non AV systems on their own control systems. Spyder Controls comes to mind as the system that is more than capable of controlling 12V switched systems. They even have a manual fall back in the event of a failure of their control system…Smart. AV control systems where limited to AV systems on the coach…again, Smart.

The RV industry could do well to look at the marine industry. For many years the marine industry has had a common protocol that if implemented in a vendor’s system could allow control, data exchange, and monitoring from other systems adhering to the same protocol. Their protocol has evolved and even made one major change from NMEA-183 to NMEA-2000. Even through the transition, devices where made available that could allow for interworking between the old and new protocols and changes in the electrical characteristics. In fairness to the RV industry, they did adopt a common interface protocol, RV-C. Unfortunately, it came about as the RV industry was struggling to stay alive. Today, RV-c is still alive and implemented in some products, even though it likely doesn’t get mentioned in many spec sheets. SilverLeaf was one of the drivers of this effort, it not the founder. If widely adopted, an integrated user interface (display or tablet) could easily be implemented while keeping all subsystem control systems alive and well and behind the door seldom opened.

At the end of the day, it’s your coach. How you feel about your Crestron, AMX, Tech-Link, or whatever processor based system your coach has is up to you. Many of these systems are very robust. My Windows based glass dash was still going strong after 12 years of service when I upgraded it. Even so, these systems will fail at some point. What’s your work around for critical systems?

[Jusfine]

Tnx Ernie, hello group. Long strange trips to say the least. I was taken into with the owners of BB's, MCI and now Prevost. I look forward to picking some brains...........
Jonathan
1997 XL Royale #201
1965 MCI 5a (past)
1980 31FC BB (past)