Looking at an XLII -- need advice

[davidbrady]

I love my Vantare, but you'll find that most folks will say the same about their conversions. I have two degrees in Electrical Engineering so it's the electrics in the Vantare that draw me towards it. It's a well thought out system designed by EE's. I don't know how many of the other converters have engineers on staff but my guess is that it's few.

The center of the Vantare electrical system are the 2 Trace SW4024 pure sinewave inverters. All loads pass thru the inverters. This means that everything in the bus can be driven with inverter power. Parliament also uses a system like this, but most of the other converters have a dedicated 120VAC panel for inverter loads and another panel for shore power/generator loads. Wanderlodge uses the dedicated panel approach. The Vantare approach requires the user to manage loads because the inverters are oversubscribed; i.e., there are 8kw of inverters but all the loads in the panel add up to more than 8kw. The advantage of the Vantare system is that I can power any load with the inverters but I need to make sure I never go over the 8kw available. The other approach, a dedicated panel for a subset of the loads, takes away that flexibility. In the dedicated panel approach I need shore power or generator power to power certain items. For instance, I can power my four cruiseairs via the inverters while other converters hardwire one or two cruiseairs to the dedicated panel. Some converters don't allow any cruiseairs to be powered by the inverters. They're all hardwired to the shore power/generator panel. To know your inverters is to know your Vantare. Remember too that Vantare sold each and every bus with complete electrical schematics of every wire and system used in the house. Only someone who's proud of their work will do this.

Blue Bird builds a good bus, but in my opinion they took too long to bring their basic platform into the 21st century. They finally managed with the M380 and 450LXi but those products were never completely flushed out. They only built 74 M380's and 57 450LXi's. For a bus built from the ground up some might consider them to still be in the prototype stage. Sadly the Wanderlodge factory is gone so these buses are what they are. The early line up: FC, PT, WB, and LXi are well developed designs but they're stuck in a time warp. Basic development seems to have stopped in the late 80's when Wanderlodge rested on its laurels while the industry scooted away. It was around then that the Prevost converters became mainstream. Prevost chassis development continued, continues to this day, and far eclipses the early Wanderlodge line up as well as the M380 and 450 LXi development. It wasn't until the M380 and 450LXi that Wanderlodge went to a Prevost style space frame using closed cross-section tubes. Up until 2004 all Wanderlodges were built with open section cross members; i.e., tophats, angle iron, c-channel, etc. These types of cross sections don't provide much in the way of torsional stiffness. The famed Blue Bird All-American chassis, which is what school buses are based on and which forms the basis of the early FC and PT's, is composed of thin wall sheet metal and 14 gauge open section top-hat roll hoops all riveted together. Under the passenger box is a truck style c-channel frame. The passenger box is bolted to the c-channel frame. This basic construction went on thru 2003. In addition, the suspension is by Ridewell. Ridewell with it's inboard mounted air springs and stick axles was used from 1963 through 2003 with incremental improvements. Consequently, the Wanderlodge lost ground to bus companies like Van Hool, MCI, Setra, and Prevost. There really isn't any comparison in ride, handling, and overall chassis tightness. I owned my Wanderlodge LXi for 10 years and for about that long I tried to get it to behave on the road like a Prevost. I failed. The Prevost is stiff, responsive, and has a one piece feel to it. I have yet to find any road surface that upsets the chassis, not true with the Wanderlodge. Traveling roads that I frequently traveled with my LXi are eye opening to me. The Prevost simply glides over anything thrown at it while the LXi pogo-ed down the road with me ducking to keep my head from hitting the ceiling.

Now, it is all relative. If I came from the Newmar, Tiffin, Allegro, the plastic motorhome world, I'd have a much different view of the Wanderlodge. When comparing to your typical plastic motorhome thrown together in 3 weeks the Wanderlodge shines.

As far as systems and electrics go. Again the Wanderlodge is lost in a time warp. Till the end of production they were still using modified sinewave inverters, 12V chassis systems (24V on the 450LXi), and a hodgepodge of distributed load centers most of which had evolved over time rather than having been well thought out by an engineering team. Then there's the fact that there's no factory backing you up. Owners require the forums to keep them on the road and owners frequently need to have components manufactured to fulfill their needs.

Having said all of this, I still love Wanderlodges. They're an American icon. They have and will stand the test of time as a true classic in the recreational vehicle hall of fame. But, much like Packard or Duesenberg or any of the other bygone great American automobile manufacturers, these buses are for weekends, parades, and rallys. For traveling cross country and doing it often I want a factory, I want a network of service centers, I want parts availability, and I want a world class handling and riding machine. I want a 2 million mile chassis with billions of miles of testing and refinement. The Wanderlodge is a great hobby, but for traveling give me a Prevost.