Good afternoon, it's been a very long time since I have been on this forum.
This question is for you folks that have older coaches.
I have a 1990 Grand villa on a Oshkosh chassis, which I have owed for many years and it has always been a very good motor home. On our latest trip across country to Florida the leveling system failed.
It's in the control panel, part number AP 7556. I have had it back to HWH twice and both times they just put jumper wires in the Burned areas. Which is sad because they have always been good to me with rebuilding just about everything else on the system.
I know all of these older control panels are obsolete, and so are the retrofits listed by HWH.
I guess what I am asking has anyone tried up dating the control panel and leveler to something newer ?
I appreciate your time and help, Mitch Sayer
Albuquerque NM
Might try these folks. North west rv supply.
Thank you, I will.
Mitch, some have bypassed the HWH computer and control panel.
Frances did this, and Mike from BC. Maybe they can explain how they did it.
You bypass the computer by adding switches for each function, travel, raise and lower for each solenoid. You would have to run wires from the cockpit to the computer. Splice into each wire harness and connect the ground and 12v. Guess you could do a basic thing or get creative with lights and a nice panel.
edit... you could also do this by the computer but then you would have to go outside open the door and level there, but depends on where your hwh computer is.
When my level system failed in Arizona, I had to bypass the computer to get to Q. Its not hard. HWH took 2 weeks to return my call. This forum took 2 hours.
Let us know what you did to resolve it please so others can learn from you.
thanks
bob
added.... don't take my exact word for it, but do your research if you want to go that route. I did not.
Good evening Bob, most likely I will do something custom.
I will let you know what I come up with.
Thanks, Mitch Sayer
I wonder if HWH would share the schematics (and maybe even Gerber files) with you? There are small outfits that will do circuit boards if they aren't too complex.
You'd have to be able to get a hold of them for that to work. I'm currently going on four months waiting for a callback.
Elliot 4 months is crazy. I think it took me about 2 weeks to get a call back from them. But it wasn't very enlightening.
Yea, I think HWH support is the single biggest downside/lynch pin for Foretravel owners. They're pretty good if you can get your rig up to them in Iowa but remote support is awful. Their service/troubleshooting callback times seem to be faster than their parts department but by and large, I'd rather have a rig that doesn't have any dependency on them.
I wish they had some sort of premium support option that would allow them to augment the support team. I'd gladly pay $100 a year or so for the peace on mind of having emergency support readily available and to shave the callback times for non-emergencies to 2 or 3 days. Our two trips to Moscow were efficient and they team quickly resolved our issues. It's just unthinkable that they can't staff up enough to meet the demands for phone support and troubleshooting.