Foretravel Owners' Forum For owners and Fans of Foretravel Motorcoaches September 12, 2025 ...

Re: Troubleshooting Red Check Engine Light and White Smoke

Reply #25 – February 22, 2016, 10:00:13 am

My comments were specifically about labor rates and pricing.  What I've found is that all of the heavy truck shops play fast and loose with pricing in ways I've never seen in the automotive world.  I suspect rv driver is similar to woman driver in a regular car shop.  The commercial drivers seem to get consistent pricing but rvers they really try to figure out what you can pay.  I wouldn't think you'd see this kind of thing with huge cummins, cat dealers, etc but you do.  The one time we had a hung caliper.  We showed up at noon on a friday without an appointment.  The first thing we were told is that there is no way they could get us in.  I said that's fine, I will most certainly have the issue resolved on my own before Monday.  Then magically there were able to get us in and quoted me 5 hours.  I told them that I'm familiar with the mechanism and they can have 2 hours max.  They heeed and hawed and agreed to 2 hours.  All said and done it took 45 minutes so they billed me 1 hour because of a miscommunication between service advisor and mechanic.  The SA was ticked that I only paid 1 hour for a non-book job that took 45 minutes.  This one is somewhat forgivable because they probably don't look at meritor brakes very often and maybe they thought they were getting into something more serious.  Maybe they just wanted clearance for a bad day before they even took it.  That's fine if they framed it a little differently "This could take as long as 5 hours, we've seen it before, but we'll bill you for what we actually use rounded up".  This wasn't how it was framed.

I've had paint/body work estimates from several big companies that are just outrageous.  Pretending like my coach has some kind of magic paint made of unicorn horn or something.

My issue is that if you take your cummins coach to a cummins shop, the issues you have should be relatively common.  There should be a guy there who says "hey, I've seen that before, it's probably ecu".  They should certainly have an ecu in another shop vehicle or on the shelf that matches the engine.  Maybe not tuned exactly but base maps and everything to run it.  Swap it in and see if it runs. 

And why is the ECU $1800.  Isn't there a used part market for these old engines?  It's probably just a leaked electrolytic capacitor that can be replaced.  Even at $125/hr labor it's cheaper to repair the ecu.  It's a fleet part.  That ecu couldn't cost more than $500 in the real world with real profits where everyone gets their pockets lined.  $1800 is just being greedy.

You pay all this money and you still have to fight to get competent work done without your wheels falling off or other major missed steps.  It's just very disappointing and I'm left with having to do all of my own work.  It's sad that a single random guy like Paul Yasbeck working in his driveway can absolutely *shame* the big mechanics in pricing, quality, knowledge and honesty.  I know if I ever break down again, I will look for a small independent with a good reputation over any chain.

Now you see why I don't share my opinion.  It's not good

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Re: Troubleshooting Red Check Engine Light and White Smoke

Reply #26 – February 22, 2016, 06:22:23 pm

hey, I've seen that before, it's probably eco"

Having been in the Automotive Dealership Environment . The first thing I told my employees/service advisors" NEVER "diagnose on the drive. It sends false signals to all, techs despise it and the customer now has "expectations" of what is at fault.

My 2 cents

Hans

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Re: Troubleshooting Red Check Engine Light and White Smoke

Reply #27 – February 22, 2016, 07:09:57 pm

Many members may remember my incidents last winter with our coach and faults that after 2 goes the Cummins shop said it was ECM related so they changed it out and programmed then we took a test drive. All looked good ( cost for ECM $1700). Well it failed again and I asked them to check wiring pins going into it and low and behold there were 5 of them bad- causing the paroblem. Now my question to them was " why when you changed it over did you not notice this problem"? Asnswer was "we missed it"
It was now working right so I had them remove new ECM and put mine back in. They did and credited me the cost and time.
Still do not know how the tech missed seeing the problem while unplugging and re-inserting the connections on ECM.\Worked out ok in the end but the issue gave us some scary moments on Hwy.
John H

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