Toter purchase advice

[bushpilot]

as long as it is a 3 stage intelligent charger / maintainer you'll be fine -

I just looked at the Parallax website and all they talk about is temperature compensated charging - i don't see any specs nor do i read in the documentation where they state variable charging voltage based on battery condition.

if its a constant (average is the word they use) - then imo its a trickle charger and will require monitoring of the battery fluid level or it'll boil the batteries dry.

[neetchracer]

I'm reasonably sure my charger is probably not smart.....however I assumed it would be since it is 2017! I could disconnect the charger and put a $30 smart maintainer in the battery compartment. I guess I don't feel too bad, the center still works good for 110v and 12v circuit protection.

[ItalGerBrit]

Just a few days ago installed the Progressive Dynamics 9270 charger and works just as BushPilot said it would. It cycles through three charge rates and automatically goes into storage mode. Like a cat, it takes care of itself. Finally figured out that my battery banks were connected correctly with 4 starter batteries and three house batteries joined with a relay switch to disconnect the two battery banks for storage. Not knowing how it worked, I never shut the switch off. Tested the house batteries again and they were bad so now with new house batteries everything is working as it should including no shifting problems but an upcoming very long road trip will be the real test. Still trying to figure out heaters, water heating, switch panels etc. Then, Direct TV, Sat hookups, and hopefully, all done. I took a year to semi get to know my American Tradition RV but hope to cut this down to just three months!

[neetchracer]

I hear ya. I bought mine from a dude that knew nothing about it, but the price was right. Took me hours of testing before I realized there was a dash switch that activated a solenoid to turn the coach power on/off. lol.

[ItalGerBrit]

I still have a couple of switches with unknown functions and 120v plus 12v Bass multi-switch breaker panel to figure out. In "is this broken or do I just not know how to operate it mode" with a lot of the electrical stuff. The new house batteries and "smart" charger cleared up a lot of the strange electrical problems.

[ItalGerBrit]

A long nightmare of a story relative to the POS Eaton auto shift problems in the last 3 months so I ripped it out and converted it back to a three pedal manual. Eaton nightmare over! But, shifting a manual is incredibly difficult to get the hang of and I will be practicing for many days/weeks to get it right. Small price to pay for dumping the autoshift junk trash tranny.
My house electrical glitches were related to an improperly grounded multi-breaker panel. It was not grounded to ground bus bar! The smart charger/converter has ended all the earlier charging problems. Thanks again BushPilot. So all is finally good with the truck. This truck is like a sports car compared to the heavy, fat, wallowing walrus Amer Trad MH. Love this truck! Safe travels.

[Bob86ZZ4]

Wow, that's a pretty big undertaking to get rid of an autoshift trans, isn't it? My son is a former truck driver. He started driving trucks at 18 years old. He could row the gears with the best of them. He used to harass me for buying a truck with a "girly" transmission in it. I did try to drive his tractor a few times. Made it up to about 7th gear. Definitely an art to it. Good luck!

[ItalGerBrit]

Originally Posted by Bob86ZZ4

Wow, that's a pretty big undertaking to get rid of an autoshift trans, isn't it? My son is a former truck driver. He started driving trucks at 18 years old. He could row the gears with the best of them. He used to harass me for buying a truck with a "girly" transmission in it. I did try to drive his tractor a few times. Made it up to about 7th gear. Definitely an art to it. Good luck!

~9K undertaking because it was a two pedal. Much easier to convert had it been a three pedal auto. I gave up on it because over the last two years every sensor, harness, TCU, XY shifter, etc had been changed and the previous owner had gone through every all gnd, pos, cables etc several times. No less than 7 Freightliner dealers had a shot at it. The last dealer said that autoshifts can be a nightmare. No shit Sherlock! The Eaton factory techs suggested that changing the XYshifter and TCU again "might" fix it. That trans could have gotten me killed locking up in 10th. Like having that happen in heavy traffic on a freeway in the middle of a city which it did twice! Hell with it. It is gone! Looking forward to the challenge of learning how to float gears like the big boys do. I suspect it will take many hours of practice.

[Bob86ZZ4]

That's awful. I'm really surprised nobody could figure it out. Crazy. Do you know any truck drivers that could ride with you and coach? My son really helped me when I was trying to learn to float them. If you don't know any maybe you could stop at a truck shop and see if any drivers are stuck there for awhile and would take a ride with you for $20-30.

[neetchracer]

Although mostly good things I hear about the auto/ultra shifts, this story scares me...lol. My 2003 Columbia has a two pedal 12 speed auto shift trans. It seems great. Lack of a clutch pedal is kinda hard to learn to back up, but not bad with some practice. I'm glad your moving in a good direction at least.

[ItalGerBrit]

Originally Posted by Bob86ZZ4

That's awful. I'm really surprised nobody could figure it out. Crazy. Do you know any truck drivers that could ride with you and coach? My son really helped me when I was trying to learn to float them. If you don't know any maybe you could stop at a truck shop and see if any drivers are stuck there for awhile and would take a ride with you for $20-30.

I rode with two truckers and they showed me how to float the gears but they both were old timers and long ago forgot the mechanics and shifted by sound and feel. After studying the rpm/speed shift point tutorials as well as the double clutching technique online I now understand much better what is going on. I am an instrument rated pilot so can quickly scan the gauges without getting fixated on the gauges instead of the road. Will install little cheat labels on tach and speedo as markers for shift/gear targets to hit. Will practice on back roads until I get it and I will get it because I have no choice! I have to get it and quick!

[ItalGerBrit]

Originally Posted by Bob86ZZ4

That's awful. I'm really surprised nobody could figure it out. Crazy. Do you know any truck drivers that could ride with you and coach? My son really helped me when I was trying to learn to float them. If you don't know any maybe you could stop at a truck shop and see if any drivers are stuck there for awhile and would take a ride with you for $20-30.

Originally Posted by neetchracer

Although mostly good things I hear about the auto/ultra shifts, this story scares me...lol. My 2003 Columbia has a two pedal 12 speed auto shift trans. It seems great. Lack of a clutch pedal is kinda hard to learn to back up, but not bad with some practice. I'm glad your moving in a good direction at least.

The problems I had are not that common relative to the many thousands of auto shifts on the road but when they occur, they are extremely difficult to correct because everything is just fine for several hours before all the crap starts again. In my case ~4 hours. I pulled all sorts of codes but one code can trigger several other codes so the codes are pretty much no help at all. The problem was heat related it seems. After the truck was allowed to cool down for an hour or so it was just fine. The autoshift worked just great when working and is light years easier to drive than the manual but my back was against the wall. You probably will never have any problems. Mine started acting up at about 105K miles on the trans and continued to get worse the previous owner told me. He traded the truck for that reason.
Appreciate the feedback from you guys. I hope that my experience might help someone else down the road. My advice would be to not spend much trying to repair the trans. 7K was spent on it by the dealer and I plus the previous owner spent at least that and nothing fixed it.

[petrel]

Originally Posted by ItalGerBrit

I rode with two truckers and they showed me how to float the gears but they both were old timers and long ago forgot the mechanics and shifted by sound and feel. After studying the rpm/speed shift point tutorials as well as the double clutching technique online I now understand much better what is going on. I am an instrument rated pilot so can quickly scan the gauges without getting fixated on the gauges instead of the road. Will install little cheat labels on tach and speedo as markers for shift/gear targets to hit. Will practice on back roads until I get it and I will get it because I have no choice! I have to get it and quick!

Those seasoned drivers will make it look deceptively easy. Then again, I guess it is easy to them.

I only drove three months over the road before my hip gave out. Even after three months, I was still double clutching whenever the truck was heavy.

Clean accurate downshifting still seems like a bit of an art form to me. Even my 3 Million mile plus trainer scraped one every now and then. Matching gear, RPM and ground speed has to be done by sound and feel, nobody looks at the gauges.

Save the mountains for last