LOTS of information

The Blue Bird has a LOT of information provided to the driver and to the occupants of the motorhome:

The dash display that is in the driver's view while traveling.

Above the driver's head - Most of these items are not pertinent during driving, which is good, because people who wear bifocals cannot focus on this area while sitting in the driver's seat, and cannot see the values when sitting in the passenger seat - unless the passenger uses binoculars or stands next to the driver, both of which have occurred when we were having alternator issues that caused the inverters (the area on the left) to issue alerts!

Above the passenger's head - again, most of this is not pertinent while driving -- there is an alarm (currently turned off) and warning light in the lower right that notifies us if the power cord is still out if we turn on the ignition (driving off while still plugged in to shore power is bad form!). There is also an altimeter in case we ever become airborne... nah... we use it to determine elevation as we are driving. The gauges here are used when we're parked - the ones to the left tell us whether we have shore power (volts) and the ones in the middle tell us how much power we are drawing. At the campground where we currently are, we only have 30A hookups. I don't exactly understand how it works, but when we have 50A hookups, we actually have 50A on each of two legs, giving us available 100A of power (which allows us to run pretty much everything onboard at the same time). When we are on 30A, we have only 30A - so it doesn't cut our power to 3/5 or 60% of 50A, but rather to 3/10, or 30% of 50A hookups. Things like our water heater will draw 10A, so that's 1/3 of our available power on 30A; the microwave will draw another 10-12A, and other random things (laptops, washing machine) will draw 5-7A - so we're getting up close to 30A and just need to be aware. If we go over 30A, it usually will trip the breaker on the power post outside... enough trips of the breaker will fry the circuit and require someone from the campground to come out to replace it. We might only trip it once, but that once might be the straw that breaks the camel's or circuit's back.

Ok... back to the "lots of information" - when I'm driving, I have lots of gauges that I can watch, and even more switches that I can flip. I often tell people that God has been gracious to me to allow only one thing at a time to have a problem so I can learn what that gauge can tell me, rather than having to learn all of them at the same time!

Note: anytime in this post or any blog post when I am indicating what Jimmy has told me, it is what I remember that I *heard* him tell me, not to be confused with what he actually told me, which might be quite different! There's this business of translation - from knowledgeable master mechanic to computer geek data princess - going on...

One of the first gauges that we learned about was the fuel level... now, I know you're saying... "what's so complicated about fuel level? I have one of those on my car/truck/SUV/etc"... well, yes, but yours probably actually "works". Our fuel gauge works some of the time, but it tends to bounce around much of the time. It will bounce from Full to whatever its current fill level is... so you have to watch it bounce a couple of times rather than being able to just glance to see the current level. The engine was off when this picture was taken, it really isn't on empty! We don't usually let it get much below 1/2 full - at 1/4 full, we can no longer run the generator (its access to the fuel is strategically placed at the 1/4 full location so we cannot run the fuel tank dry with the generator.
The other gauge pictured here was also one of the first ones we learned about... it shows the air pressure on the two air tank systems that provide air for the air brakes. When we had just had Miss Doozie for a few weeks, we were driving a short distance up I-35 to meet up with the fellow who was going to provide us with driving instruction. As we were heading up the interstate, I started hearing a strange sound from behind us but somewhere in the bus - Dwayne went to check it out and found that it was coming from within the toilet area of the bus. I was checking gauges and saw that the Air Pressure was indicating 0. At this point, I had already pulled off the interstate but was stuck in traffic on the frontage road. Amazingly I was able to process that the reading could not be correct because if the air pressure gets below a certain point (I think 65PSI), the rear spring brake will automatically engage as a failsafe (and bring the bus to a pretty immediate stop!).... so I was pretty certain that the gauge reading was not valid. When we got to the place where we were to meet the driving instructor, we told him about the problem and he said that probably the governor that told the air system to "sigh" off when it got to the full level (you may have heard this from tractor trailers) was stuck and a bang with a wrench might fix it... the gauge wasn't actually reading "0" but rather the indicators were pinned all the way around against the pin at 0. A few minutes later, a wrench tap/bang on the governor got us working again. Mike, our instructor, also had me bleed down the brake air system by pushing/releasing the brake pedal so I felt the spring brake engage so I would experience that situation (while we were already stopped in a parking lot). By the way - the strange sound that we heard inside the bus was an air hose in the toilet area that was spewing air because there was too much air pressure in the system.

This was another set of gauges that we learned about pretty early on... there was a problem with the charging system through the alternator on the bus when we bought it. The previous owner told us that he would connect the coach and engine batteries together to be able to start the bus, and we did that, but master mechanic (my brother) Jimmy wanted to know why that was necessary. Dwayne and I were just discussing what the resolution was, and ultimately, I think a voltage regulator needed to be replaced to get the system working correctly - but we're not sure we're remembering correctly. At any rate, I check the DC Volts at times while driving - the coach batteries should be at 13.8 (almost 14) volts, and the engine batteries at 12.8 volts.

 Speedometer is something I knew how to use from the beginning, but the odometer (which displays in a digital display just above the "VDO") had stopped working a bit ago, just blinking 69999.9. A few months later, it started working again... on strike? temporary anomaly in the space/time continuum? who knows?
The Tachometer is something I am still learning. We have another display above the driver's head which is information from something called "ProDriver". When I am using the engine brake, sometimes it blinks a red light indicating that I am over-revving the engine. I have been trying to watch the Tachometer to see what the RPMs really are and whether it is a problem. We are thinking that the ProDriver might warn about an RPM value exceeded that is less than what the engine can bear (the warning light comes on at 2100RPM and the documentation seems to indicate that 2250 or 2500RPM might be the value that is really a concern), but we are thinking that we need to go to a Detroit Diesel shop and have someone there check to see if the engine is recording issues.

 Another use of air on the bus is to supply air to the air bags that provide the air suspension system on the bus. We can control the air bags that keep the tag axle in contact with the ground with a "Tag Axle Dump" switch. The manual indicates that this switch will only work at less than 15 MPH as the intention is for it to help with tight turning at slow speeds - the tag axle is right behind the rear dual axle, and when the bus makes a tight turn, the tag axle tires essentially drag across the pavement, scuffing the tires, making black marks on the pavement, and, the reason we dump the air, keeping us from making the tightest possible turn due to the friction they cause. Miss Doozie takes quite a bit of room to make a turn, even a little help can be beneficial, so I try to remember to dump the tag axle to allow a tighter turn when maneuvering in tight spaces - in campgrounds or parking lots. I can see if the tag axle has pressure on it with this Tag Axle Pressure gauge. Since we are parked, the pressure is off most of the way - it normally runs about 70PSI.
I haven't been forced to learn about the Trans(mission) Oil Temperature gauge yet (that is, nothing has gone wrong in that area yet!) - guess I had better start learning before I have to know!

I don't think I am fully using these gauges yet either... I do watch the Turbo Pyrometer when we are stopped and getting ready to turn off the engine - I wait until it is under 450 degrees before turning the engine off. I have been watching the Turbo Boost more recently when we are climbing hills, trying to make sure that I'm not pushing it past the 25PSI... but that's all I know to do with it thusfar - more to learn here!

Finally, this is a set of gauges that I have just learned about. I mentioned to Jimmy that it seemed that the Oil Temperature gauge was always on the same value (where the yellow marker is - we had added that some months ago to note if it ever goes beyond that). He asked if it immediately goes to that value when I start up or if it starts low and then increases to that value as the bus warms up... of course, I had not noticed that. He also indicated that the water temperature and oil temperature should show similar values - as the water is being used to cool the oil. I didn't discuss the Oil Pressure gauge with him - something else to learn...

When we drove from Seaside to Newport, I watched the Water Temperature and Oil Temperature gauges carefully and took pictures when we stopped at signal lights or pull offs on the drive to help me remember.

The engine has just been started - both temperature gauges are at the lowest value, and the oil pressure is at 30PSI.

This was after we hooked up the Jeep and we were on our way out of the campground. The engine was off while we hooked up the Jeep. The water temperature appears to have come up a little bit.

About 5 minutes into our drive...

about 10 minutes...

20 minutes

55 minutes

1 hour 10 minutes

other gauges at 1 hour 10 minutes

1 hour 25 minutes

other gauges at 1 hour 25 minutes

So... it looks like to me that the water and oil temperatures are tracking together, so the water is successfully carrying away the heat from the oil as designed. The temperatures do start out low and work to warmer as the engine warms up (as would be expected, I just had not bothered to watch before). The oil pressure always seems to be a little under 30PSI - I didn't talk to Jimmy about that gauge, so I'll need to find out more about it. These pictures don't seem to show the oil temperature getting up to the yellow marker that I thought it always was sitting on... so... I don't know whether this is because the camera was from an angle different from where I am looking at it or what - I honestly didn't notice the value being under the marker when I took the pictures later into the drive, so I'm guessing it may just be a bit different because of a different angle on the gauges.

The best news for me is that the gauges do actually appear to be working as they seem to behave in the way that I understood Jimmy to tell me to expect them to behave - hurrah!