Community Forums

Wayne R · 08-29-2006, 04:43 AM

Not all of the solenoids fail. Mine is 2 years old and working as designed. I carry a spare just in case. We fulltime in our motor home and just completed 3 weeks of dry camping with no issues other than battery capacity with the residential refer.

Mine did act up for a brief period in the 1st month of use.

lundy · 08-29-2006, 06:50 AM

Maybe a suggestion to WRV would be that if such a problem exists on this many coaches, they would issue a recall letter. Personally, I get upset when my coach does not start in some remote location caused by something as simple as a $38 part.

Audrey & John · 08-29-2006, 09:12 AM

We started out with a bad solenoid. The chassis battery was not getting charge when plugged in. It was replaced a month later. This too failed after just a few days. Then WRV sent us a bigger "fatboy" solenoid and John did the replacement himself. This fixed our problems (over a year now).

We haven't dry camped long enough to know whether we have any other type of power problems.

I glanced into the battery compartment of one of the new RVs under construction at WRV, and we saw only 6 house batteries and the smaller solenoid.

Audrey

Audrey & John · 08-29-2006, 09:59 AM

Here is the "fatboy" compared to the original solenoid.
The printed label is hard to read at this size; it reads:
White-Rodgers/RBM
Type 586-105111-3
Coil 12V D.C. Cont.
Cust. No. 586-902

John

Ted III · 08-29-2006, 02:46 PM

Audrey & John, quite frankly the heavy duty solenoid I changed to looks like what your picture shows on the right. I have never seen anything like the "fat boy" as you refer to it. It certainly gives the impression of being substantially more substantial. I will definitely look into that.
Thank you.

EngineerMike · 08-29-2006, 04:39 PM

I don't know about you guys, but I just gotta have me a FatBoy. Anything w/a name like FatBoy hasta be da bomb.

Aud- does FatBoy get hot enough to BBQ fingertips? My SkinnyChic solenoid runs at ~135?

Buddy and Beverly · 08-29-2006, 04:58 PM

Supposedly we are getting the solenoid with the number Ted III sent, so it won't be a "Fatboy." It's good to know something bigger exists if we need to go to it.

Obviously, not everyone seems to have problems. Seems like the 40's don't have as many problems as the 34's and 36's. Maybe that's the way I'm reading it. Oh well, it's a wonderful coach when everything works right. We keep saying that we believe the bugs are all out, and then something else happens. I keep hearing "two years" to get them worked out. Surely we're getting two years rolled into 6 mos.

We've got 9,000 + miles on ours now and plan to put a bunch more on this Fall and then do a winter trip. Hopefully all the bugs will come out of the closets.

Beverly and Buddy

Audrey & John · 08-29-2006, 04:58 PM

LOL! Fatboy only gets warmish. The previous solenoid got extremely hot.

Audrey

P.S. "Fatboy" is what WRV called it.

halmallet · 08-29-2006, 06:26 PM

check the ground wires,never hurts to add a second ground to batteries. never more then one wire to each batteries.if older coach such 2000 and one put buss barr on back of battery compartment it fixwd mine

EngineerMike · 08-29-2006, 08:42 PM

Gitcher FatBoys here (about .75 of the way down page on right) for $82
or here for $44.95, although this last may not be the one rated for marine use (which I suspect is the "-3" in Johns part #).
The same solenoid lines seem to be offered under the Stancor brand, but I didn't see comparable part #'s anywhere; might try West Marine.
Or you could try the Cole Hersee 24143 200 amp, continuous duty rig w/silver contacts. Not quite as sexy sounding as a FatBoy, but has the pulchritudinous specs engineers love.

Danny Gayhart · 08-31-2006, 12:37 PM

Dead chassis batteries on our older coaches was usually traced to the Echo Charger wiring. Do the newer coaches have one? If not what replaced the Echo Charger?

Danny

Ted III · 08-31-2006, 05:02 PM

Mr E Mike, I have played with a lot of words but share with us pulchritudinous. Do you sit up in bed at night and these just come to you or does it take a great deal of drinking?

Buddy and Beverly · 09-01-2006, 03:31 PM

Thanks Audrey and John for posting the pictures of the solenoids. I made a printout and took it to the RV repair facility.

Danny, we don't have an Echo Charger, but when the Guaranty RV techs were helping us get our coach started, they recommended we get one. So, we plan to.

Beverly and Buddy