Air Bag Flat

[SSteve]

About 10 miles from our stop for the night, the chassis seemed to ride a bit rough, for lack of a better word. While checking in at our park, noticed the Right Rear corner low (as in deflated). All others ok. Searched IRV2 and found a few instances of some ride height adjusting parts going missing causing the bag to not inflate. I'll check this out in the AM.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks
Steve

[Gary RVRoamer]

Major leak in the bag or an adjacent air line? Stuck open air dump valve?

Loss of that much air should be easy to find by ear.

[94-Newmar]

Here is a link to a post I made just a few weeks ago when I had a similar problem but with a front leveling arm. I don't know about your chassis, but on the Newmar/Spartan chassis we only have 1 leveling valve for both rear bags while the fronts are independent (3 total).

Air Ride Leveling linkage

You can crawl up underneath with the coach running and the other bags aired up and remove the quick link to the leveling arm and operate the leveling valve by hand to see if its even attempting to air up. Push up on the valve lever to add air to the bag, which might also let you hear any leaks right around there, such as Gary suggested above, the dump valve being stuck.

[SSteve]

Thanks folks.

After we parked, I deflated all of the bags, then re-inflated. Again, 3 good--1 not. Stuck my head in and around the RR as best I could to listen for a leak, but heard nothing. I'll give it a better listen while underneath tomorrow.

94-Newmar, great pictures. Gives me a good idea of what to look for if it is a leveler issue.

Thanks again,
Steve

[SSteve]

Update...

It was the leveler system. The rod attached to the axle assembly was no longer attached to the leveler valve. The retainer nut was missing. Temporarily reattached to verify it still worked. Good inflation and heard no leaking air so, hopefully, there was no damage to the bag.

I checked the left side and all of the attaching hardware is still there and secure. I'll check the fronts later.

Decided a more permanent fix would be to use a wing nut to attach the rod then safety wire the wing nut to prevent this happening again.

Thanks again for the assist!
Steve

[94-Newmar]

Excellent news!

[MaverickBBD]

Glad to hear you still had the rod and didn't have to resort to the golf tee trick.

[SSteve]

Hey Mav,

Now you've gone and done it!

I just gotsta know about the golf tee trick...

Steve

[MaverickBBD]

SSteve

While attending Campfreightliner, the instructor (Mike Cody) showed us on the bare chassis the operation of the air valves to the air bags and how the rods connect to inflate and deflate them to keep the coach level. He showed us how easily the disconnect and reconnect. But if you ever loose on there is a position on the inflation are that connects to the rod where you can stick a golf tee that inflates the bag long enough to get you to a service center. He (as I) passed on a warning about doing this as if you don't know what you are doing you can have the coach drop on top of you and like he says: You will be deader then dead.

[94-Newmar]

That sounds dangerous - from both having the coach lay down on you or over-inflating the air bag. If I ever lose a rod entirely I'll find a nice branch or stick cut to length and a couple of the small bungee cords to hold it them in place until I get home.

[SSteve]

Whew!

I was afraid it was going to be something like sticking the tee in your eye to distract you from the pain when presented with the bill to tow, diagnose and install the missing rod.

Glad it was an actual tip to limp home. Given a choice between a flat bag and an over-inflated one, I'll take over-inflated. I can't tell you how much I worried about what damage might have been done driving on the flat bag, not to mention vehicle control issues.

Thanks for the info, Mav
Steve