[Richard]

I had originally intended this thread to explore why the truck drove better than a coach on a design or principles basis.

Your replies were good and on target. It was pretty silly of me to think that you had intimate knowledge of all the things I have done in aligning the current coach and previous coaches over the years.

On the current coach, the toe in is set at 3/16 to 1/4. My previous post on this shows that I think due to wear in the system that there is a difference in the toe in set on a turntable alignment rack and the actual toe in when the coach is rolling. By rolling I mean to roll the coach forward twenty feet or so and allow the tire forces to act on the suspension components. I don't have data to prove this, but I think this situation was made worse when I changed to the 365 tires. The toe in was set at 3/16 on the alignment table but when measured after rolling the tires the toe in was actually toed out. By the way, it wandered a bit, in the toed out condition.

I have changed tie rod ends, and drag link ends to new. I have measured the play in the center link ends to be .030 in total. I plan on replacing those as soon as I come up with a solution to an unobtainable part.

I have adjusted the freeplay in the steering gear box to it's minimum using a dial indicator.

When we get the coach to Florida, I will probably take it over to Josam in Orlando and have them put more caster in to generate straight line stability.

I have driven a handful of Prevosts. I can't say that the steering sensation was dramatically different than the Newells. Certainly not the difference I immediately felt in the truck.

I think if you drove my coach, you might say what am I whining about. In my pursuit of steering perfection, I am trying to understand WHY that truck steered more precisely than my coach.

On a sidebar, just for Monday morning entertainment. I spent a day on a abandoned concrete parking lot aligning the previous coach after I had paid two different local truck places to do alignments. It did not drive well after the pros worked on it. So I used a homemade trammel bar. string, a digital level, and some basic trigonometry to make all the adjustments myself. It drove OK after that, but I was always curious how accurate I could have been with my redneck setup. So, on a trip we stopped by Miami and I paid Newell $600 to put it on the rack and tell me "I'm not touching it, it's on the money" Rhonda got a big kick out of that, and told me not to be so anal ytical.

I think Jimmy's answer was the most helpful." I have had a couple of old class C's that steered better than any of the bus's I have had. "