What did you do to your bus today

[cmillsap]

Spent a couple of days repairing a broken latch on our coach’s utilities drop door. The latch was frozen shut and parts were broken and missing due to not being greased. The latch has a grease fitting so well hidden that no one would ever know it was there. It needs greasing to keep the latch operable.

Marathon designs and installs a unique utilities deployment system in their conversions. It consists of an air operated drop door that hinges down underneath the chassis in which the sewer hose and power cord are housed. A mechanical latch operated by a pulling solenoid latches the door in the up or closed position. The capped sewer hose is automatically deployed and retracted out the drop door by air pressure built inside the hose. The power cord is electrically deployed out the drop door by a Glendinning cord reel. This system is great so long as everything works as it should.

Marathon has updated and redesigned the working parts several times over the years and for good reason. If the closed latch fails to release the drop door or become inoperative, access to the utilities is not possible. Conversely, if it fails to latch the door in the up position, the door will slowly lower itself (due to air loss) and drag along the pavement subjecting itself to be destroyed or torn off. A new latch of the same vintage is no longer available from Marathon

First night out on our trip, the drop door would not open. The latch was stuck closed. Access to the latch is difficult (to say the least) but I finally got it open enough to release the door. Next morning, I drilled a hole in the lip of the door, closed the door and screwed it up to the bay’s floor so we could continue our trip. Did this each night until we reached our destination.