Our Liquidspring is Out To Lunch!

So, driving up from Georgia to our eventual destination in New Hampshire, I began to notice a less-than-smooth ride in the rear of our 36LA. Sure, the roads weren't very good in some of the states we passed through, but I was expecting a better ride than what we were getting.

Since we only had a single night in southern Virginia, with an early departure the next day, I didn't have any chance to diagnose what the problem was. I completely forgot about it following the harrowing episode of a FedEx truck causing one of our tow dolly tires to suddenly deflate. It wasn't until after we left the Hershey RV show that I had another chance to try to figure out what was going on.

My first clue was that the Liquidspring interface by the driver kept going crazy; sometimes it showed normal lights, while other times it was flashing odd groups of lights which made it look like it was trying to reset itself. Pulling into a rest area on I-81 just north of Hazelton, PA, I walked around the coach to check everything from basement doors to the toad and dolly. Facing the rear of the coach looking forward, I noticed that our brand new motor home was listing heavily to port (the driver's side for you landlubbers). There was no space between the top of our rear tires on the driver's side, and a good 4-6 inches between the top of the tires on the passenger side and the wheel well.

Not cool.

Catching Wayne Wells from Liquidsping at the Hershey show, he immediately got me in touch with Chad Wilkins, a Customer Service Manager at the home office in Indiana. After a quick explanation of our symptom, Chad ran us through a couple of calibration tests on the driver interface and determined that our ride height sensor on the driver's side was toast.

The good news: they are relatively easily replaced.

The bad news: we had to make the rest of our ride up north without any Liquidspring comfort.

Chad would send our two new sensors (he wanted us to replace both sides) overnight to a friend's house, and sent us a document via email that described how to change them out.

Crawling under these coaches is not an easy task, especially if you're almost 63 years-old; even worse when your camp site is crushed rock. Not a lot of room, and the ride height sensor is above your head and situated where your arms have to curl around some parts of the Ford F-53 chassis. But the good news is that there are only two bolts that have to be removed to replace the ride height sensors, a simple unplug of the old unit, and a clip that has to be removed to put a control rod on the new unit. Plug the new unit in, replace the clip on the control arm, and it's time to calibrate the new units.

Heading inside to the Liquidspring driver interface, you hit both ride height arrows simultaneously to put the unit in calibration mode. The back end of your coach goes through a whole bunch of rises and dips, and after about 2-3 minutes (if you've done things correctly and the units are good) your coach is level and ready to head down the road in relative comfort. Shut off the coach at the key and wait for about 4 minutes, and the new calibration is locked in.

At least, that's the theory.

Not so much when your error code refuses to clear after changing out the ride height sensor.

Looking for a Liquidspring service provider is not easy. Their website shows lots of places in different regions, but once you start calling them you find out that they either only work on ambulances and fire trucks (and those don't really want to leave their comfort zone to work on an RV), or their local shop isn't certified – or trained – or hasn't even seen what a Liquidspring installation is, but some other national branch is, and Liquidspring has added ALL of them to their list.

But Chad from Liquidspring insists that just about any shop could diagnose and work on their product, and fortunately he's right. Calling a local RV repair shop in nearby Nashua, NH, we schedule an appointment for Thursday morning. After about 4 hours, the 3 folks at 1st Priority Towing and Repair have all had a look at this unique system and have figured out the sensor problem and have it fixed.

And what a difference it is! I'm thinking this system wasn't working pretty much from day one, because the difference in the ride is night and day to what we experienced, even coming back from our dealer in Alabama. It's early, but can't say enough good things about the support from the folks at Liquidspring!