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New member here. The Newell factory referred me to you guys!Just acquired a oldie but goody 1968 unit. Anybody have any info on this age Newell. Looking for windows as all are frozen closed. cracked 3 thinking this can't be possible. Tried all kinds of silicone, rust penetrating stuff etc. Can't find anywhere that either has or makes replacement windows.

Just an update on rebuilding the GM tilt, telescopic, steering column on our 1984. The usual problem with these having the tilt bolts come loose deep in the column had become unbearable. After getting in over my head due to a modification made to a steering wheel mounting  shim made by Newell way back in 84,  I was not able to put the shaft back together. I put my pride aside and I sent the column to Steering Services, in Utah to have him re assemble my fine work. Glad I did. He said I needed a bottom bearing in the shaft. it felt ok to me , but I went ahead and had it done. The shaft came back to me in a few days, and now after 1000 miles, I have an added bonus of no more road wander. Strait and solid. I can only guess that the bottom bearing was giving the steering system just enough play to continually need correction by the driver.

I’ve finally got some pictures posted in my gallery of the remodel. I purchased the coach back in March of 2018. The wife and I have worked tirelessly on it in the short period of time. In the end we are happy with the outcome. I will continue to refine it more but we are going to enjoy the fall weather coming up and get her out on a few brief trips. 

I encourage you when you get time to check out my photo gallery of the before remodel (the way it was when we brought it home), and the remodeled pictures.

Spotted an older very pretty Blue Newell, East Bound on BC 4 Pacific Rim Highway, heading to Port Alberni BC.

Drove down to Jacksonville today and looked at #392. She's a 95 and been for sale for around 18 months. Started out at Lazydays for $119K. Price has been lowered numerous times over the many months and now she's at little PoDunk dealer in Jax. They had her for 459K and now at $56K.
Frankly I figured it would be a clunker. Not at all, nice clean unit, 165K miles, 4000 hours on the gen set. No odors, no leaks. It was pouring down rain, good time to check for leaks. Ran down the road very well, nice and straight, no shimmy's, rattles, nothing! Gen set ran as it should, no smoke on startup etc. 20KW unit.

Problems I found, front AC unit weak at best. The entry door when closed can't be opened from the outside. I figured it out in about 5 seconds. The exterior handle is loose and not allowing the connecting rod to make it's full stroke and release the lock. Works fine inside. The sales dude played dumb. Or maybe he wasn't playing. When the headlights are switched on and the dash lights turned to bright, the temp gauges on the engine and gen set show full hot and the fuel gauge goes to zero. Turn the rheostat to zero and gauges go normal. Otherwise couldn't really find anything earth shattering. Usual wear and tear on some interior upholstery tires are 2013's and perfect, show no signs of deterioration, cracks rot etc. Actually treads look new. I may change them due to age. All the bays are dry and clean, engine compartment clean with no glaring leaks underneath. Undercarriage is clean, virtually no rust could be found anywhere.

Going back in the morning to spend 5-6 hours going over her more closely. Batteries are all new.

Anyway the sales guy said they'd take $54K for her as is. We are thinking this is a real fare price on a 95 newell.

Thoughts?

Classic 1975 35-Foot Newell Motorcoach

$21,000
 
148,000 miles
Caterpillar 1160 V8 Diesel pusher
Allison 6-speed automatic transmission with retarder
300 gallons fuel
40 gallons propane
Propane water heater
100 gallons water
100 gallons waste
3 Coleman a/c units
Dash air
3 suburban furnaces
2 catalytic heaters
Dometic 3-way refrigerator
Onan 6.5 kw gasoline generator
Kitchenette
Shower
Storage Closet
Alcoa wheels with excellent Michelin tires
 
This vehicle has been configured for use as a mobile field office for oil patch or other remote use.  Large work table with plenty of room for paperwork.  Single bunk.   Heavy duty air conditioning and heating for all climates.  Newell is the Rolls Royce of aircraft-construction motor coaches, and despite its age, this coach shows its quality construction.  Photos and further info available, [email protected]

The Plan - Pick up the three Granddaughters in Dallas, head up to Michigan to visit Dianna's family for a bit, run up to Petoskey to do some sight-seeing with the girls then swing by Cincinnati to visit with my sister for a couple days on the way home.  Simple, right?

The reality - Everything seems ok as we head out, air pressures don't seem to come up as quickly as usual but they do come up, we get out of the driveway without issue and merrily make our way to Dallas in anticipation of seeing the girls for the first time in 5 or 6 weeks (they spend July with their Dad, they actually live just a few minutes from us).  When we meet up with them it becomes painfully obvious we have a problem, if we shut the engine down for even a couple of minutes we loose air pressure to the point that the doors barely operate, the toilet won't flush and the rear end squats down.  We spend the night at Newell's facility, should have called it good and just left it there to figure out what was going on.  I carry a spare pancake compressor which I had to hook up to the service port to keep pressure up for the facilities, weird thing is the seals don't loose pressure unless you leave everything shut down for a couple of days.  I'm thankful for that as we encountered a lot of really hard rains.

Back the the story though, we got up Sunday morning ready to head for the hinterlands but again had to let the engine run for a bit to achieve working pressures.  Spent the night in beautiful Joliet, IL and again I have to use my back up compressor to keep everything working but the engine brings everything up to snuff in a couple of minutes for travel.  That afternoon we arrived in Cedar Springs, MI and proceed to park the rig in the barn driveway of a friend where we planned to leave it for several days while staying with Dianna's folks and sister.  As a result of our usual stellar communication skills, the right rear wheels dropped off into a very shallow ditch.  Not having realized the situation; I started pulling forward to improve my alignment with the drive, this resulted in the bottom edge of the engine access door (hood if you will) catching on the ground and flexing it enough to create a 6" long crack starting at the curb side of the panel at point of the latch.  It has also jammed the drivers side latch such that I can't raise the panel to access the engine.  Didn't seem to cause any other damage other kinking the air line to the brake quick connect for my tow vehicle which I repaired the next day.

Over the next 5 days I visited the rig daily to run the generator to keep the batteries charged up.  I had the back-up compressor hooked up to keep things working and it cycled on and off as needed.  The coach maintained it's posture, the seals inflated and all air operated equipment worked.  When we are ready to move to Petoskey I notice it takes longer to come up to pressure and I have to fast idle to do it, once under way all is well and looking normal.  When we arrive, we end up idling while we check in and disconnect the Jeep, during which time it looses pressure and the rear end squats.  I have to fast idle for a bit to bring it up so that we can move on to our site.  As we rolled toward our site we were just idling along and again we lost pressure and had to fast idle in order to raise the coach enough to get it into the site and still lightly drug the generator muffler.  By now this was getting really old.  At this point the on board compressor was running continuously and I still had to occasionally supplement it with the back-up to get the toilet to flush.

We were there for 5 days and when preparing to leave I had to idle at about 1500 RPM for several minutes to get the pressures up and this was after spending about 30 minutes trying to get the driver side window awning reeled in.  We headed into Cincinnati, arriving in time to catch rush hour, fortunately we kept moving just enough to keep the pressures up.  Unfortunately we took a wrong turn and ended up driving through some really narrow twisty roads including a one lane bridge barely wide and tall enough to fit through. I had noticed the rig putting out a puff of smoke when transitioning from deceleration to acceleration, something it had never done before. By the time we got to it was loosing more speed going up the hills than normal and after slowing to about 10 MPH to cross that bridge there was a fairly long moderate grade, I couldn't get over 18 MPH and it was putting out a lot of blue/white smoke. I remembered threads on this forum about this and immediately thought "fuel fiter", I was right.   Finally we arrived at the FMCA campground and I use that term loosely.  When we plugged into the post the transfer switch would not trip to engage shore power, I called Newell to see what I could do about it and Mike told me that I could manually trip it then wedge something into it to hold it in place as a temporary fix till I got home and could investigate further.  What I didn't notice was that my volt meters above the drivers seat were only indicating voltage on one leg, something I noticed the two nights later in Nashville.  We experienced more of the same as far as the air system go for our stay there. While there I replaced the filter in the Davco, fixed my power problems.

Sunday afternoon we decide to leave a day early to head home, it takes what seems like 5 minutes of idling at 1500 to get things set this time and apparently they weren't all the way there when we pulled out of the park as the rear skid plate drug as we negotiated the almost full u-turn required to get out of the park and onto the road.  I pulled over to check things out but it appears nothing but the skid plate touched ground.  Outside of Louisville we encountered about a twenty minute backup due to an 18 wheeler catching fire on the shoulder of the highway and every time we came to a stop I had to shift into neutral and raise the RPM to keep my pressures up.  Made the 12 hour drive home without further incident, until we reached my driveway.  I have to turn into the street directly across form my drive, unhook the jeep then back into the drive.  While unhooked of course the coach squatted down and I had to rev the engine to rebuild air but it never really happened.  I turned on the leveling system to raise the coach and Dianna said it looked like it was high enough to clear the hump so I started to slowly back in.  unfortunately it wasn't high enough and the Aquahot exhaust hit ground, I tried to raise the coach more but it wasn't happening so I pulled it back across the street to assess the situation.  when I got out of the coach I noticed an antifreeze looking liquid dripping below the Aquahot and a puddle of it at the entrance to my drive, not good.  with the help of a couple of neighbors we build some ramps that allow me to get into the drive with no further damage.  Oh, did I mention that when we pulled up to stop and unhook the Jeep, I looked in my mirror and noticed what looked like smoke coming from the drivers side rear wheel well?  I immediately walked back there and felt the drive wheel and it wasn't particularly hot nor did it smell hot so I ruled out brakes dragging and looked up between the tires and noticed what looked like oil coating the inner and outer sidewall of the inner tire.  Apparently the bearing seal has gone south, this is a seal that Newell replaced about 16 months ago.  I already knew I had a leaking seal on the right front wheel (replaced by a shop here in town about 2 1/2 years ago) but it isn't nearly as bad, in the 1500 mile drive home it just sent a few very light streaks to the edge of the wheel but nothing reached the tire sidewall.  Fun times!

Got the rig parked in the garage and plugged into the power and still only one leg working so I took pictures of the labels on the panel and start the search for a replacement.  Those things are over $400, luckily I have a tendency to read everything on those labels in case part numbers have been superseded so that I can match specs.  It struck me when I saw a blurb on the label saying that the switch would not work if receiving power from only one leg of a 240v circuit.  The combination of that note and the fact that my volt meters were only registering voltage on one leg made me stop and think about what was happening.  Suddenly a light went on, I remembered just before this trip I was running the shore line back in with the Glendinning and didn't get it stopped quickly enough allowing the plug to slam into the guide.  The subsequent use of the plug over the next few days finished pulling the wire loose form contacts in the plug, an easy fix, everything is once again powered up.  Now for the air and the Aquahot issues, not such an easy fix I'm sure.

Hello Gurus , hope you are staying cool . I am hoping someone can shed light on my air conditioning adventure .
Our '86 has 3 roof air units , Dometic Duo Therm 15k , appear to be original. 
The front unit works well , ran almost continuously on a trip last month. 
The mid and rear units will freeze up after about 1.5 hrs in 90 degree + outside temp.
I have cleaned the coils , they are not as new , but you can see through the fins .
Current draw , according to analog ammeters above driver : Front ac unit : 14 to 16 amps with compressor running .
Mid and rear ac units : 10 to 12 amps .
Fan motors all turn freely , seem to move plenty of air .
I looked at mid unit this morning , there are two service ports which appear to be original equipment . Information on compressor indicates the system uses R 22 . 
I have read somewhere , either here or elsewhere online , that a lower current draw is an indicator of a low charge situation . 
I don't have a clamp on amp reading meter , but they are available and I can get one for a more accurate way of measuring .
 Any input greatly appreciated !
Thanks , Chris

I saw a coach headed west on I-40 just west of Grants, NM around sunset yesterday afternoon/evening.  It was towing an enclosed trailer. White with red & blue "swooshes".  Trailer was white.  Looked familiar but can't quite place it.

I'm not sure how to post a link or if this link will even work, but this was in upstate PA, today. Graphic reminder of the power of water...

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_f...16631&_rdr

p.s. If this doesn't work, feel free to delete the thread.