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I have had intermittent starter engagement for some time, it kept getting more frequent, 2020P Coach 1482.  It always started from the engine compartment switch.  I think (hope) I finally resolved it.  There is a Silverleaf Rear Load Panel in the engine compartment with relays and wiring that go to the starter relay (Solenoid) mounted on the starter.  There is a Black/Red Starter Solenoid wire that goes to the front Fuse Panel where the air compressors are.  I found a K31 Relay in it which was powered whenever the Key Switch was rotated to the Start position.  I changed the relay on principal.  The engine has started every time since then (knock on wood)

Starter Wiring 2.pdf Size: 326.56 KB  Downloads: 14

START CIRCUIT CUMMINS 2010-Model.pdf Size: 229.62 KB  Downloads: 17

FCLC SPYDER FRONT RELAY BD.pdf Size: 1.18 MB  Downloads: 9

I’m Good afternoon, looking to purchase a 2009-2014 Newell, mid entry (if possible), 600+hp, Allison transmission, bath and a half, king bed. Located in Az. [email protected] or 928.486.7567

We are Bill and Nancy, the new owners of Newell 512. We live near Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and for the past 16 summers, we’ve enjoyed traveling across the country and Canada in our Class C motorhome as a family. Along the way, we’ve been accompanied by our two Bernese Mountain Dogs, who have become seasoned travelers with us. As we look ahead to retirement, we’re excited to spend even more time on the road in our new coach.

While Bill is no stranger to driving large diesel trucks as a volunteer fireman, this is our first diesel pusher. We are eager to join the Newell family and are looking forward to learning from all of you.

A huge thank you to Richard and Rhonda for taking the time to teach us about Mickey. Your wealth of knowledge has been invaluable, and we are grateful to have you as our friends and support team.
A huge thank you to Richard and Rhonda for taking the time to teach us about Mickey. Your wealth of knowledge has been invaluable, and we are grateful to have you as friends. us about Mickey. Your wealth of knowledge has been invaluable, and we are grateful to have you as friends.

Synopsis: There is a way to adjust the caster on the non adjustable caster front end. Adding 1/2 degree of caster to my front end produced better straight line stability with 365 tires. It is my opinion the 365/70 tires require more caster than the DANA specifications call for due to their increased footprint.

The title is intentional to make searching for those terms easier. There are many of these front ends out there on other brands besides Newell, and I could not find in ten years of searching even ONE piece of info on increasing the caster. 

Why increase the caster? In theory an increased caster angle provides more force from the tires to self center. The downside is that too much caster can produce a shimmy or shopping cart wobble. It can also increase steering effort at slow speeds. 

As many of you gurus follow my OCD efforts to make the Newell drive like a BMW have read. I have touched everything and improved everything in the entire front end. New tie rod and drag link ends, new suspension bushings, new and bigger bearings in the steering column, new u joints in the steering, rebuilt steering gear box, and too many alignments by the ‘experts’ to count. Still I was not happy with the behavior at freeway speed. I was absolutely certain, and confirmed with dial indicators that there was very little slop in the steering system.

This is what I specifically was not happy with. I felt that a steering correction in one direction almost always resulted in an over correction because the steering wheel did not return to exactly dead center on its own. I was unconsciously having to move the wheel back to true center, and almost always would move it too far. I am talking about micro movements, but I was aware. Curiously enough, I found the straight line stability to be EXCELLENT under three conditions. One, a heavy road surface i.e a surface with a lot of drag on the tires. Two, a heavily crowned road that wanted to steer the coach to the left. Three, a consistent side wind from either side. 

As I drove for tens of thousands of miles, it became clear to me that in those cases either the rough surface or the side force moved the wheel to dead center on its own. 

I also noticed the worst behavior was on a flat glass smooth road with no wind. I was constantly making micro corrections. Things that make you go hmmmmmmmmmmm. 

Before we go any further. I am very aware of oversteering a bus where you sit in front of the front wheels. There are a number of people on the forum who have ridden with me, and I am pretty sure they would attest that I am not a steering wheel fighter. 

All of that to get to, I thought for years on how to increase the caster on this front end. All of the literature from the manufacturer says it is NOT adjustable. There is not an obvious way to adjust. I did take the coach to the most reputable alignment place in my area and they attempted to adjust the caster by placing shims in the vertical plane where the upper and lower A arms attach to the coach. A shim between the frame and suspension on the top A arm in the front, and a second shim on the lower A arm in the vertical plane at the back has the effect of twisting the A arms relative to one another, making the line between the A arms change it’s angle. It works on front ends that have ball joints at the A arms for the steering spindle. I hope my illustrations help my verbal descriptor.     

Except that DOES NOT work on this particular design and the photo illustrates why. The A arms are not attached to the spindle by ball joints at the top and bottom. The A arms are attached to the spindle with tapered roller bearings that are transverse to the spindle. The zero tolerance in those tapered roller bearings do not allow the A arms to twist relative to one another. This was not what I wanted to discover. 

However, during the replacement of the bushings in the A arms last year, I paid attention to how the overall suspension assembly was attached to the Newell frame. At the corner of each A arm, the straddle bushing is bolted to a right angle casting. The right angle casting is bolted to both a horizontal and vertical section of the main Newell frame. Two large bolts vertically and two large bolts horizontally hold the casting to the frame. One of the castings at each A arm end means there are four castings per side on suspension. 

Hmmmmmmmm. What if those castings were unbolted on the two rear points of the upper and lower A arm, and a shim inserted in the horizontal plane? Wouldn’t that tilt the A arms backwards more? And isn’t that going to tilt the spindle backwards increasing the caster? Yep. I did a little high school trig and calculated that a 1/8 shim on both A arm mounts in the back casting would increase the caster by almost 1/2 degree. 

So that’s what I did. I removed the castings, made the shims you see, elongated the vertical holes in the casting to allow it to move downward, and bolted it all back together. Adjusted the toe in to 1/16 and off for the test drive. 

Woo Hoo! That magic I had been searching for was now there. My hands were super still on the super slab. More research looking at the huge float tires that are on dump trucks, garbage trucks, and cranes says the wide tires require more caster. Except I could not find hard numbers. As best as I could measure with my backyard primitive techniques, I believe the caster to be a 5.25 degrees. That is way above the specification that Dana lists, way above the specs that alignment shops use. 

Some of you who monitor my antics are trying to reconcile this with selling the coach. The short answer is I completed all this just before I had any idea that I was buying a new coach and selling 512.

After 20 years of Newell ownership, Rhonda and I have purchased a 2007 Prevost Marathon. I am equal parts terrified of a rig I don't know intimately and excited at the prospects of more learning and fixing adventures. 

Of course, I will still help with the Newell crowd in any way I can. 

I will leave it to the new owners of Newell 512 to introduce themselves, but I am certain it is headed to a new home, rolling toward more adventure.

Here’s another ZF Newell quandary…. 

While driving… the Steer Axle Airbags are overfilling and are not exhausting air to lower back down to “Travel Height”. The nose of the bus will riding high. The steering feels different. 

I’ve referred to it in the past as “feels like I’m driving on ice”. 

Like many things on my bus, I’ve been chasing many oddities for years. This condition has also existed for many years but is not consistent. I dive the bus for a while, park it, I get out and notice that the nose of the bus looks higher than it should. This year I finally found a shop in Columbia Missouri that was able to complete a three axle alignment and make my bus’s handling “Great Again”. This condition changes how it drives and pisses me off. 

This is after driving two hours from Bentonville Ar to Springfield Mo.
   


I lowered the suspension completely to allow the bus to “Air Up” to Travel Height.
   


This looks normal.
   


In December of 2021 when my “Handling” problems Began, I had the entire suspension inspected at the factory and it got a clean bill of health. But there was a question about how a HCV so I decide to replace all three and start over. That was my first introduction to the air ride suspension on my bus. 

Yesterday I took steps to correct the problem but this post deserves some background. 
Bus was built in 2004. 
In the past several years,I’ve completed an entire rebuild of the suspension. New ZF control arms, airbags, and HCV. My bus is responsible for the realization that the ZF RAS system hydraulic accumulator has a limited life span. 
I’ve fabricated custom rear HCV control arm for “fine tuning” the rear bag Travel Height. 

I’ll post what I considered using information from this site, internet searches, AI input… 

If you own one of this era units, here’s what my bus’s steer axle Height Control Valve installation looked like in October of 2021.
   
   

In my bus I have a forward hatch in the middle of the forward through bay to gain access.

Was sitting on the Sun Shine Keys beach next to Hwy1 and suddenly saw a P50 Newell coming down towards Key West
Was brown with some yellow and had barb wire looking decals in the paint 
Was wondering which coach went past ?

Also saw a p2000 Newell at the St Augustine Rv park in St Augustine next to I-95. Walked past but was dark saw people eating so did not knock on the door. Was wondering who went who we shared the Campground with?

Hi Newell Forum

Not sure if I am posting this on the correct spot on this forum

We have coach 1624
It is a P50
Age 2018
Have Intrepid system 1.0 (I think)
Have crestron ( icon is pink cyclone looking icon and color) software on ipad to manage all coach functions 

I went on vacation and my son brought his Starlink with

With such great internet I thought it a good idea to upgrade the two ipads in our coach to the newest IOS

We had 13 version now upgrade to 18 
Unfortunately we bought the coach used and  dont have the email or password for the previous own unavailable - we know who previous owner was but he did not know his own password so we cant truly access the edit functionality to make the system our own

So we created new icloud account to sign in

Now the ipad is telling me that the crestron software needs to be upgraded

When we go to the crestron’s website it does not have the same pink/ red icon version - actually says has been discontinued and has other versions

So the question is did the ipad software just mess everything up to the point of no return with the previous functionality?

Does anybody know if one needs the old version to be reinstalled to make the Intrepid system work again

Would upgrading to the new system think Intrepid 2.0 now be the the only option to get all functionality back on the ipad system?

Appreciate any and all advice

Will call Newell next week when back - might be the only option I now have 

Thanks guys!

I have been looking into battery systems and that of course has me looking into how much power we consume daily. Has anyone tried any of the energy monitoring products like the Shelly EM?  I’m interested to see how much battery power I really need to run everything.  Next step would be to convert these old SCS AC units to an inverter style like Jack Houpe and a few others did…

If I dump too much air or the coach sits too long without the compressor on, the leveling rods push out the bottom of the rubber mounts on the axle or bend.  It is as if there is not enough travel on the King of the road leveling valve??? Is this normal.  Is there a fix?  

Thx! 

Gregg