2000 diesel 4x4 Concourse,

[sm350bl]

Figured I would start a project thread. I brought the coach into my work ( after hours of course) and was able to get it up in the air to put eyes on everything, This time around I was able to get the oil/filter changed, drained torque converter and dropped pan to replace filter/clean pan. Checked out the front a/c since it was non-op when I got the coach. Previous owner stated they never used it so they don't know when it stopped working ( coach has also been in storage for 8+ years) recovered the system to find very low refrigerant level however system looked dry with no obvious signs of moisture to indicate any leakage anywhere. so i vacuumed the system and it held with no obvious leak down. recharged and switched it on. Besides the compressor clutch being a bit lazy at the start to engage it start cycling and the pressures looked good. So im just going to run it until there is a problem then trouble shoot from there. The coach exterior marker lights were non-op as well and this was due to a blown 7.5amp fuse in a aux fuse panel under the drivers kick panel area. replaced that and they all came on ( whew, I needed taillights to drive home at night ) Rear axle took a whole quart to bring it back up to the proper level ( glad I checked it) tag on rear end claims 4.10 ration limited slip which was nice. When I was trying to do homework on this a month or so ago I found really no specific info regarding the 4x4 system. This one was done by Salem Kroger and I will say that I am overall very pleased with the quality of the conversion and parts. Coach came with the build sheet from SK stating all the parts used and associated part numbers for everything. Conversion uses a 2002 f350 Dana 60 front axle. I snapped some pictures of the the underneath just for reference if anybody is curious. Coach also has mor-ryde in the rear. I don't know if the sway bars were SK or added later but I was very impressed with their size. The rear one is 1.5 inches! Its huge. Front sway bar is a hair smaller diameter but also impressive. Bigger than the stock e450's.

[sm350bl]

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[sm350bl]

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[Blue~Go]

The coach exterior marker lights were non-op as well and this was due to a blown 7.5amp fuse in a aux fuse panel under the drivers kick panel area. replaced that and they all came on ( whew, I needed taillights to drive home at night )

Coupla notes on that for future reference:

So Ford provides two "trailer wire" lines with proprietary connectors that end around the rear driver's side frame rail. Brown connector has wires for the typical four trailer wires (green/yellow/brown/white). Black connector has the other three less common ones (power/electric brake/reverse). You can buy pigtails to attach to those (or just use wires).

Well, Chinook used those to power the taillights and marker lights OF THE RV itself. I usually like all their decisions, but maybe this one wasn't the brightest. So anyway Ford has the thin wires going back, then Chinook brings a skinny wire all the way forward (along driver's frame rail then through driver step well) to that little fuse box, then another skinny wire all the way back to the taillights. That's a lot of skinny wire.

THEN that's used to power the taillights, plus ALL the (incandescent) running lights. If you tow a trailer, add in all THOSE lights to that skinny wire and its 7.5 amp fuse. Ask me how I know it will blow....

tag on rear end claims 4.10 ration limited slip which was nice.

That sounds like the stock Concourse Dana 70 4.10 LS, just so you know.

I don't know if the sway bars were SK or added later but I was very impressed with their size. The rear one is 1.5 inches! Its huge. Front sway bar is a hair smaller diameter but also impressive. Bigger than the stock e450's.

Mine came stock with the stock Ford bar in the front (guessing... 1-1/4"?) and no bar in the rear. I think that's typical E-350 cutaway setup - at least for the gas engine. I changed to the big Roadmaster bars (formerly IPD) which are 1-3/8" front and 1-1/2" rear. Maybe that's what you have. Likely either that or Hellwig brand.

For the light rear on my Concourse the 1-1/2" rear bar was too much (front is great with the big bar). Handling was great but it was too harsh in the rear on bumps. So I put on a used E-450 rear bar. I forget the diameter but it was smaller than the 1-1/2" Roadmaster and larger than the "no bar" that was stock. Perfect middle bear (but I don't have 4 x 4 - I'm sure your Concourse is heavier so the larger rear bar is fine).

Nice to be making her yours with your maintenance baseline. Good feeling.

[sm350bl]

You are def correct. I started at the econolines fuse panel under the hood and saw they used the vans trailer lighting for the coach lights and we saw they ran from the front to the back then back. Alot of wire run. I upped the fuse to a 10 amp. Was going to play the waiting game and see if it gave me trouble down the road. Thanks for the additional info about sway bars! Both front and back are aftermarket for sure. They were stickered but I cant remember what brand they were. But IPD sounds familiar it was a short name.
Yeah its nice to be getting a baseline on the mechanicals for sure. I'm the kind of person where I dont want to be second guessing maintenance when im on the open road. peace of mind is worth a million bucks. I am pretty sure none of the zerk fittings have been touched in eons. cleaned all those off and put chassis lube where I could without over doing it. The van chassis itself I would rate as a high good to low excellent in condition from what i've seen so far. The coach however im going to rate right now as high fair to low good. Thinking im going to be needing some new roof vents, ( fans don't come on) I did get the gen started but will be doing a full service on it. only 180 hrs on it. but still need to figure out how all the heater/ acs work and function test them. It has a control for nu heat but have no idea how to work that, assuming i need shore power to test it. Any input is welcome!

[Blue~Go]

Kudos to you for already figuring out the tailight "system." I had to do it on the ground a night in a busy rest area

You'd need shorepower or the generator on to run the nuheat, I believe. Basically, anything electrically powered that makes heat is a huge power hog and not something you can run on DC for more than seconds. So nuheat (which I assume is in floor heating strips), tank heaters, electric coffee maker, toaster, microwave, etc.

With a robust (modified/non stock) setup you can run short duration things like the microwave, but still pretty limited on time.

Reason for this is heating takes a lot of electricity. The amount required to run any electrical appliance is measured in watts. To get amps (what counts) you divide by the voltage. Hence a 1500 watt item will take only about 13 amps on shore power (115 volts), but 125 amps (!!) on DC (12 volts). This is why cross-country electrical transmission lines are super high voltage. Otherwise the wires would be the size of tree trunks.

[sm350bl]

Kudos to you for already figuring out the tailight "system." I had to do it on the ground a night in a busy rest area

That sounds like a miserable headache. Luckily for me the other guy I work with is a automotive electrical specialist we picked up from a specialty shop a couple years ago. He directly pointed out that fact of some rvs using the chassis trailer relay to power marker lights/ tailights, so that was my cheat sheet. Has anybody experienced overloading this system when towing with their Chinook? I wonder if it did ever become a concern if you could bypass the second lap of running front to back and just installed a circuit breaker in the oem wiring somewhere along the frame rail? or power the aux fuse panel marker/tailight fuse with more direct power from the chassis and leave the trailer relay circuit just for trailer use?

[Blue~Go]

Yes, as I recently described, I experienced overloading (fuse blew) when towing a cargo trailer that had lots of incandescent marker lights. No problem towing previously with trailers that had fewer incandescent lights or all LED lights. I was planning to change the cargo trailer to LED anyway, so that worked to reduce the load. No problems with LED trailer lights and the stock Chinook lights thousands of miles of towing. Would be even less load if I change the Chinook marker lights to LED (I noticed that superbright led has them in the correct number of lumens - a pet peeve I have is people that put in extremely bright LEDs and then it looks like they constantly have their brake lights on )

Larger wire or a few less laps around the planet with the existing wire would be good, but then I don't know what the Ford source is. That may not be up for more amps regardless of the length. But eliminating some voltage drop is never a bad thing. OTOH, changing to LED's eliminates having to figure it out and given that they work really well doesn't seem like a kludge (to me).

[chin_k]

What makes it more important to keep the current low on the power line is that the power loss from Ohm's Law is I^2*V. By keeping the current low (at the expense of voltage), the power loss is minimized.

[Tomsprops]

Congrats on your Rig ! I just picked up exactly the same rig earlier this month. A 2001 4x4 (SK Conv) 7.3 Diesel Chinook. I'm going thru a similar process of learning what I have and how everything works.