Seneca Trip Notes - MPG and more

[crumgater]

We just finished a 3000 mile trip from Seattle to Boulder to Corvallis and back to Seattle... never went more than 500 miles a day, and are now confident in the following:

a. Each 1/4 fuel tank = 150 miles of driving

b. Up, down and around, we averaged between 9.5 and 10.2 mpg... the slower (2-lane state hwy) routes had better gas mileage.

c. Pushing from 65mph to 70mph on the interstates dropped efficiency by about 0.2 mpg (or about 6 gallons extra for the trip).

d. We have the "BlueFire" Truck app - mpg from the engine sensors is a little higher than what I calculated based on fuel purchases.

e. Even crossing 8,000 mile high passes, and dropping into 4th gear a few times for a few miles heading up, or using the engine brake cruising down the pass, water temps never went over 200F and tranny never went over 180F. Water temp climbed faster when in stop & go traffic than at any time on the highways.

e. Truck stops (Flying J / Pilot and Loves) are easy to get in and out of - but I wish we could pay at the pump...

f. Gloves and Orange Hand Cleaner is a must when fueling up at truck stops.

g. Never let go of the Diesel nozzle when fueling up at the 100 gal/min fuel pumps.

h. The stench of Diesel is hard to get out of clothing.

i. The Onan 8k Generator consumes about 0.38 gal/hour (the way we're loaded... no A/C, mostly TV and Oven use). This is compared to running a Honda EU2000 at 0.25 gal/hr with just the TV's (gas oven) on our 5er. I'm happy with that!

j. We can setup in 15 minutes.

k. We can be ready to roll in 30 minutes - including a dump.


During out 11 day Seneca "boot camp" (we just bought the 2015 34TS in March) we also learned: *

1. how to dump the air from the rear suspension before leveling to minimize 'lift' on the front jacks when leveling

2. where the fuses are for the Bigfoot leveling system. We blew one (7.5A) on the last night when I hit "retract all" after dumping air and the fronts were still up... must have overloaded the circuit when there was nowhere for them to go?

* Found answers here while traveling or at the campground at 11pm trying to get the levelers to power back up.

This forum is AMAZING.

And a picture from one of our favorite parks: Crown Villa in Bend, OR

[SloPoke]

Originally Posted by crumgater

f. Gloves and Orange Hand Cleaner is a must when fueling up at truck stops.

g. Never let go of the Diesel nozzle when fueling up at the 100 gal/min fuel pumps.

h. The stench of Diesel is hard to get out of clothing.


* Found answers here while traveling or at the campground at 11pm trying to get the levelers to power back up.

This forum is AMAZING.

And a picture from one of our favorite parks: Crown Villa in Bend, OR

Ahhh G and H made me laugh... Glad you had a good trip.

[jschulz1720]

Originally Posted by crumgater

f. Gloves and Orange Hand Cleaner is a must when fueling up at truck stops.

g. Never let go of the Diesel nozzle when fueling up at the 100 gal/min fuel pumps.

h. The stench of Diesel is hard to get out of clothing.

1. how to dump the air from the rear suspension before leveling to minimize 'lift' on the front jacks when leveling


And a picture from one of our favorite parks: Crown Villa in Bend, OR

F. We keep a box of disposable rubber gloves on board for fuel fill ups.

G and H also had me laughing.

1. Please explain what you have learned.

[Crossingover]

Originally Posted by crumgater

e. Truck stops (Flying J / Pilot and Loves) are easy to get in and out of - but I wish we could pay at the pump...

1. how to dump the air from the rear suspension before leveling to minimize 'lift' on the front jacks when leveling

2. where the fuses are for the Bigfoot leveling system. We blew one (7.5A) on the last night when I hit "retract all" after dumping air and the fronts were still up... must have overloaded the circuit when there was nowhere for them to go?

Sign up with Good Sam and combine that membership with the Pilot/Flying J 'RV Plus' card and you can pay at their truck pumps.

What are the answers to 1 & 2?

[crumgater]

For G & H, I had even read on the forums about some of the issues at truck stops, but I guess some things you just have to experience for yourself once. <sigh>

The clothes are hanging in the sun, now... after some soaks in Dawn and baking soda and three washes... it's getting better...

We do have Good Sam, and will have to sign up for some fuel cards...

For #1. Dumping air: Put levelers in manual, lower the back two jacks and lift the rear about 1" off the ground - until you hear the air escaping. Wait about 10 minutes (go do other things) until the air seems to have all dumped (lift a little more if needed)... retract jacks and then go back into 'auto' leveling mode.

Does anyone else find their Seneca always wants to lift the front tires off the ground to get level?? Even on advertised "level sites", we were front high. See pic, below - that was after dumping air - although, based on the puddle, it obviously wasn't completely level. That was the beautiful gravel mud-pit known as the Western Hills Campground in Rawlins, WY; a one-night stop-over.

For #2. Leveler Fuses: Apparently when retracting "all" with some jacks already up, the motors can overload (? that's my theory, anyway)... so 1 out of 10 times of dumping air, we blew a fuse when I hit "retract all" and the fronts had not been deployed at all...

The Bigfoot panel went DEAD. No lights, no power - and this is, of course, at 11pm at the KOA after returning from the football game, dead tired... we had full battery power and were plugged in, so went looking for the fuses. Based on help found on the forum, we searched the wall in the battery compartment, and just inside the door, on the cab side of the battery box was a box with two fuses: 1x 10A fuse and 1x 7.5A fuse. The 7.5A fuse was blown. We replaced it with a 10A fuse (the smallest one we had on hand), and WaaLa! We were back up and leveling again. I now have 7.5A fuses on order, although I've read other places that larger ones are ok, too (?). I'd rather replace a few 10 cent fuses than a motor...

From what I read, anything that stays powered after you click the battery disconnect switch should have a separate fuse in the battery compartment (steps and levelers included). And, there it was!

[crumgater]

Oh... another thing we learned -

The satellite dome does not like low hanging tree limbs, but the dome will return to working again once the dents are pounded out... (at least for that dent, it did).

For anyone going to Corvallis, OR, driving through town on the main streets (Harrison) is a major tree hazard area. We're very happy the dome was the only injury, and the A/C units were unscathed.

[WaltW]

Dave and/or Tina, are you running the generator to power the TV and microwave en route or are you boondocking? If en route why not just run off the inverter? The house batts will be charged by engine when driving.

If boondocking, never mind.

[crumgater]

Originally Posted by WaltW

Dave and/or Tina, are you running the generator to power the TV and microwave en route or are you boondocking? If en route why not just run off the inverter? The house batts will be charged by engine when driving.

If boondocking, never mind.

We're running the genny when tailgating for UW Huskies football games, so, basically boondocking.

I've always wondered why the fridge isn't on the inverter circuit... we let it run on propane when driving, but if we could run it off the inverter that would make more sense, to me. Our ol' truck camper was a 3-way fridge that ran great on 12v, too.

[Crossingover]

Originally Posted by crumgater

Does anyone else find their Seneca always wants to lift the front tires off the ground to get level?? Even on advertised "level sites", we were front high. See pic, below - that was after dumping air - although, based on the puddle, it obviously wasn't completely level.

Wheel lift has not been my experience. Perhaps it is related to the air dump making the rear that much lower when entering the auto level routine. If we're ever on a tilted campsite, I have an assortment of drive on blocks to take out some of the tilt without lifting wheels. You really shouldn't have the wheels off the ground for safety reasons I'm told.

[memphis02]

Likely, you need to do what I had to, which is re-zero your leveling system. It turns out that the "from the factory" settings are pretty crummy. Every time I would go to to auto-level, my front wheels would be 6+ inches off the ground, even when on a perfectly flat surface.

Read up in your manual on how to do this. Dump all the air from your suspension, manually, then re-zero your system.

Since having done that, I've auto-leveled in a number of spots that were far from being level and had great results!

Good luck!

[crumgater]

We do double-check the level with a torpedo level on the floor by the door, and when the system says 'green', we are nice and level... re-zeroing might be worth a try, though. Thanks for the suggestion!

[memphis02]

I can't say it will be a silver bullet, but for what it's worth, ours was always level, however, it was level with the wheels hanging off the ground. Once we re-zeroed, even without dumping the bags, we're much closer to the ground.

Pic1 is before re-zero
Pic2 is the next time out, after re-zero

Both using auto-level w/out dumping bags.

[crumgater]

Thanks Memphis02... we'll be out in the rig this weekend... I'll see if I can get the re-zero--ing done and tested out. Although, where we'll be parking, it's the back wheels that are in the 'hole' and need to come up, which is a whole different bag o'worms.

[GJegstrup]

New to Seneca here. Curious what the technique is for dumping rear air bags. I here them emptying when I autolevel.

[crumgater]

Originally Posted by GJegstrup

New to Seneca here. Curious what the technique is for dumping rear air bags. I here them emptying when I autolevel.

For my unit (2015 37TS), I have to "lift' the back end up manually (make sure the front wheels are chocked first). You can hear the air escaping - the higher up you lift, the faster/more complete the "dump". Once I can't hear the air hissing anymore, I retract all jacks, and THEN hit the auto-level button and let it do it's thing.

[Robbbyr]

Originally Posted by GJegstrup

New to Seneca here. Curious what the technique is for dumping rear air bags. I here them emptying when I autolevel.

I used the same procedure that crumgater described, sometimes I would need to do it two or three times before all the air would be depleted thereby taking the air bags out of the leveling equation. Several of us Seneca owners have added valves to enable dumping of the air bags prior to leveling. This makes leveling more predicable and helps to keep from having to lift the front end quite as much.

If I recall correctly you have the Bigfoot leveling system same as me. Bigfoot's system has the built-in ability to control leveling dump valves should you choose to install them. You may have noticed an "air dump" light on your control panel. It is active once dump valves have been installed and the panel reprogrammed to now utilize the valves.

If you ever want to further explore dump valves there is lots of information here on the forum. Let us know if we can help.

[Seann45]

e. Truck stops (Flying J / Pilot and Loves) are easy to get in and out of - but I wish we could pay at the pump...

Almost all Pilot/Flying J stations have dedicated RV pumps that you can pay at. It also keeps the truckers happy that you are not slowing them down.

[GJegstrup]

Originally Posted by Crossingover

Sign up with Good Sam and combine that membership with the Pilot/Flying J 'RV Plus' card and you can pay at their truck pumps.

What are the answers to 1 & 2?

The fuse for Bigfoot levers is in your battery compartment.

[GJegstrup]

Originally Posted by Seann45

e. Truck stops (Flying J / Pilot and Loves) are easy to get in and out of - but I wish we could pay at the pump...

Almost all Pilot/Flying J stations have dedicated RV pumps that you can pay at. It also keeps the truckers happy that you are not slowing them down.

The rv pumps don’t usually have pumps for both tanks, right? It’s a bit of a pain to only be able to fill one tank

[Robbbyr]

Originally Posted by GJegstrup

The rv pumps don’t usually have pumps for both tanks, right? It’s a bit of a pain to only be able to fill one tank

I have the Pilot/Flying J RV Plus chage card thru Good Sam and pay at the pump at the truck lanes. I get a monthly statement and have it set up to automatically debit my checking account. And it gives me $.08 off the cash price. Very easy and can fill both tanks simultaneously. Especially easy with Gord's Extendafill extensions on my tanks!