Helping my friend become a GMC owner

a friend of mine came out wanting to buy a motorhome.   I had to jump at the opportunity quickly to sway him to a GMC.   Luckily for me,  he went out and Test drove a SOB class A, a few days before I had a chance to meet up with him, so he could test drive my coach, so it was in his head how poor they drive compared to a GMC.  It only took about a 30 minute drive to have him convinced a GMC was a great way to travel.

Fast forward a few weeks later, after emailing and calling on quite a few GMC's, a posting came up on Craigslist in Omaha:

Wow,   those sure are nice pictures for the price he had advertised,  and it probably needed more work then what he was hoping to buy,  but it was not terribly far away,  and if it looked 1/2 as good in person as the pictures, for the price, we could fix and update the coach and really have a nice GMC.   

We had a local GMCer go out and take a  look at it, and he agreed it was a good deal, so he jumped on it and the deal was set.  Leave Friday after work,  pick it up saturday morning and drive it 6 hours back to St. Cloud.   Hoping that it makes the trip, but we could probably fix some things along the way if needed.

He had it pulled out and pointed toward it's new home.  Quick look over, and it looked nice.  Seller mentioned the few problems he had with it while he was reviving it, such as water heater, and it had possibly some charging issue, and had to use the boost switch to restart it once.   Since we had to hit some busy roads to get us away from Omaha, Ed had me jump into the drive seat and fired it up and drove away.

Not a single issue driving through Omaha, and we were finally heading away from traffic, but also away from some part stores and civilization.   This is crossing Missouri River  into Iowa on I-680 north side of Omaha.

We pulled over to grab some coffee, and to do a quick check over of the coach North of Omaha, after about 35 miles of flawless driving.    All systems seemed to be good, but as the owner mentioned, something was up with the charging off the alternator.   I shut the coach off, and it would not restart.  Tried the boost- nothing.   I did not take any pictures, but I finally was able to get the coach restarted by shorting out the solenoid at the starter, and the decision was made not to shut it off until we are home.   I re-checked the charging, and it seemed to be charging high(16V on my meter), but was charging.   So Ed jumped into the drivers seat of his new coach,  and I had to start chasing him down.

Driving along fine

Happy GMC owner.



Now not long after,  the coach started dying, and Ed hit the boost switch and it came alive.  So we pulled into the rest area,  rechecking the charging, it no longer was charging the engine battery, and it was going dead.   So I rewired the isolator, and got 17v back charging to the battery,  only to find out later that my 9v in my VOM was bad, and it probalby was charging a correct voltage.   However the isolator was definitely not working.

Looks good even in the rear view mirror.   This is MN.

Parked it in my yard on the ramps, so we can get the starter out.    I have house guests, so needed to leave room in the driveway for them.   The plan is to get the starter  and alternator gone through,  replace some battery cables,  and a few other small  misc stuff like change out the buzz box and of course the oil and filters,.      This is pretty amazing for a coach that has been stored supposedly for the longer part of a decade(last tabs were 2005), to drive almost hassle free 390 miles.