Vegas 2016 Chassis Battery, maintenance Free??

[DocMike]

Okay, getting ready for the first long drive 3 day camping trip so I am trying to cover all bases here. I picked up a Qwik-fill water system for chassis battery from CW yesterday...looks like a challenge to just get to the battery much less ever add water. Is it suppose to be one of those fancy maintenance free batteries?

Also, I was, quite literally, just knocking around under the hood area and realized there is nothing but wood between the top of the engine bay and the inside (underside) of the huge dash/window/computer work station (D/W/CWS)...no insulation or sound proofing - just black painted wood. I remember reading about owners putting soundproofing material in the doghouse, is there any reason NOT to put something under the D/W/CWS? If Okay, what has been done in the past?

Thanks.

[DocMike]

Well, after a bit of a struggle I managed to get the covers off the battery and the Qwik-fill installed on the chassis battery. As far as the two under the steps I can reach them just fine and using a new squeeze plastic Ketchup holder (we bought the Mayo, Ketchup and Mustard trio at CW...on first use the Mayo ruptured) so I did not want to risk a Ketchup or Mustard explosion as such they have been "red-shirted" and sidelined until now. Water flow is easily controlled and I have a back-up incase the Ketchup blows out. BTW: It also works fine with the Qwik-fill on the chassis battery (I did not see the fine print about the squeeze bulb being a separate purchase).

Okay, so much for the easy stuff. Any suggestions on some kind of sound proofing for underneath the huge dash/window/computer work station (D/W/CWS)?

[belfastboy]

I had our Axis 24.1 (June 2014 mfg date) in for final warranty work. One of the problems was the house batteries not charging. It turns out they required monthly maintenance and 3 cells had run dry. Thor/Dealership replaced the batteries at no charge with Maintenance Free. I checked my notes we had taken for the orientation at purchase and the dealer rep advised they were maintenance free. It would appear then that the batteries can be either at Thor's discretion or the dealer rep just misspoke. Anyways we now have maintenance free batteries.

[groswald]

DocMike,

I have a roll of 3/4" FatMat that I'll be installing over the weekend. I'll take photo's and post. JamieGeek has already done something similar. A search should find his pic's.

Don't get to take a trip until late September, so I won't really know how much improvement is made. I had already stuffed big wads of pink fiberglass insulation up each of the plastic pillars on either side of the windshield. That made a noticeable difference all by itself. I'm hoping the FatMat will further the noise reduction.

I also found, thanks to some great pictures posted here, that my coach is missing some angle brackets that are supposed to hold all that wood to the frame. Mine just bounces around and makes an awful racket. With strong headwinds you can actually see the dash lift before crashing down. I'll be adding these as well.

We bought our coach very gently used (story told elsewhere), so no warranty. I get to fix all of the manufacturing problems myself...

Regards,

Randy

[JamieGeek]

Search the forums for fatmat and you'll find about 3 or 4 threads mentioning soundproofing.

[EA37TS]

I used DynaMat for mine. Research I did showed DynaMat is engineered to be hung up side down for hoods, roofs etc whereas other products are not and some even warn against doing so. Dyna Mat is more expensive than FatMat and others but for me it is worth the investment having some level of confidence that it won't drop into the fan or belts while traveling.