Spartan Chassis Plant Tour (Part 2)

On the RV chassis lines it was interesting to see the different approaches taken by the RV manufacturers in specifying what Spartan does for the RV maker.  For instance, Fleetwood has the complete chassis bridge for their American Coach RV’s outfitted by Spartan. All the framing for the exterior compartments right out to the exterior walls, the leveling jacks are installed by Spartan so the body builder can focus on installing the body componentry.  Chassis destined for Newmar and Tiffin do not have any bin storage assemblies on them. 

Those chassis do have a number of wiring connections designed to mate with body components. Each RV maker has a location for their wiring looms and air brake hoses. Fleetwood has it mounted along the road side upper chassis rail accessible from the bin areas in the finished RV. Newmar has that harness run much closer to the outer edge of the central chassis structure which will be accessible from covers placed along the bottom of the chassis.   Spartan does supply and install jack systems however each RV maker selects whether to use the Spartan supplied system or the one they supply to Spartan to install.

The bare chassis allows one to get a good view of the additional components required to meet the 2010 emission standards. With the additional “muffler”, the tank for the Urea additive and the computer equipment needed to operate and monitor the system   take up at least the space for one exterior compartment.

Quality production is evident and to further aid in field diagnosis of problems our tour leader is championing a project to photo document each chassis model. This will be stored on line and available to those doing service in various forms. What he has discovered from this project is that installing components on a bare chassis from the top and bottom and then having to document it (and service it) when the chassis in under a RV body highlights the difficulty a technician has in servicing it. The natural and logical upshot of this project is “can we do it differently to make the component accessible in the finished RV?” Certain this project will drive better service and product improvements which will make it less expensive to service. 

--R.L.

This is the 2nd of 3 parts. 

Click here to go to Part 1.

Click here to go to Part 3.

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