Comfort Drive replacement problem?

[Headhunter]

Hi Guys: I have a friend down south that has a 2017 Ventana. He said he was having problems with his CD not working and cutting out. I suggested this site for help and go to information. Naturally I said call Newmar for assistance.

I was curious and looked and found on the other site a bunch of CD problems from 4 or 5 owners that they had to replace the whole comfort drive system, the whole steering column at a cost of $8K to $10K and it wasn't covered by Newmar because it was out of warranty. I don't have a Newmar, and always heard great things about the CD system.

This is the first time I have ever heard about this, so I figure I would ask the guys who drive them.

HH

 

[Neal]

There is a newer system as I think the vendor that made comfort drive in the 2017, such as I have, sold it off to another company and has had problems which may be what you're referring to, more recent years. I would suggest turning off the salesman switch and also the chassis battery cutoff, wait 30 seconds and reverse that order to turn it all back on again.

 

[scottramer]

If your friend is tech savvy here are a couple of publications (one being diag procedures) written by one of the original engineers that developed the Comfort Drive

 

[Headhunter]

Hi: @Neal & @scottramer Thanks much I have passed both suggestion on to him. He is pretty savvy, but the Newmar Ventana is new to him.

HH

 

[J&JD]

Once in a great while my CD ends up at about the 3 setting and doesn’t change no matter where I set the dial. When I find a large open space such as a parking area I creep ahead and slowly turn the steering wheel all the way to lock and then back the other direction all the way to lock. After doing this a couple of times the system comes back to normal. I know, not very scientific but it has worked for me a half dozen times or so.

 

[Rich W.]

J&JD I’ve read that that helps and do it myself occasionally just for GP. Also as per scottreamer, Ken Sherwin is the developer and guru of the system and anyone having trouble with CD should run it by Ken before spending the big bucks. He not only knows everything there is to know about it, but he is passionate about helping folks having issues and his responses are knowlegeable, specific, concise and accurate.

 

[Neal]

I believe Ken / TRW was the prior vendor and is not on 2020's and later. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Rich W.]

Yes I believe as of a several years ago, he is no longer affiliated (retired as I recall) but as far as I know is still willing to provide information as a subject matter expert.

I just dug this out of my archives:

If for some reason the unit does not respond when the engine is started, the "column drive off" message will appear on the LBCU. If so, you can wake the unit up, usually by driving and turning left and right. If not, there is a wake up procedure. According to Ken, every failure must have 5 successful trips to erase the failure. If 5 failures occur with not enough successful trips to erase them, the unit self destructs and is dead.

It came from this thread: Comfort drive dead - iRV2 Forums , which as I recall has a lot of information in the topic.

The TRW trouble shooting link: https://www.trwaftermarket.com/glob...re/other-manuals/other-manuals-sp/cdv-101.pdf

CD re-set video fortunately successful

 

[Rustymayes]

I took my 2022 DS out today to fill it up and I got a new message, 'Steering assist disabled" or something to that affect. I shut off the ignition and restarted and tried to change the assist level with no change and message returned. Perhaps I need to shut off the batteries to do a hard reset?

 

[Rich W.]

Watch the video and check out the links in post #8 for re-set procedures and see if that works.

 

[Rustymayes]

Thanks Rich, I thought that was the correction for the early systems. I will give it a whirl and report back.
We will be just down the road from you tomorrow night, going to Thunder Valley to see Journey in concert! It should be fun watching the old geezers play.

 

[Rustymayes]

Thanks for the links Rich!. It took a few tries but it finally woke up the CD. All is good now. We will just see if the fault returns and how often. I will record any failures in my log.

 

[Joe Hogan]

Looking at the random Posts regarding systems on the Newmar DPs, I am hoping that purchasing the DSDP is not going to be a problem filled experience

 

[Rustymayes]

From what I have read over the past 8 months since thinking of going with a DP and then buying the 4081 DS, it does not matter how much you spend on these big toys, there will be problems. I really think in comparison, the Newmar has the best over all quality in build, but they are far from perfect. Yesterday I noticed a rear wheel skirt was loose at the bottom attach. I found that there were two self tapping screws drilled into the attaching flange but not engaged in the frame. The frame bracket was bent out of the way so the screws missed it. Hard to believe that the tech that installed the skirt did not notice this nor did any of the inspectors. I bought the coach new so unless it was damaged and then repaired poorly enroute to Ca, the factory guys got a little sloppy. It is a small detail but for a $600,000 coach, these little details should not be overlooked! I picked mine up 400 miles from home on a tight schedule. If I had it to do over I would give myself a good full day to go over every square inch of the coach and allow time to have even the slightest discrepancy corrected before taking delivery. As a whole though I am still thrilled with the purchase.