85 Barth Motorhome wrenching
 

I used my motorhome over Labor day weekend. I bought it in 97 and havent used it much in the last 7 years. It is an 85 Barth. These were top end custom motorhomes built in Indiana. Mine has a 454 Chevy bib block on a P30 Chassis.
Anyway it left me stranded, which turned out to be the starter. It suffers from much deffered maintanance from me. i have decided to invest the time at fixing it.

First thing is the tires. It has michelin six 8R 19.5 tires that were new in 94. About 7000 miles on them but dryrot has set in. One had sidewall cracks big enough to bury half a penny!!

I got 3 estimates for 6 tires installed $2900, 2800 and 2700. Now being cheap, that was just too much money to spend on something I hardly use.
I looked at Smas club and the tires were $346 each, no instalation available.
I started looking on the net and found: http://www.trucktireretreading.com/servlet/the-New-Truck-Tires/Categories
They had these Chinese tires for $135 each delivered. I hate to buy Chinese but these will need to be replaced due to age, not wear.

I made the decision to mount them myself. I have a tire machine from the 40s but the bead braking hardware was not far enough out to handle these.
I broke the beads with a lead hammer. Getting the tire off the rim, and the new tire on the rim were easy. The hard part was getting that narrow tire to bead to the rim. For an hour, nothing I tried worked. i though, if I could find something to fill the big gap at the top I could get the bottom to bead.
Then it clicked, I would use a 20 inch bicycle innertube.

I have an electronic wheel balancer, but dont have an adaptor to handle these wheels.

The install

Continued. Notice the valve extension.

nice job!

its nice to see someone use a dying art.

you own a mounting machine and a balancer???? can i come to your house?:D

i almost had a brake lathe with all the adaptors for 50 dollars. all it needed was a new fork to engage the gear box. wish i had bought it!

Here is a picture of the motorhome.

Now the next thing to address will be the exhaust. I bought this in my 20s and that 454 had some balls. I had a punk in a ricer come up on the right side at a red light. He was in a right turn lane and had every intent on going straight and cutting me off. I put the trans in low 1 and pushed the pedal down. That thing can really jump off the line and I dusted him something awfull.
The bad part? I blew an exhaust donut out. Ever since that hot rod day, I cannot keep a donut in the exhaust on that side.

Next weekend I want to put a set of Hedman elite coated headers on it, an H pipe and some high flow mufflers like flowmaster 70s or some equivelent.
http://www.streetsideauto.com/products.asp?PTID=3240&brand=BBTZ&series=Elite+Hedders&partnumber=69820&Skip=True&LookupType=YMM&Res et=True
these are the ones.

Barth's are nice. A friend is looking for an older motorhome and I told him to look at Barths. Starter fluid and a controlled explosion inside the tire would have set those beads.

Nice! I had a Vanagon this spring and because of that I do not let VW's in my driveway. Absolutely the worst head gasket design I have ever dealt with in my entire life. I sold it 2 months after I bought it for 2x what I paid for it and the bad taste still hasn't left my mouth yet.

Thats funny! I almost bought a passat VR6 with a 5 speed manual. He said it was 20,000 miles past the interval for the timing belt change. i looked at how much work that would be and passed on it.

Squirt lighter fluid or ether in the tire and light it. Might want to keep the eyebrows out of the way. That will seat the beads.

If you have to replace the starter, might want to look at a mean-green starter. Gear reduction type. My sub was heck on starters because of the heat. MG solved that problem.

I bought a heat blanket that covers the starter and solonoid for it for the header install. If that fails to do the trick I will give that a shot.

I tried two different heat shields for the starter. Still had the no hot start condition. Usually when I was towing (and making lots of underhood heat). Final straw was when I was not towing but had a car full of teenage kids. Once was enough. I made the call and bought the starter.

instead of headers you might look into big truck exhaust manifolds.the later 80's 427's actually used a type of header.individual pipes into a 3 inch flange with a donut instead of the thin header flange gasket that blow out if you look at em wrong. it's rare to find a mid 70's to mid 80's big truck with good manifolds.they get white hot in those trucks and crack like candy.those headers seem to have cured the problem.

I would have to agree to look into some of the revised exhaust manifolds they came out with, some of them flow very well and are way cheaper than headers.

Also have any pics of the interior? I am curious to see what this beast looks like on the inside. And have you considered slapping in a Cummins deisel in there?