Motorhome Maintenance - Tranny and Brake Fluid Flush 2016 Winnebago View

With every motorhome, comes a little maintenance! 

Our 2016G Winnebago View motorhome is on a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter chassis. It is recommended at 40,000 miles (per warranty), to have the transmission fluid flushed and a new filter and seals put in. Then it's good for 80,000 miles before it needs another.

Also, every two years it needs to have the brake lines flushed and new fluid put in. Doesn't matter the miles, it's that with all of the joins and connections and parts, water and moisture can intrude and contaminate the fluid. We always did that on our other motorhomes too. 

Steve does all of our service on all of our vehicles. In the past, the two times that we have let somebody else do the service, they screwed it up!

After reading a few manuals, and watching a few YouTube's, he decided maybe at this stage in his life it's time to trust and let someone else do the work and just pay the bill.

So it's really really hard on him to actually bring it somewhere and have someone else do it. 

Kind of like a parent taking their baby to a doctor for the first time.

The authorized Mercedes-Benz repair shop is located way down in Appleton, 65 mi away. They are very highly ranked with wonderful reviews. Any people we know with rigs like ours around the state of Wisconsin go to them for service.

We called up and made an appointment, and they got us in just a few days later. It would be a 3-hour appointment, so we were told that we could wait in their customer lounge. Since it was an hour and a half down, 3-hour appointment and an hour and a half back, We weren't sure we wanted to leave Nick all alone that long so soon after losing Binney. But to our surprise, we asked our service agent about the customer lounge and found out that it was dog friendly!

It was going to be a hot and humid icky day, but the dash air kept us very comfortable as we drove down for our 9:00 a.m. appointment.

We were immediately greeted by our service department agent Hailey Reinke.  She tried to allay Steve's fears and make it as easy as possible on him! She guided us over to the beautiful customer waiting lounge and told us to make ourselves at home. 

We brought along Nick's little bed and some toys. We also brought his water dish and our own water from home. There were five or six other people in the waiting area already. Nick did not make a peep. He curled up and watched from the safety of his little bed.

We were quite pleased with his behavior. We weren't sure what to expect being in a public place for up to 3 hours. We gave him a few cuddles and reassured him that there was nothing that was going to hurt him.

We hauled out the laptop and started planning our cross country trip for this fall. He sat nicely on a chair next to us for a while and paid attention to every word we said.

After an hour he opted to curl up on the cool floor right at the base of my chair. He went to sleep and didn't make a peep. Nobody knew he was there!

Our 3-hour appointment turned out to only be a 2 hour appointment. I peeked into the mechanics' area and took this photo. Pristine and clean. We were very impressed.

EVERY vehicle gets a complimentary wash and hand wipe dry from their service department before it is handed back to the customer. Isn't that wonderful?

As each person's vehicle was completed, they were escorted over to this climate controlled indoor pickup area.  Everyone seems so satisfied and nobody was grumbling about extra repairs or high prices. People were smiling and getting into their cars to drive off into the sunset...

We were a little concerned that the door to the pickup area might not be high enough for our motorhome???

Not to worry, our motorhome was brought around to a side lot near the pickup area. We took care of the paperwork and the bill, and Steve dashed out 20 steps ahead of me to make sure his baby was okay!!!

I followed along with Nicholas, the laptop, the dog dish, the dog toys, etc. lol!

Steve was already inside going through everything and starting things up and checking things out. I made it across the lot and the temperature was increasing horribly, and I wanted to get the dog in before his paws were too hot on the pavement.  We fired up the generator and turned on the roof air in the camper portion of the motorhome to cool things down quickly.

For those who want all the technical stuff, here are the part numbers and the quantities and the bill! 

July 12th 2024 

45,720 miles

Bergstrom Enterprise Motor Cars 

Mercedes-Benz division 

3002 North Victory Lane

Appleton Wisconsin 54913 

Hailey Reinke 

920-749-2020 

Transmission fluid service replace fluid drop and clean pan install new seal and gasket 

A102710060 SEAL RING 1-$6.89

A0039900212 SCREW 6- $26.46 A102770095 OIL FILTER 1- $15.50

A1402710080 ELASTOMER-MOLDED SEAL 1- $20.00

A00198 96.80318 TRANSMISSION OIL 7-$206.71

Labor $240.00

Brake fluid system flush, bleed system, inspect brake system and function $144.34

Labor $115.00

8000-989-560-509-0108 brake fluid 1 $29.34 

-----------

Total bill $355 labor,

$304.90 parts,

$29.95 fees ,

$37.94 tax

------------

invoice total $727.79

Now we don't need to get this done again for another 80,000 miles!!!

We met up for lunch with Steve's brother Pete since we were already down in the area. We had a cool ride home in the comfort of the motorhome as the temperatures crept up up up... just like the rest of the country. 

Steve's brother Pete and sister-in-law Cindy give us some beautiful flowers and a thoughtful card to comfort us after losing Binney this week. How sweet. 

My GoPro Quik App made this little video for me automatically from my photos:

We are really missing 

our beautiful little Binney.