My Epic Repair Project
Well, just finished my big repair project. I previously posted about my broken black water tank in my 3 year old 5th wheel.
I first noticed this problem on July 29th and I finished today so 1 month! The job ended up being much more time consuming than I thought it would be.
It was easy to remove the coroplast. I did cut it into about 5 sections. 3 of the cuts I was able to make where there are cross members, which made reattachment much easier, and 2 were not.
Removing the tank was frustrating because there are 4 different connections to deal with. The toilet inlet, air vent, flush valve and the outlet. I had to partially remove the grey tank just to have room to remove the black tank. It also required emptying out the pass through storage and removing a wall to access the drain and vent pipes from above.
Once it was finally out and inspected and pondered I decided to order a new one versus trying to repair this. I found the exact OM tank though Amazon and got it almost half what the manufacturer's direct distributor wanted with the added bonus that they were charging $120 for shipping and, as an Amazon Prime member I paid $0 shipping.
The longest delay in this project was acquiring all the fittings and parts I would need for reassembly. No one local had a couple of the pieces so back to special ordering.
Replacing the tank was even harder than removing it because it's discharge and the gray water discharged are joined with a "Y" fitting. There's only so much room in there and very difficult to maneuver the pipes and fittings.
While I waited for parts I took the opportunity to do some clean up in the belly like rerunning heater hoses and remove excess length and kinks! I also changed out the 1/8" silver bubble insulation with 1" R-Tech rigid foam board insulation.
I also added a BAL Hide-A-Spare, a new storage tube for my sewer hose and ran power from my inverter in the forward compartment, to the rear wall of the trailer in the kitchen. So, I kept busy.
I reassembled a section at a time. The sections that were not at a cross member required fabricating something to attach the 2 edges of coroplast to so I used 2 pieces of aluminum angle stock (an idea I stole from someone else who did some under belly work so a shout out to him). On the joints where there was a cross member I still used 2" wide flat aluminum stock to cover the edges and screwed it into the cross member with self taping screws. I also used a full roll of Gorilla Tape (absolutely love this stuff, way better than basic duct tape). Then I reapplied expanding foam insulation everywhere something sticks through the coroplast.
One thing I really want to pass on is I got so much miss-information from a couple of local RV repair facilities, especially my local Camping World. I couldn't believe how many wrong parts they tried to sell me telling me "that's the way we would do it"! Man am I glad I didn't take it to them to fix!
Anyway, 4 weeks with the last 2 being 6 - 8 hours a day and it's all done! I am beyond thrilled.
I took almost 100 pictures and many won't make too much sense but they are in chronological order from the very beginning to the end.
Here's the link and if you choose to look and have any questions about what you're looking at or what I did, feel free to ask.
Let's see if this link works:
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/blown96ws6/slideshow/Trailer%20underbelly%20holding%20tank%20repair
I first noticed this problem on July 29th and I finished today so 1 month! The job ended up being much more time consuming than I thought it would be.
It was easy to remove the coroplast. I did cut it into about 5 sections. 3 of the cuts I was able to make where there are cross members, which made reattachment much easier, and 2 were not.
Removing the tank was frustrating because there are 4 different connections to deal with. The toilet inlet, air vent, flush valve and the outlet. I had to partially remove the grey tank just to have room to remove the black tank. It also required emptying out the pass through storage and removing a wall to access the drain and vent pipes from above.
Once it was finally out and inspected and pondered I decided to order a new one versus trying to repair this. I found the exact OM tank though Amazon and got it almost half what the manufacturer's direct distributor wanted with the added bonus that they were charging $120 for shipping and, as an Amazon Prime member I paid $0 shipping.
The longest delay in this project was acquiring all the fittings and parts I would need for reassembly. No one local had a couple of the pieces so back to special ordering.
Replacing the tank was even harder than removing it because it's discharge and the gray water discharged are joined with a "Y" fitting. There's only so much room in there and very difficult to maneuver the pipes and fittings.
While I waited for parts I took the opportunity to do some clean up in the belly like rerunning heater hoses and remove excess length and kinks! I also changed out the 1/8" silver bubble insulation with 1" R-Tech rigid foam board insulation.
I also added a BAL Hide-A-Spare, a new storage tube for my sewer hose and ran power from my inverter in the forward compartment, to the rear wall of the trailer in the kitchen. So, I kept busy.
I reassembled a section at a time. The sections that were not at a cross member required fabricating something to attach the 2 edges of coroplast to so I used 2 pieces of aluminum angle stock (an idea I stole from someone else who did some under belly work so a shout out to him). On the joints where there was a cross member I still used 2" wide flat aluminum stock to cover the edges and screwed it into the cross member with self taping screws. I also used a full roll of Gorilla Tape (absolutely love this stuff, way better than basic duct tape). Then I reapplied expanding foam insulation everywhere something sticks through the coroplast.
One thing I really want to pass on is I got so much miss-information from a couple of local RV repair facilities, especially my local Camping World. I couldn't believe how many wrong parts they tried to sell me telling me "that's the way we would do it"! Man am I glad I didn't take it to them to fix!
Anyway, 4 weeks with the last 2 being 6 - 8 hours a day and it's all done! I am beyond thrilled.
I took almost 100 pictures and many won't make too much sense but they are in chronological order from the very beginning to the end.
Here's the link and if you choose to look and have any questions about what you're looking at or what I did, feel free to ask.
Let's see if this link works:
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/blown96ws6/slideshow/Trailer%20underbelly%20holding%20tank%20repair
