Suburban water heater replacement issue

Yep,StonedPanther has described how this mess probably got put together on assembly line.And his suggestion is what I figured I would have to do.I have replaced air conditioner fan motor on roof,new toilet,and various other plumbing and electrical issues,so am confident I will get it done.Opnspaces,thanks for info on home depot,luckily have one literally across the street from me.Got almost 10 years of fulltime living from this heater,so can't complain too much about unit itself.

Sharkbite fittings work well in tight places also.

I normally have some weird sense of pride in that I will find a way to get those clamps off and new ones on so it looks factory when I'm done.

But in your case I think StonedPanther has some sage advice. Cut the two PEX pipes where you have easy access and pull out the old water heater and PEX as one.

If needed new PEX and be bought at Home Depot ($4.50 for 10 foot)
a clamp tool is $40 and some clamps about $7 for ten clamps.

StarkNaked wrote:
Here's one method:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=969UMd5I0T8

Disclaimer: I'm not a plumber, but I have done pex connections in the last few weeks!

Yeppers, that's one method. The issue might be is doing that on a work bench while having the line clamped in a vise is one thing, in an RV another. Typically there are lots of cheap plastic fittings around and close to the heater they use to get the pex around other items and construction, fittings that probably were not made to be used with pex in the first place, so when you go twisting a pair of dykes around in the limited spaceif you can get them on the clamp at all, bad things happen.

Even if you can get the clamp off you need the room to get the new clamp on. They install the heater before the cabinetry or other construction is around it, usually with absolutely no thought about if the heater ever needed swapped out. Its all about speed on the factory line. I would try to cut the pex somewhere so I could get the heater out through the hole with the rear connections intact, then plumb the new heater the same way outside the rig, slide it back in and connect the lines that were cut with sharkbite couplings.

Here's one method:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=969UMd5I0T8

Disclaimer: I'm not a plumber, but I have done pex connections in the last few weeks!