Today Trailer: Finish up the fresh water, including the vent and fill hoses and fixtures, and the leaky hand pump rebuild.
Today Technical: I'm starting a new (to me) picture posting method found here...
RV.net Picture Posting Tool using Imgur.Until the first of each month rolls around, previous pictures won't be viewable until my PhotoBucket bandwidth download limit (when viewers view my pictures associated with their view of "that page of my posts") resets, and just like the full moon, for a few days, weeks, most of a month, my post's pictures will be a "full moon" again. But over time those pictures will fade and we'll be into this new method, where pictures are fresh, sharp (enough) and easy to do. Let's hope. ;)
When tested a few days ago, the spout on the hand pump leaked at the bottom of the tube. I figured a sealing o-ring was bad. Off it came. To my surprise I found somebody had tried to stop the leak by stuffing an old (the red) faucet washer down in there. It didn't work. I took my back-up hand pump apart and discovered it had two o-rings in it, so I borrowed one, and discarded the faucet washer. That fixed it.
This is what it looks like. You slip the o-ring over the tube (put the nut on first), then the slight metal bevel of the tube sits against the bevel down in here...
And the nut tightens the o-ring against the tube's metal bevel on its top surface, pressing its bottom surface against the above internal bevel. That keeps the spout swing a bit snug too.
Then upon test, we had this leak coming out of the handle shaft base.
Now with this further leaking, I had to remove the pump and get it on the bench. Separating the two pump halves with four screws on the bottom, I carefully disassembled the components, paying particular attention to how it goes back together.
Careful with the gasket, which I was able to reuse, and replacing the bad o-ring on the handle shaft with a suitable candidate from my small parts drawer of o-rings.
I also gave the internals a cleanup with small wire brushes of various sizes and such.
Back installed in the cabinet and connected to the hose from the tank.
And on the surface, no leaks!
Now back to the water tank install.
I wanted to use the original gravity fill fixture, due to its high quality and heavy construction of chrome steel, but it has no vent hose connector.
Back in the day, they would simply vent the hose at a higher point inside. Lil' Queeny's was part way up the wall, in the ice-box cabinet. Tow-Mater didn't even have a vent hose. The vent was really just to let the atmospheric pressure (if you believe in science) press down on the top of the water in the tank, making the hand pump's job of suction a little easier.
These days, the vent is also to allow water tank pressure relief when we try and fill our tanks too fast.
I wanted an outside vent, for water over-flow, if nothing else, but didn't want a new hole in the exterior. I had this idea in my head, to bring the vent as close as possible, back out to the fill fixture area. I pictured a kitchen drain pipe with a dishwasher hose attachment feature - a wye. But my hose is 1.25", like a bathroom, not 1.5, like a kitchen. They don't generally install dishwashers in bathrooms, so they don't make a dishwasher drain wye in 1.25". I made one.
Over at the home center (the RV store had no such beast), after spending quite a bit of time generating and excluding ideas with a very helpful (and surprisingly knowledgeable) home center young woman employee, and after just about having to defend my elderly honor against some jerk and his wife in the same aisle (they thought they were the only ones there), I decided on these cheap parts.
A simple 1.25" bathroom sink tail-piece, nut removed (the male pipe thread screws right into the fill fixture), and an irrigation sprinkler new-fangled attachment thing called Dawn, or Swing. 89 cents.
Google Search instructions indicated you simply glue these on. But its inside diameter was ever so slightly larger than the outside diameter of the weak walled (schedule 20?) under sink drain component. So after glue, I clamped it just that little bit it needed in the vice.
Creating this.
But the glue didn't appear to weld the two surfaces. The joint broke back open quickly. I scraped the residue back out to a nice smooth couple of surfaces and tried again with a different cement, then clamped it this time with worm-gear clamps at both ends.
It held much better this time. But during install finagling, it popped off again, so I put the clamps back on and left them there. It seemed to fix it. No leaks thereafter.
I drilled a hole in the wall of the tube, through the smaller hose barb direction.
And stuck it in the wall with the outside fixture removed.
That gave plenty of room outside to attach the fixture, then push it back inside to this "close to installed" position.
And upon installation completion.
I also spaced the clamp holding the hose height, dropping it slightly with that stack of washers there, and got a really close to evenly sloped hose length. I may need to support further, we'll see.
Then I filled beyond here to test. No leaks except just a bit-o-seep at both ends of the 1.25" hose. I tried differing tensions on the clamp. I think it's just a crappy hose design and I'll be on the lookout for a smoother inside wall hose. I've seen too many difficulties with this popular style of hose.
So here's the big picture on the fresh water tank replacement.
And the cool vintage looks of the outside fill fixture. Didn't that polish up nice?
So that completes the freshwater. Tomorrow shall we finish up propane?
