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Old 07-29-2014, 04:59 PM   #1
Poppy's 5th Wheel
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Crap! Quite Litterally

I took the trailer to a local muffler/welding shop who does custom hitches to have a hitch and 2 trays (for carrying my Honda generators) made.

They did a great job and created exactly what I wanted but I ended up with a problem and I don't know how severe it is.

I'm driving off and I smell sewage really bad. I pulled over and took a look around and I have raw sewage draining out from my coroplast (sp?) around the front jacks and I also noticed water dripping around the drain valves for the rear grey water tank! Yikes

I have no idea how it happened. They did have the trailer on a lift but I don't remember if anything came in contact with the sewer pipes. I thought if so it may have pushed them up into the black and grey tanks and broke them or the seals around the drains or something.

Crap! I'm at a loss. I suspect I need to drop the coroplast and take a look. If nothing else the insulation is going to need to be pulled out and replaced because it stinks to high heaven!

That doesn't look like an easy job. At least 5 million screws and lots of stuff protruding that will keep it from just dropping down.

Anyone with any ideas on what may have happened or experience dropping the bottom of these?

We are planning to leave for 3 months on August 18th so I'm going to need to get busy in a hurry.







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Old 07-29-2014, 05:29 PM   #2
SkiSmuggs
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Sorry about your issues, but killer work at the rear bumper! I hope the bumper is up to the job. I took one look at the bumper on my High Country and figured that I could never use it for anything but sewer hose. And I see you have the 299RKS like we do! Got 12,000 miles on ours and it has been from Vermont to Virginia, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and the Grand Tetons in Wyoming then back to Vermont.
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Old 07-29-2014, 06:18 PM   #3
Poppy's 5th Wheel
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SkiSmuggs View Post
Sorry about your issues, but killer work at the rear bumper! I hope the bumper is up to the job. I took one look at the bumper on my High Country and figured that I could never use it for anything but sewer hose. And I see you have the 299RKS like we do! Got 12,000 miles on ours and it has been from Vermont to Virginia, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and the Grand Tetons in Wyoming then back to Vermont.
The hitch tubes tie back into the frame at multiple points. The original bumper is just there for looks essentially. It can no longer hold the sewer hoses. The hitch tubes go right through it.





Extremely hard to really see in these photos.

We love our 299RKS. It has at least that many miles on it already and many upgrades. I can't imagine dealing with this right now though.
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Old 07-30-2014, 12:31 PM   #4
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Sorry to hear about this, I can just imagine the mess that you have to deal with Keep us posted!
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Old 07-30-2014, 01:57 PM   #5
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Paul,

YECHT is about all I can muster. Dang, that's going to be a bugger to clean up and get ready for an extended trip.

Just speculation on my part based on the pictures you posted of the trailer on the rack. It looks like they may have tried to back it onto the rack, raise the rear of the trailer with the landing gear on the ground and crushed or pushed the tank dump pipe up against the floor. If so, they probably cracked or separated the pipe where it goes into the black tank. If the tank is not damaged, you may be able to use a coupler and tie it all back together without too much expense (other than lots of man hours to take down the coroplast and clean the underbelly.

Good luck and keep us posted as you find out what's damaged and how to go about repairing it for your trip.
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Old 08-13-2014, 08:20 PM   #6
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Black tank replacement

Poppy,
You may be in for quite a job... last year we had a BBQ griddle fly out of the back of the truck and it hit the road on edge and sliced our black tank wide open (2014 Montana High Country 318RE).
We had to get a new tank, new chloroplast, new insulation, it was $2600 when we were all finished.
It is NOT a DIY job either... really special care must be taken to install the fittings correctly on the tank.

Good luck.
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Old 08-14-2014, 07:43 AM   #7
Poppy's 5th Wheel
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Originally Posted by brucem26 View Post
Poppy,
You may be in for quite a job... last year we had a BBQ griddle fly out of the back of the truck and it hit the road on edge and sliced our black tank wide open (2014 Montana High Country 318RE).
We had to get a new tank, new chloroplast, new insulation, it was $2600 when we were all finished.
It is NOT a DIY job either... really special care must be taken to install the fittings correctly on the tank.

Good luck.
Yikes! And that's why I cancelled our planned cross country trip we were supposed to start Monday for 3 months. If we had found this on the road and had to deal with an RV repair place and held up in some motel for who knows how long I would have died!

I haven't been back to update this post but it's almost finished. I removed the full coroplast underbelly and all the ridiculous insulation, which I then threw in the trash. I removed the tank and after a little research I found a replacement tank on Amazon for $138 with 2 day no cost shipping (Amazon Prime Member). BTW, interesting note. I contacted the OEM manufacturer of the tanks and they referred my to their exclusive distributor. They wanted $288 plus about $120 shipping for the tank! That's just plain nuts.

I also ordered new sensors (the kind that are supposed to be shielded to give truer readings .... we'll see how that goes , and a new Tornado flush system. I've now got all the fittings and I will be replacing them and putting it all back together next week. Oh, I believe the reason the tank failed was from a stress placed on it by the poor installation of the support bracket. The tanks have a lip around them to rest on the I-Beam on one side and a support on the other. That support is installed with self tappers after the tank is in place and this one was barely holding the tank up. I checked the supports on my other tanks and have re-positioned them closer to the tank bodies to take the stress off the tank's lips.

While I was at it I did a bunch of "cleanup" underneath the trailer. I added some rubber pads between some screws heads and the the fresh water tank where other owners have had leaks from the rubbing, I re-routed heating ducts for better flow, I organized and tie wrapper all the wiring which was haphazardly run, I ran a new wire from my invertor in the front of the trailer to the back kitchen so we can now use our electric coffee pot on batteries. I'm also replacing all that useless 1/8" "insulation" with 1" rigid board insulation.So, I took advantage of the situation by getting a lot of things done underneath.

Then, while the trailer has been out of service, I also finally reconfigured our steps into the bedroom from 2 very tall steps to 3.

Anyway, I'm lucky that our trailer is parked alongside our home and I have the time (retired) and a skill set that allows me to do these kinds of projects. A $2,600 repair bill would have been hard to budget or swallow.
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Old 08-14-2014, 07:59 AM   #8
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Sounds like that is quite the ordeal.

I use Amazon a lot, but am wary about buying some things there because manufactures may make exclusions to warranties. For instance, a few manufacturers of motorcycle comm units won't honor their warranty unless it is purchased at an authorized dealer, which Amazon isn't. It was cheaper for you, but it might be worth looking into.
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Old 08-14-2014, 08:13 AM   #9
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I really like the way that all of that work was done on the back of the unit, it looks really good. While I'm sure the entire ordeal was a pain for you to mess with, I'm sure you now have a good feeling knowing that you have been in there and improved some things that could use some improving, as well as fixing the main problem.

You will be happy going down the road now. I give you credit for diving in and tackling the job.
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Old 08-14-2014, 08:24 AM   #10
Poppy's 5th Wheel
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I really like the way that all of that work was done on the back of the unit, it looks really good. While I'm sure the entire ordeal was a pain for you to mess with, I'm sure you now have a good feeling knowing that you have been in there and improved some things that could use some improving, as well as fixing the main problem.

You will be happy going down the road now. I give you credit for diving in and tackling the job.
Thanks so much. It is a good feeling.
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Old 08-14-2014, 10:36 AM   #11
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poppy
again good job on the rework and the hitch set up.
I used to have a hitch on my older TT. I had a welder install it the main frame and it crossed over on each side and then under the stock bumper. Many a firewood load was carried to NA$CAR races and the genny a time or two when I couldn't get it into the truck bed.
Whenever you start your cross country tour keep us informed with pictures and stuff.
and have fun now that the repairs are behind you.
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Old 08-14-2014, 01:01 PM   #12
Poppy's 5th Wheel
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Originally Posted by byrdr1 View Post
poppy
again good job on the rework and the hitch set up.
I used to have a hitch on my older TT. I had a welder install it the main frame and it crossed over on each side and then under the stock bumper. Many a firewood load was carried to NA$CAR races and the genny a time or two when I couldn't get it into the truck bed.
Whenever you start your cross country tour keep us informed with pictures and stuff.
and have fun now that the repairs are behind you.
randy
Thanks and will do! We've decided to stick to the west for this year and then we'll head out this same time next year.
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Old 08-15-2014, 06:59 AM   #13
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First, the rear bumper looks great, and don't mind me if I "borrow" your great idea!

Second, I feel for you on your ordeal, when I have much smaller issues I get frazzled, less alone just before a 3 month trip.

Third, you sound like a very handy guy and you must feel better about the improvements you've made throughout your 5er!

Hope you get back on the road very soon...
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Old 08-28-2014, 03:30 PM   #14
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Well, just finished my repair. The job ended up being much more time consuming than I thought it would be.

I first noticed this problem on July 29th and I finished today so 1 month!

It was easy to remove the coroplast. I did cut it into about 5 sections. 3 of the cuts were made 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 once 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.

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 and a new storage tube for my sewer hose.

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/blow...0tank%20repair
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Old 08-28-2014, 05:01 PM   #15
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My hats off to you!!! Very nice job.
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Old 08-28-2014, 05:54 PM   #16
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Poppy's 5th Wheel, Howdy;

It always fascinates me that projects always seem to get compleated
exactly when they're supposed to be done. I never try to schedule a
compleation date, only adds to the fustration level and encourages one to
'hurry'.
If Geo is the 'Lord of the Underbelly" then you must be the 'Poohba of the
poo-tank
' that is if the others concur.

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Old 08-29-2014, 08:46 AM   #17
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Oh "CRAP", sorry you had to go through that, but on the other hand I'm not as you just made a great record of a "how to" that will go on forever. I commend you. I would have done the same though, once all is apart that is the time to take care of the things you can see, too many people would just put that off. I hear way too often "if it works don't @#$% with it" Enjoyed the pictures, they show a lot.

Well done!
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Old 08-31-2014, 01:43 PM   #18
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Wink If you get bored...

Hey Poppy, if you run out of projects, come up to Northern Calif. and you can redo all the stuff under my trailer!
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Old 08-13-2015, 04:00 AM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Poppy's 5th Wheel View Post
Well, just finished my repair. The job ended up being much more time consuming than I thought it would be.

[...]

Let's see if this link works:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/blow...0tank%20repair
Poppy, your work from a year ago, is proving helpful this year! While in Colorado last week, I noticed water leaking out from an opening in the coroplast, around where the main sewer line drops down from the black and forward gray tank. The water had a funky smell to it, not as bad as I'd expect from a black tank, worse than I'd expect from the forward (sink and shower) gray tank. On a positive note, no insulation to get wet in this "entry level" trailer! Considering this is the first repair required of the trailer after 100 nights of use, I'm happy.

Rate of water draining out didn't slow 10 minutes after dumping the black, slowed considerably within 5 minutes of dumping the gray. Leak started again a couple days later. My assumption for now is more likely the gray tank with a crack mid to high on the tank (or high plumbing connection).

Still working and unable to keep trailer at house for a prolonged repair period, I called to a couple local RV repair shops. The one that gave me more confidence (Crestview in Georgetown, TX), can't even look at it until September 20th. Labor day weekend I have reservations at a State Park (Mother Neff, for those of you in Texas) with full hook ups. I will take the opportunity to drop the coroplast, confirm the location of the leak and see if it is something I can repair over the weekend, or back in the storage lot.

Poppy, your link to photobucket isn't working, any chance you could try refreshing it? I'll bet there is a lot I could learn from your work.

Thanks in advance.
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Old 08-13-2015, 04:30 AM   #20
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Photobucket wouldn't open for me.
How did you secure the 1" foamboard?
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