Yikes, is our RV falling apart? It seems that way.

Is our RV falling apart? It sure seems that way. Over the last four months, I have been doing lots of do-it-yourself work on my RV. The newest issue is that the engine wouldn’t start until I spent two days working on it. I will let you know what I found and repaired near the end of the story. First, I have lots of other examples of our RV falling apart and issues I have been working on.

A big problem prevents you from using your RV

As a full-time RVer, not using my RV is not an option. I found the engine problem and the engine started, so last Sunday we headed out for our next stop near Phoenix. The engine start problem is fixed. There were zero problems with the engine on the hundred-mile trip. Plus, we added another sixty-five more miles crossing Phoenix from the west side to Apache Junction. So I know that the repair worked. This is a big relief. Other repairs are much more run-of-the-mill, except for the engine start problem.

The engine start issue started on Wednesday and it was fixed by Friday and tested several times both on Saturday, Sunday, and again two days later. I am certain that the engine start issue is resolved and will not happen again. At least the engine won’t fail to start for that reason.

Do-it-yourself-RVer

Everything on this list is a repair. Usually, I talk about projects. The only repair in this list to a project item is replacing a bad circuit breaker on my solar setup. It is also probably the smallest repair on this list. It is not only a small repair, but still works most of the time, unlike other repairs that need to be fixed immediately.

RV repairs are common for several reasons. The biggest problem with our RV falling apart is that the problems are all happening at the same time. None of it is pretty, in fact, some of it is ugly, but we are getting through it. I don’t write this seeking sympathy, but rather to tell you what we have been doing. One of my biggest problems is still not resolved. (I think that there is only one more big one!) I am fixing so much stuff that I am losing track. I will tell you about the big one in a future story.

If you are going to be an RVer you better be handy or perhaps rich. For me, I’m too cheap not to be handy.

I try to understand and fix (almost) everything myself. I didn’t fix our engine problem when we were in northern British Columbia. I didn’t have the tools or the skills for such a repair. If you missed that story here is a link: 500 miles with an engine problem in remote Canada

Real-time update

This is as real-time as it gets around here. I even delayed telling the story to include a couple more finished repairs. This week I had intended to tell a story about how difficult it was to replace our washer and dryer. But that issue isn’t on my list of big problems. After lots of frustration, we have a good washer and dryer so I will tell that story later. The washer and dryer replacement story is worth a stand-alone story. It was a pain in the butt. Several issues happened, including the problem that the new washer and dryer are slightly bigger than the old ones. Notice all the extra room I have to work with.

Examples of our RV falling apart

Our broken door handle

We only have one door on the RV and the handle has to work. Our door has been difficult to open since we got the RV. I have even replaced the door handle previously because it broke… it was broken at the same place as this one.

This time I called up TriMark Door Systems and questioned why they were breaking and what the warranty was on these handles. They couldn’t answer the first question. As for the second question, the warranty only applies if you purchase directly from TriMark Door Systems. Shame! Lots of RVs have this door handle and it is a lemon, but you have to use it because it is the only one that fits the door.

A leak coming from the roof

Part of the rainy weather California is getting this winter is that some came through the roof. I have fixed this problem more than once. It is a long-going battle. Every winter I reseal the roof over the problem area. Every winter the problem goes away only to come back.

Sometimes it rains and I don’t have any leaks. Sometimes it rains and I catch some water inside the cabinet over the driver’s seat. Last winter I removed nearly all the old sealant and applied the new sealant. This winter I reapplied new sealant over the top of the old sealant attempting to stop the leak. Between storms this year, I resealed every seam on the front eight feet of the roof. In the last three years, I have sealed every seam on the entire roof. Today I don’t think I have any leaks, but of course, it didn’t rain today.

You can only apply new sealant directly to the roof unless you clean the old sealant. Rather than scraping the old sealant away this year, I found a great cleaner for old sealant. Brake cleaner does a great job cleaning old sealant so that the new sealant will stick to the old sealant. Be careful with the brake cleaner, you don’t want it on just anything, just the old sealant.

Another key piece of information is that there are two basic kinds of sealant. The popular one is called Dicor. However, my RV came from the factory with a silicone sealant. Dicor will not stick to silicone. The only thing that sticks to silicone is silicone and new silicone only sticks to clean silicone.

Ample rain hit again a few days ago and I was able to evaluate the repair. So far no leaks from the roof on the front of our RV. Knock on wood. Now I need to check and reseal the rest of the RV, both roof and sides. Checking and re-sealing is an annual task. Smarter RVers check the sealant before it rains and leaks.

Cracks in our skylight

Our skylight is a factory original installed in 2008. This winter we also had water leaking around the edges of the skylight above the shower. This is another case of our RV falling apart, this time due to age. Plastic skylights don’t last forever. So I made a quick temporary fix that involves roof sealant and brake cleaner. Soon the skylight will have to be replaced. My quick fix, to stop the leak, won’t last forever. So far my fix is holding. My repair is just delaying the real repair.

Clearance marker light leaks

Clearance marker lights are the five red lights on the top of the back of an RV or large truck and five amber lights on the front of the RV (and large trucks). These plastic light covers also don’t last forever and mine will be new soon enough. I ordered the lights and am now waiting for the opportunity to make the repairs installing the new lights. This is another example of our RV falling apart due to age.

When repairing the leak on the front of the RV I noticed moisture inside the plastic light covers and that is a sure sign that they leak and that they need to be replaced. I am fighting yet another case of our RV falling apart, replacing the failing parts one at a time. When the big part in the back of the RV quits making noise, I am going to let someone else fix it.

Broke down on the side of the road

We broke down on the side of the road and it had nothing to do with the big noise maker. Is our RV falling apart? It seems that way.

What happened to put us on the side of the road? You might call this part two of our RV falling apart. Maybe it is part five or six if you include the untold washer and dryer story and the little stuff. We have enough fixes and problems that I am losing count of the issues.

Tami heard a slight hiss

For the last few months, Tami, while the engine was running, heard a small hiss from the front of the RV. I could never hear it. It had to be an air leak. So I investigated finding nothing. There were only four (actually five, but I didn’t know it at the time) uses and sources of potential air leaks in the front of the RV.

In order of importance, the air-powered devices are the suspension, brakes, horn, and step cover actuator. (Anticipating an argument, about brakes more important than suspension, my RV won’t move if the suspension isn’t working. Thus, this is the reason that I put suspension before brakes.) All of these things checked out fine, including inspections by professionals. What I didn’t know about was that there is an air tube that goes to the back of the instrument panel that powers the air pressure gauge. This air tube, connected to the back of the gauge, was the one that was hissing and eventually broke.

The air connection on the back of the gauge failed and the tiny hiss turned into a woosh. I couldn’t hear the hiss, but I could hear the woosh. I also could hear the low air pressure alarm. Thinking we had a huge problem with the brakes or suspension, Tami pulled off the road.

Then while sitting just off the road I started investigating. We couldn’t hear the woosh when we were outside but only when we were inside. The brakes worked so we could roll and stop so that wasn’t the problem. The suspension was still up, meaning the airbags (we have air suspension) had not deflated. I started looking for sources under the dashboard. As I moved my hand up behind the dashboard, I could hear the noise change slightly. The problem had to be behind the dashboard. Why was there an air leak behind the dashboard? After disassembling the dashboard, still sitting along the side of the road, I found the disconnected air line behind the gauges.

This small connector that ties the tube to the back of the dashboard electronic display computer was broken. The tubing was too short and was pulling on the connector probably since the day it was built and eventually the connector failed right at the end of the tube.

After a call to Tiffin to determine if the RV was safe to drive (it was safe but annoying because the low-air alarm was going off) we drove back to our campground. Now, we also had an air leak behind the instruments on the dashboard. This is yet another example of our RV falling apart.

Fixing our air leak

So we drove to our preferred Yuma RV park (about ten miles away) and registered for a week-long stay. To fix my air leak, I was going to have to somehow connect the broken part back to the plastic tube and connect the other end to the back of the gauge. According to the Tiffin Parts Store, the broken connector was part of the dashboard electronic display computer and I would need to get a new dashboard computer and it would cost $500. I choked, a ten-cent plastic part was broken and a new replacement computer would be $500.

Come to find out, the new $500 dashboard electronic display computer wasn’t available so Tiffin couldn’t send me a new one. What to do? According to the Tiffin parts store the only way to repair it was to change out my entire dashboard with a more modern one and that would cost $5000, not including labor!

So for the next two days, I tried to repair my broken plastic connector using glue. It didn’t work; the tube was made of very slick plastic, and the glue wasn’t sticking. I wasn’t on board with fixing a ten-cent piece of plastic with a new dashboard. If necessary I would find one, somewhere, perhaps in a junkyard, or repair it with something else; even if it meant snipping the low-air alarm wire and disabling it for a while. I bet a golf tee and some duct tape would plug that hole at the end of the tube.

Finding a new coupling

I had a few choices to find a new coupling. First, there was the junkyard option. What I was looking for was a small section of plastic tube with the appropriate connector. Under the dashboard, I found the broken parts from my old connector. At junkyards, they would snip the air tubes and want to sell me the entire dashboard display computer with the connectors already attached.

The second option would be a commercial truck supply company. Big trucks and buses have pneumatic systems that control their brakes just like we do. I assume that big trucks also have the same gauges as we have and perhaps they would have the connectors.

The third option was a hydraulic repair shop. If they had parts to fix a hydraulic leak, perhaps they would have parts to fix a pneumatic leak. After two visits to the hydraulic shop, I was able to find the correct part.

Then the hydraulic shop told me that the part that would fix the problem, the very same part that had failed, wasn’t approved for use in my motorhome. The perfect repair part wasn’t certified by the Department of Transportation and they didn’t make or sell certified connectors. I told the hydraulics shop that I didn’t care about the Department of Transportation, and now have the one that fixed the problem and two spares in case I have to swap in some more non-certified parts.

Once assembled it was fixed. No hiss or woosh, and no low air pressure alarm. Overall I spent about twenty dollars to fix my $500-$5000 problem including the spare connectors that I keep just in case of a future failure.

The problems I am dealing with are mainly related to the fact that our RV bounces down the road and things fail faster in an RV than in a house. Is our RV falling apart? It seems that way.

Air Step Solenoid

Over the steps, next to the front door, we have a step cover that extends and retracts using pneumatic pressure.

I didn’t fix the air step solenoid as much as I adjusted it. For some time now, retracting the step cover has been rather slow and extending the steps was too fast. The adjustments are made using the small screws below on the left side. The way these screws affect the air pressure is when they are fully closed, no air from the left side of this valve will pass to the tubes on the right. Without pressure going through the valve, the step cover doesn’t move.

After numerous attempts to get the setting correct, I cranked the screws down clockwise until they were shut down and the cover didn’t move. Then, one at a time, I backed off the settings until the steps were working correctly. One screw adjusts the amount of force to extend the step cover and the other screw adjusts the force to retract the step cover. Even though it was only a few days ago, I can’t remember which screw was for extension and which screw was for retraction. My memory doesn’t last very long anymore.

The above picture has a good view of the plastic part that broke behind the dashboard. The plastic part that failed is red in this picture. I didn’t know it when I had the dashboard leak, but attached to this valve I had three additional couplers that could have been used to fix my dashboard. I could have removed the coupler from the Air Step Solenoid and put it behind the dashboard. To disconnect this connector from the tube, push the red part towards the silver part and the tube will come loose. Then you can unscrew the connector from the device.

Solar Problem

I installed our RV solar panels and batteries and I know exactly how it works or how it should work. So diagnosing this problem was easy. All I had to do was look for a green light. No light meant that electricity was not making it from the panels to the controller.

The problem is that one of my circuit breakers on the solar panels sometimes disconnects. To make a temporary fix, all I have to do is turn it back on. If this wasn’t the problem, then the only other thing that could be at fault was that three of my six fuses, all on one side of the RV, would have to fail simultaneously.

A single point of failure was more likely than a multiple-point simultaneous failure. I was right and the problem was the circuit breaker. It has been turning off while we are driving probably due to vibrations. When this happens half of my solar array turns off. The location of this circuit breaker is between the solar panels and the charge controller. The purpose of the circuit breaker is to protect the RV from too much current. When this circuit breaker disconnects it doesn’t even move the small yellow lever indicating a disconnect.

A short circuit is a connection between the positive wire and the negative wire bypassing the load. When this happens there is no load (bypassed) and thus the wire becomes the load. In a circuit, if there is no load then the wire gets hot leading to a possible fire. In this case, the load is the charge controller and the electricity source is the solar panels. When a circuit breaker warms up due to too much current flow it trips opening the circuit. Open circuits have zero current and thus cannot create a fire.

My circuit breaker, however, opens not due to too much current but rather from vibration as we travel and thus my circuit breaker is faulty. Perhaps I should have used a fuse and a switch. Anytime the sun is shining my panels are creating electricity. I got a replacement circuit breaker and, I am going to make this repair after dark. As a side note, the 100 on my solar charge controller means that the controller (next picture) can handle 100 volts of direct current. This is well within the danger range if you somehow touch it incorrectly.

After dark, I am certain that the voltage will be zero and I can perform the repair on a zero-volt system. Someday soon I will replace the sometimes working circuit breaker with my new circuit breaker. I intend to do that when I am not dealing with the other issues of our RV falling apart.

The bathroom sink faucet

Yesterday I removed our bathroom faucet. I shouldn’t have had to remove the faucet, all I wanted to do was change the cartridge to stop a water leak. The old cartridge did its job for sixteen years without failure and then started a slow drip.

Our bathroom faucet isn’t an RV faucet but rather it is a residential faucet. The old cartridge was fused to the housing and the only way to remove it was to remove the faucet and beat the old cartridge out of the housing with a hammer and a screwdriver. Instead of getting a new faucet (we considered that), I reinstalled the old one. A new one involved more labor than the old one. In either case, I was going to make some changes. I wanted water shutoffs under the sink. In a house, they are required. In an RV they are rare.

Getting the old faucet out of the sink wasn’t easy but fixing it while it was in place was impossible. Is our RV falling apart? This repair was harder than it should have been.

Catching Rocks

Well, we didn’t catch the rock but instead, it hit our window. By the time we stopped in Quartzite, we had an eleven-inch crack. Thankfully it is along the bottom edge of the window and I was able to talk the windshield repair guy into fixing it. The crack was growing and now at least it has stopped growing.

I am scared to have the windshield replaced at the wrong shop. In many cases, the repair incorrectly performed can cause the window to pop out of the RV when you are driving. I would much rather have a cracked window in an area that you can’t see rather than a window pop out when I am driving. Road damage isn’t another case of our RV falling apart. At least we knew what caused the window to crack.

Mobile RV oil changes

While at the RV park with an RV that wouldn’t start, I found a guy who does mobile RV oil changes without moving the RV. This turned out to be a wonderful option to have. My problem with changing my oil, which I always do on every other engine I have ever owned, is that my big diesel engine holds five gallons of oil.

Where would I put and then dispose of five gallons of oil? So I paid the mobile RV oil change guy to change the oil. Overall I would have assumed that I would get a discount since a shop wasn’t involved. That part wasn’t true. It was the same cost as going to a shop. I could be fixing the engine start problem and he could be doing annual maintenance at the same time.

Fixing our engine start problem

The problem that caused our RV engine starting problem last week started nearly three years ago when we had to get our chassis batteries replaced. Here is the story about that and all the efforts that I went through to try to recondition the chassis batteries to make them last longer. Zombie Batteries that won’t die

That story is that I had to go to Camping World and get the batteries replaced. My chassis batteries are in a very difficult location, behind the engine. The tech who replaced them used the very same wires as when the RV was new. Because of corporate rules, I didn’t get to watch the repair, and because it was Camping World it was expensive. Was our RV falling apart in 2021? It sure seems that way.

Our new starting problem was very baffling

Perhaps it wouldn’t have been baffling to you, but to me, it didn’t make sense. Our RV chassis batteries are strong and voltage readings at the battery are close to 13 volts. Yet when we turned the key, the dashboard didn’t light up like it usually does. The dashboard merely twitched and then nothing.

So somewhere there must be a broken wire or loose connection. So I measured the voltage at the jump start location. Instead of matching the battery voltage it reads less than six volts. If a wire was broken between the battery and the jump start location, it should have read zero, not six volts. I still can’t explain the six volts even though I found the problem and repaired it.

A phone call to the help desk at Tiffin sent me looking for loose or broken wires. He suggested looking behind the main switch panel close to where I had the weird voltage readings. It was very difficult, so I spent half a day trying to move this panel where wires are connected to both the front and the back of the panel. Oh yes, this panel has both house battery shutoff switches and chassis battery shutoff switches. There are plenty of wires and not very much room. It was difficult to even get close to the terminals on the back of the panel.

Also, I knew that the next morning, the mobile oil change guy would show up and he needed access to the rear of the RV to change the fuel filters and refill the oil. To enable this, I had to remove the bicycles and bike rack so that he could access the engine. So half an hour before the oil change, I removed the bicycles.

How could an oil change lead to an electrical repair?

Instead of the place where I was looking for a loose nut (I am not the only loose nut), when I opened up the back of the engine cover (where the batteries live), there was a broken wire right at the connection point from the hot side of the battery over to the chassis main fuse. Using the logic that the obvious problem is probably the real problem, I redirected my energy toward fixing that broken lug. Had I not been getting ready for the oil change, I wouldn’t have found the problem so quickly.

Remember my mention of the RV tech at Camping World? He caused this wire to break at the lug. He created this problem by positioning the batteries slightly off to one side rather than where they were before. Positioning the batteries incorrectly resulted in the wire between the battery and chassis fuse being slightly short. Instead of repositioning the battery or making a longer wire, he ran the wire without any slack in it. Over the last three years, this connection vibrated to the point that the lug on this wire broke.

The broken lug was hanging in an open space but not connected to the fuse. This wire was directly from the battery heading to the fuse. Since it was a hot wire and unfused, it could have caused huge problems if it had fallen to any part of the frame or engine connecting it to the negative side of the battery. (Can you spell FIRE?) I am pretty hot (under the collar) about this repair at Camping World. I am also mad at myself for not assessing this risk before it broke.

Conclusion

I don’t care what my English teacher said to do. I am not going to tell you this story again and call it a conclusion. Instead, I think I would like to relate that I realize that our RV is falling apart. Eventually, gravity, corrosion, and dirt will win. I am just fighting to keep it alive and enjoying the do-it-yourself wins that I get from fixing it.

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