[Exposed]

Well it was a long weekend here at the Brown's DRV Repair Shop. I had to do a brake job on the granddaughter’s Hyundai Friday afternoon so did not get back to the DRV hose replacement job until Saturday morning. I decided to call my brother to come over to help. Honestly, it is definitely a two-man job. I did go back after getting all the hoses pulled and took some pictures but most of the work is inside the belly so hard to get any decent shots.

We started out by putting jacks under the front of the RV to be able to up/down the landing jacks without having the truck hooked up. This gave us space to work in on the hydraulic pump/manifold area being open to the front. Looking at the existing lines we decided to do the front landing jacks first. This was a total of 4 new lines. After getting the load off the front-end jacks, we raised the jacks just off the ground. We were thinking this would minimize fluid dumping when disconnecting. Was pretty easy except having a wire tie screwed into the frame above the generator and no way to access. Ended up with some long dikes and barely getting your hand in across from the pump area and snipped loose. We connected the new hoses to the existing hoses and pulled through over the generator housing. Once pulled, reconnected new hoses. With all four lines replaced, figured would cycle couple of times to see if working okay. Made some noise when first stared up then seem to get all the air out and started working. I would say this was the easiest part of the upgrade.

Looking at the routing from the pump/manifold area, lines run down the backside of the loading jack down to the bottom just outside the frame in the rolled part of the side skin. It is rolled and then screwed into the bottom of the frame. I could also see a wire tie to the landing jack at the top where lines head down. This was a bad deal to start. Seeing this, my next move was to get access to that area and best option was to remove the control panel that operates the landing jacks. I removed the mounting screws this gave me access to that area and could see where lines were wire tied several spots going down the land jack housing (see picture Hose-3). From the bottom, I realized that I would not need to cut into the belly covering since the lines were outside the frame and actually inside the area covered by the skin where it rolls under the RV (see picture Hose-2). First issues were jack stands to support the front needed to be on the frame and that would cover up a big chuck of the rolled skin that needed to be removed. I decided to just cut back just enough to place a 2x4 block for support and still allow me to remove all the screws holding the skin to the frame. Once I did that, I could loosen the skin and let it drop down. Sure enough our great guys at the factory wire tied all the lines (hydraulic, cable, telephone, electrical) together and then screwed to the floor. No way to just pull out the old ones. So, had to remove all the wire ties and then could separate the hydraulic lines. The next issue was the cut out in the floor from the top was barely large enough for all those lines. The new lines have larger connections so I knew that would be an issue fishing the lines down through there. I decided to cut out an area in the bottom of the butane box which gives me access to work around the hole at the floor level (see picture Hose-5). After doing this, I could stick my hand through the cut out (about 4”x6” opening) and manage to feed each line down through the area. After removing all 5 lines from the manifold, I took the 5 new lines and pulled through one at a time. Then, I tie wrapped to the land jack housing for now.

This was a good start, but the fun had just begun. It was easy pulling the old lines back to where the lines disappear when you get to where your water line access opens to the bottom of the RV. At that point, that opening is a big bowl which covers out to the edge of the from under. Apparently, the factory cut a hole in the frame about 4”-5” past where the hoses disappear (see picture Hose-1). About 4’ past this point is where the kitchen slide cylinder and mid landing jacks are located. Moving to that area, there was a partial area that was cut out and then foamed sprayed to seal off area. I removed all the foam and then opened up the area that was already cut. By bending back I could see a partial wood frame mounted that allowed to attach the belly covering. I went ahead and cut along the wood frame all the way across to the other side. I could then bend back and push the insulation back and could see the cylinder and also where the 5 lines show up on the inside of the frame now. I decided to cut another section of the belly covering about a foot from where I though it was passing through the frame. From this access I could then pull each existing line through the frame. I connected the new line and tapped to the old line and pulled from back toward the cylinder. It took awhile wiggling and twisting hoses but got all 5 pulled out and new ones pulled in. I would consider this the hardest part in replacing all the lines. Once we had all 5 lines pulled, we started working on cylinder replacement on the kitchen slide. This is where all this got started. We had followed the Lippert directions on replacing cylinder, so slide was extended prior to starting. Since cylinder was pretty easy to get to once open on the bottom and insulation pulled back, took about 30 minutes to swap out with new cylinder. At this point, we opened up some areas at each leveling jack. We were fortunate DRV had not tied anymore hoses down with tie wraps so we would just pull old hoses out and tape new hoses to old ones. We replaced all but the hoses to one leveling jack and the dinette cylinder Saturday. It was about 3:30 and decided to call it a day. We are not spring chickens anymore and decided to finish up Sunday morning.

We got started back Sunday morning and when we opened up the area at the dinette cylinder, the insulation was wet around the end of the cylinder. Sure enough, seal on the shaft is leaking. So now will have to replace the other cylinder even though it has not been any issues in operating. We went ahead and pulled the remaining new hoses and connected.

So now all the new hoses are installed and all that is needed it connecting the 5 at the manifold. With all things going on when doing the replacement of lines, the sequence of where the 4 extend lines (kitchen and dinette slide, right and left leveling jacks) got switched. The schematic I had downloaded ended up being not correct. After connecting all the new lines and putting pressure on them, I decided to just switch power connectors on the solenoids instead of disconnecting and reconnecting the hoses. Once you break these connections or have a leak, it can make a mess pretty quick in the compartment. It took awhile to figure out the new order of the lines but finally got everything working the correct device. Starting at the rear and moving forward, opened and closed everything to the front several times to get all the air out of the system. Now, all the hydraulics are working okay. I also can now bring in the kitchen slide and then bring up jacks and other slide and it is not moving. Before it would creep back out. The final test will be on our next road trip to make sure but feel comfortable replacing the cylinder was the issue.

Got off the phone with DRV awhile ago and got the dinette slide cylinder ordered. And of course, not in stock so will probably take couple of weeks to get the replacement cylinder. I also ordered replacement stainless screws and flat washers to replace all the screws I removed. There were several different sizes and flavor. Guess they just grab whatever is close when using these since they would be the same you would think. Once get the new screws can button all the bottom up except at the rear cylinder.
I meant to take a picture of the 16 old hoses replaced. It was quiet a pile and about 250’ feet of hoses. I spent about $1000 on new hoses, $145 for new kitchen cylinder, and now $256 for dinette slide. $30 for transmission fluid. I don’t know what the dealer would get for this job, but I am sure a lot more than this. I will probably do some searching around Houston for someone to rebuild both of my original cylinders and have on hand if I have another one quit functioning or starts leaking.

One other thing I would like to mention is you can see in the pictures, the propane line that runs under the RV, is rusted big time. I am sure it is probably okay but looks like it is 20 years old and set outside in the weather forever. This is alarming to me since this DRV has not been parked outside and never been on roads where salt was used (except maybe delivery to Kansas). Another project will be to replace this black iron pipe in the near future.

To end this, I would say this was a success and anyone planning on tackling this, be prepared for some work. It is not hard but definitely time consuming. Anyone needing more information can contact me via email and will be happy to talk about this venture… I will update post once I get the dinette cylinder to close the blog.