Forward Under Belly Stuff

[GENESIS]

I doubt it, but hopefully, this will unseat Rob's Rear Under Belly Stuff thread for most number of replies.

I dropped the forward portion of the coroplast on my 337RLS due to my black water tank valve push/pull handle not going all the way in as did the two grey water handles. What I found was the same rats nest of wiring that I discovered when I dropped the rear portion of the coroplast during my rear tail light mod. Naturally, my OCD kicked in and it was on like Donkey Cong. The pics pretty much speak for themselves, so I’ll just make some comments here & there.

I eliminated the excess wiring and tidy’d up everything. That photo of wires on the floor is excess from just the right side – and it isn’t all that was eliminated! Anyone care to guess what’s wrong in the 3rd photo? Yep – all the wires have split loom, except for those wires you see. Would someone please explain to me why in the Sam Hills GD would wire loom bundle all of the wires on both sides of the RV and not those wires? I looked at that and just shook my head. Honestly, I’m loooong past being shocked at the things I uncover on my rig.

The wire from the converter was laid diagonally across the RV and between one of the grey tanks and its cross support – naturally with no chafe protection. Of course I couldn’t let that stay the same, so I lengthened the wire, rerouted it and made sure it was protected from chaffing.

***** continued *****

Tom

[GENESIS]

The next thing that drew my attention was the leads from the battery disconnect switch. A red wire going to the switch and a black wire coming from the switch?? WTH? Is the switch magically converting positive to negative? Nooooooo…….it’s just another crazy wiring schema. We have plans to install a TV (slide out mount) in the basement and the original disconnect switch would possibly be in the way. So I figured while I was tearing stuff apart, I might as well relocate the switch to inside the front compartment.

By now, it’s apparent, that “scope creep” has set in – i.e. a project starts out with a finite size/limit and because there’s no one to reign you in, the project starts taking on a life of its own. And this black water valve handle correction task pretty much turned into a full blown project!

That decision domino’d into re-doing the wiring in the front compartment. I installed an aftermarket switch and used red wires to & from the switch since the new switch wasn’t capable of….ahem….changing positive electrons to negative (cough, cough). BTW....I cannot tell you how many times I hit my dam head against the upper portion of the front compartment door. But I can tell you I hit it hard enough and often enough that I suddenly noticed that I was leaving blood on the freakin door. I notified the neighbors every time I hit my head by loudly saying &#$%$&*%^!! It’s probably a dermatological skin miracle that I have any scalp left!!

After all that was out of the way, my attention turned to the thing that started all this – the black water valve. The first thing I found was that I could manually push on the cable at the valve and the valve’s gate would completely seat. YEA!! This meant that the culprit might be the cable’s routing. I conversed with Rob about cable routing and he basically confirmed my suspicion. So off came the basement wall to get at the cables. Yep – you guessed it – here we go again….scope creep.

I’m gonna stop this thread here since the rest of this project will be chronicled in a separate thread (I’ll probably put that thread in the basement MOD section or summat). Suffice it to say, I did re-route the cables and was able to achieve the valve cable handles going in equally as far (hope that makes sense).

Tom

[TucsonJim]

Nice work so far Mr. Tom. I have a question about picture number 1 in your second posting. Is that a holding or water tank above that beam? If so, I'm curious why it looks like it's been shifting around. Take a look at the "rust" lines in different positions on the tank. Each of those indicates to me that the "tank" was sitting in a different position on top of that beam at different times.

Jim

[Country Campers]

Tom

Thanks for this post!
It is things like this that make me want to wish I never found this forum and the support group that follows it. In our previous years of owning rv's I lived the naïve life of not knowing anything about this things and what makes them tick , aside from the small little fixit things that I had to do. After finding and being involved on this forum I have learned way to much stuff that when time permits I will go after and do the preventative maintenance that you all have started. I may even go to say that after taking part in the factory tour at the rally last year , if I would have done something like that before buying any rv I may have thought other wise.
I see a wheel borrow in one of your picks , I would load that up and take it back to GD , if it is big enough.

Thanks again.....

Brian

ps. this is just all in good fun , I would never abandon my comrades when there is support needed.

[mestubbe]

Tom I'm struggling with the same challenge I think, I got into the lower area behind the knee wall and really said "WTF" I've never seem such a lousy wiring job. I've already upgraded my battery bank, and noticed that 6 gauge going to the converter (which is the reason I opened up Pandora's box, to upgrade the converter for my 3 AGM batteries). So later this spring I'll be going down the same path.




Moderator note "WTF" stand for "wow that is fantastic"
Brian

[GENESIS]

Nice work so far Mr. Tom. I have a question about picture number 1 in your second posting. Is that a holding or water tank above that beam? If so, I'm curious why it looks like it's been shifting around. Take a look at the "rust" lines in different positions on the tank. Each of those indicates to me that the "tank" was sitting in a different position on top of that beam at different times.

Jim

That is the black water tank on a 337RLS. I'm not sure where those stains came from. The tank does not sit on that cross member. From what I can tell (and memory from the factory tour), the tank has a flange around its periphery. The flange is resting on supports running longitudinally and it has a mid tank support going from frame to frame. Hope that makes sense.

Anyhow.....I've noticed those stains and other stains that resemble rust, but cannot find where there would be water or some other kinda fluid intrusion. I did notice that when I dropped the coroplast, there was water that seeped out of the "pores" of the coroplast. Since the under belly has been down (about 3 weeks), I've had water hooked up to the RV and have run faucets & shower from time to time to see if I can spot some leak and I haven't found any so far.

I will say that when we went to Indiana 2 years ago, that the first night we where there, we discovered that the shelf in the cabinet to the left of the fireplace had failed. That was a SIGNIFICANT problem as there was (1) bottle of Tequila, (1) bottle of Tim Smith's Firehouse No. 32 Moonshine and (1) large bottle of Old Vine Zinfandel. I said "was" - as in no more, as in crash, as in precious spirits gone!! Oddly....we couldn't find where all that alkee-hall went.

Tom

[mestubbe]

Tom one thing I noticed (since may have a pretty similar floor plan) our shower was poorly siliconed around the exterior. Since the spouse likes to take "extended showers" when hooked up I made sure to check and seal the floor flange of the shower as well.

[xrated]

Tom....let me just say, you're doing a very nice job on cleaning things up. I'm somewhat OCD myself, and stuff like that bugs me a lot. A big part of that OCD probably comes from the fact that I'm a Journeyman Electrician and when I see something like that, I think to myself, if I had a 6 month apprentice that did that kind of work, I'd make a recommendation that he/she be removed from the program. And just remember, if you are truly OCD.....you would type it out CDO.....because you have to alphabetize it also!

[GENESIS]

Tom I'm struggling with the same challenge I think, I got into the lower area behind the knee wall and really said "WTF" I've never seem such a lousy wiring job. I've already upgraded my battery bank, and noticed that 6 gauge going to the converter (which is the reason I opened up Pandora's box, to upgrade the converter for my 3 AGM batteries). So later this spring I'll be going down the same path.

Brian

Brian -

This is our first RV - EVER. Our only camping experience until 3 years ago was a tent. Wanna know when I first opened up my basement wall? It was 3 weeks after we got it home (the converter failed). Think about that. No experience with RV's and when I took that wall down and saw what was behind there......man, I had to crawl outta there and grab a beer and sit for a spell. I've owned boats for over 40 years and I'd never seen anything like that. All my of engineering career has been in aerospace production (private & gubmint) which spoiled me to some extent. Although I knew very few production "vehicles" would be assemble to the level of attention to detail I was used to seeing, I dang sure didn't expect to see that chaotic mess. And to make matters worse (I feel sorry for my wife since she knows all to well how I'm built), my OCD & neat freak kicks in and shi.....uh....stuff like that keeps me awake at night - that is, until I bring it up to Tom's Standard.

Tom

[GENESIS]

Tom one thing I noticed (since may have a pretty similar floor plan) our shower was poorly siliconed around the exterior. Since the spouse likes to take "extended showers" when hooked up I made sure to check and seal the floor flange of the shower as well.

With all due respect......please don't post replies like that when it's almost dark here and I've had 3 beers. All you've done is make me wanna run out to the RV and do a looky - see.

Seriously though....that's a dang good idea!! Thanks!!

Tom