I have no words for the fact that these units come with ZERO documentation. Yes the owners manuals and some installation manuals are there for components like the furnace, AC’s etc. But for the systems, ie water, sewer, electrical AC and DC, hydraulics there is NOTHING. I bought a boat that was built in 1978. It happened to have the book in it. Nice blue prints showing tanks and locations, how they are connected. Plumbing, electric…. the works. This is how it should be.
But, it is what it is. Elkhart builds marginal quality and we buy it. So in the interest of maintenance and modifications it is upon me to reverse engineer the darn thing, labeling things to the extent possible as I go along. First thing I needed was the hydraulics as I was getting ready to somehow mod the slides. I also needed the furnace/hot air distribution system for the winter ops improvements, and similarly a good idea of what plumbing runs where. So I waited for a nice day and got the creeper out……
The first problem you run into is the cover. Talk about lack of serviceability. At some point in the production the frame is upside down and it is covered with a giant single sheet of Coroplast, which is an eponym (like Kleenex) for corrugated plastic. It is screwed in with large self tapping machine screws. So to see anything the whole thing has to come down, or at least a corner. On the driver side there’s gas pipe and conduit over top. Can’t even get your head in there to take a peek. So that had to change.