Busy day with the Axis

[JamieGeek]

Having some time today and really nice weather; I was able to take care of a few things on the Axis.

First off I removed the taillights and used my "as seen on TV" solution to the leaky taillight problem: I sealed up the area with some "Flex Seal"!

For being only 1 year old the recess where the taillights are was pretty clean, and very little water.

There it is sprayed with "Flex Seal". The stuff is pretty tough once it drys. In fact, if you do anything with "Flex Seal" it is best to remove the masking within about 10 minutes of spraying it. Otherwise you'll have to cut through it with a sharp knife.

All done.

Next up was replacing the windshield washer pump & tank. I don't have any pics of this as its pretty straightforward: Unplug the electrical plug and the washer hose, remove 2 bolts, put new one on, replace 2 bolts, replace plug and washer hose.

Since I had a little left over of the sound insulation material from when I used it on the doghouse I figured I'd use some to try to plug the A pillar holes:

I cut two sections about 8" x 2' and crammed them up the sides from the engine compartment. The right end of the picture above is where the A pillar hole is. Unfortunately when I was putting the RV away I was concentrating on something else (see below) and didn't pay attention to the noise level.

Continued on next post...

[JamieGeek]

Last week our Sunguard came in the mail so I had to put that on as well:

At the moment I'm only using velcro patches to hold it on (as you can see it isn't that tight to the windshield yet). It did come with snaps to hold it on but I'm not really ready yet to drill into the front. The advantage of using velcro is that I can reposition the cover slightly.

It even came with covers for the two side windows. Looks like I'm going to have to add a fastening spot about 1/2 down the front edge of the window. From these two pictures you can see its hard to see into the RV from the outside (on a sunny day) through the cover. Here is what you see from the inside looking out:


Finally since we've had the dolly now since Feb I wanted to do a test tow. I hooked up one of our cars and towed it from the house to the RV storage lot (about 5 miles; this is why I didn't pay attention to the noise level as I was watching the car in the rear camera display). The car and dolly tracked well (yeah boring: "everything worked").

[mcr1010]

Nice job and thanks for the pics. No rot is going to start in your tail light recesses.
I must add that to my punch list. I had the list knocked down to two items, but it is growing again. Looks like some SS screws would be good for the tail light unit also.

[Nursx2]

Jamie,


Love those screens! Question, can you see in the coach at night when the lights are on and it is dark outside? If not, where did you purchase them and for how much!?


Noticed the rust around the screws holes in the pic of the taillights. I placed silicone in the holes on my old Sunseeker when I treated the taillights as you did and replaced the screws with stainless steel. Just a thought!


Excellent mods BTW!


Darren

[JamieGeek]

Originally Posted by Nursx2

Love those screens! Question, can you see in the coach at night when the lights are on and it is dark outside? If not, where did you purchase them and for how much!?

I can't answer the night question yet as I put them on as seen in the pic then immediately took them off to put the camper back into storage. I'll report more on that once we use them while camping (most likely sometime in May). I purchased them driectly from the Sunguard folks since I had asked our local dealer if they made one for our Axis and never got back to us; so I just called them.
RV Windshield Covers by Sunguard Shade Products
I have to dig around for the price--can't seem to find it. They were not cheap $350+ from what I can remember.

The rust in the screw holes seems to be soley from the screws as they were all rusty and a few holes were stripped. I'll probably address that at some point...

[timp410]

Looks great Jamie, this is something I desperately need to do but wasn't sure of how I was going to accomplish it. Thanks for taking the time to post pictures. You have been a wealth of knowledge for owners of these rigs...please keep posting them.

[JamieGeek]

Ah close I just looked up what I paid for for the screens: It totaled at $318.

[Nursx2]

Thanks Jamie.

[JamieGeek]

Oh and I have to add that I didn't order the Flex Seal--I found it at Lowes in the fastener aisle.

[mcr1010]

Since I had a little left over of the sound insulation material from when I used it on the doghouse I figured I'd use some to try to plug the A pillar holes:

I cut two sections about 8" x 2' and crammed them up the sides from the engine compartment. The right end of the picture above is where the A pillar hole is. Unfortunately when I was putting the RV away I was concentrating on something else (see below) and didn't pay attention to the noise level.

Jamie, is that FatMat insulation that you are using?
Also, I was poking around under the hood today and took a pic of the air ducts that supply air at the base of the windshield. This looks like it could be a source of eng. noise since it does not look as if it is insulated. Below is a pic. I haven't figured out how to insulate it yet. Any ideas? Maybe FatMat would work here.

[JamieGeek]

Yes that is FatMat:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I purchased that to insulate the doghouse and had about 1/2 of it left over.

You could probably put the FatMat all over the underside of the dash. As you can see in my pic there isn't much under there.

[mcr1010]

Right, there is not much room for applying a mat to all the various surfaces. Best way to insulate in there is to drop the engine or remove the dash.
And that hopefully that is not going to happen anytime soon.

[JamieGeek]

Originally Posted by mcr1010

Right, there is not much room for applying a mat to all the various surfaces. Best way to insulate in there is to drop the engine or remove the dash.

I did find it to be quite easy to maneuver the fat mat around inside the engine compartment when I was putting those in. I thought for sure the adhesive would grab something on the way and I'd spend most of the time unsticking it from stuff.
That turned out not to be the case since the mat is rigid enough that I could guide it around things. I was very surprised when I looked at that picture how well I had the section positioned since it was all by feel.

[FW28z]

Interesting that you used Flex Seal for the tail-light voids.

I used Epoxy on mine; partly because it is old-school, and partly because I had some delamination in the plywood, and the Epoxy took care of that. But I see no reason Flex-Seal would not work, especially if the plywood is not yet damaged.

If manufacturers are going to insist on using those tail-lights, they should be protecting the void behind them... but then they would have to buy and apply some form of sealant.

And then it would cost more, so they could have "upgraded" the tail-lights to a version that did not leak in the first place.

Sometimes, being cheap costs more.

[JamieGeek]

Originally Posted by FW28z

Interesting that you used Flex Seal for the tail-light voids.

I had purchased a can to use to cover the DIY black tank sensors. Before doing any of that I sprayed a few things to experiment with it and figure out its properties. Turns out Flex Seal is very similar to the underbody spray that auto manufacturers use to seal up cars (way back I used to work in robotics and had many plant visits supporting the underbody spraying robots).

[mcr1010]

Does look like the rigid foam is a little easier to install. Did you install the foam when you removed the doghouse from the rear of eng. or the front?
I can't remember how much room is available to access the dash-duct area when I removed the doghouse, but it may be easier to reach the areas near the firewall from the doghouse end.
I may just take a look at some self sticking insulation at Lowes today. It is Frost King foil backed 1/8" x 12" x 15' duct insulation. Not ideal, but may keep some noise and heat down. Will try to remember to take some db readings before and after and see if it makes any difference.

[flyguy]

Hi guys,

Just a little jump backwards at the sunscreens. I purchased a nice one at www.sunscreen.com or if you search the internet type "prompt sunsreen".
Check it out. no velcro,no snaps. takes 2 min. to install and looks great. I have one on my hurricane and am very pleased. I don't know if they make one for the Vegas yet, but you can give them a call.

For the wiper blades I used grey foam water pipe insulation at home depot. Looks clean and neat and just cost $1.99 for an 8 foot section.

Larry & Annie

[JamieGeek]

You mean this one:
RV Sunscreen | No More Snaps, Drilling or Climbing
Interesting, much the same function as the one I got but a bit easier to put up! Looks to be a similar price point.

[flyguy]

Yes, that's the one.
I was nervous of making holes in those areas, then I found their site. No creases, rests nice and flat, holds fine even in high rain or wind conditions. I'm sitting in my coach right now but I don't know how to add a picture. It asks for the url of the picture ???. If I could access my photo's I would include a pic.

Larry & Annie

[JamieGeek]

Originally Posted by flyguy

I was nervous of making holes in those areas

So am I which is why I used velcro to start out with.

To post pictures you can either just include them as an attachment (Go advanced then under additional options at the bottom press "Manage Attachments" and upload the file) or you can put the image on a hosting service and use the img tag to include it inline with your post (like I did above using dropbox).