I brought the Axis home for the weekend and did several repairs, mods, and upgrades that have been on the list for a while. In no particular order they were:
1. Replaced the outside-shower valve body.
I forgot all about the outside shower when I winterized last fall. You can imagine the result. Fortunately the lines themselves drained when I drained everything, but there was a little water left in the body outside of the valves. There was a lot of leaking when using the shower, but none with the valves off.
Amazon had the replacement body. They are really easy to replace if you have access to the backside of the housing. Unfortunately in the 24.1 the backside of the housing is the toilet pedestal. I had to remove the whole housing from the front. That involved removing 9 screws and then cutting the caulk.
The repair itself was simple. Cleaning up the poorly-applied acrylic caulk was a pain though. I ended up using lacquer thinner to soften the caulk so it could be removed. I tested it first, and it didn’t seem to hurt the gel coat. Also, you’ll notice in the photo that my decals are deteriorating already.
I remounted the housing, taped it off neatly and re-caulked with GE Silicone II clear caulk.
2. Next was adding insulation to the engine compartment. I started by adding some brackets on the underside of the dash. I noticed from pictures that others have posted that there should be angle-brackets securing the dash to the chassis frame. They were missing in ours.
Sorry for the fuzzy photo, but mine looks like this – no support at all. Strong gusts or big bumps would visibly lift the dash after which it would crash back down.
I created these brackets from 1/8” aluminum angle.
And installed them thusly. The dash no longer moves. Fuzzy again…
Then I added some ¾” FatMat that I got from Amazon. I covered the seam where the dash meets the cap all the way ‘round. This included completely covering the end of the plastic trim pillars that I had previously stuffed full of fiberglass insulation. I’m hoping for a pretty big improvement in sound levels and elimination of air infiltration.
I have a good bit of mat left. I’ll add more after evaluating the noise levels on the next trip.
3. We had one of the cabinet-lid support struts strip and pull out so that needed fixed.
I bought several of these from an online vendor. They are called “anchor nuts” and are used in automotive and aircraft applications when a nut is needed in an inaccessible location.
I used 6-32 sized nuts of the self-locking variety. 6-32 socket-head cap screws fit nicely in the mounting hole in the strut, and the self-locking feature of the nut means the screw can be left loose enough for the strut to pivot freely but it will not back out.
They are mounted to the cabinet frame with #2 x 5/8 wood screws. To ensure the wood screws will not strip I:
1) drilled a properly sized pilot hole
2) ran the screw in to cut threads in the wood
3) filled the hole with CA glue (super glue)
4) let it harden, and
5)mounted everything up.
I use this method all the time in my model airplanes to make balsa hold screws. Works a treat. The result looks like this.
I fixed the busted one and went ahead and did the same for the other cabinets over the couch. I have enough nuts to do all the cabinets over the beds too.
4. Lastly, the lining in the cab-curtains literally disintegrated. They turned to a nasty white powder, made a mess, and looked terrible from the outside. My DW sewed up some new ones. We chose a nicer fabric and lined them with black-out lining. The lining will reject heat pretty well in addition to darkening up the coach in the evening.
I replaced the curtain tracks at the same time. The originals were too short. They didn’t come all the way back to the valence leaving a nice gap where folks could peer in. No longer a problem.
Regards,
Randy
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