The Dunks
Madera, Ca.
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Joined: 08/06/2003
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I am really enjoying your thread. Thank you for sharing with us!
The Dunks - Terry and Steve
'05 Endeavor - The Oasis
'05 Jeep Grand Cherokee
In God We Trust
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John339
Clyde Ca. USA
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Joined: 01/24/2002
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I see you are using the special tool to force the Eternabond down. The small roller.
I couldn't believe how much that helped me and how sore my wrists and fingers were when I was finished.
We enjoy reading about your overhaul so keep those photos coming.
John and Cindy and Misty Rain and Senor Paco(Chihuahuas)
1994 Coachmen Catalina 300 MB RD
in sunny Clyde, Calif. KE6IDM
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stevelv
Living on the island
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Joined: 05/24/2006
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Thanks for the words of encouragement 
Works2RV - now that's a possibility. I haven't traced all the wires yet as I was tied up in the dash area - but it could be a level sensor but I'm not sure how it works as I have no manual for the HWH levellers. I have 4 manual hydraulic levers behind the drivers seat and a panel with red and green indicators at the front with an On/Off switch. I'll experiment today.
Just heading off to Napa for hopefully, a blower switch.
RV Park Finder
Ex Fulltimers
Repairing/Restoring 1984 Monaco Regent 36' Gas to restart RVing
DH,DW,Jake and Indie
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Works2RV
Summerville, SC, USA
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Joined: 04/07/2004
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Our leveler system is a 100 Series HWH - 4 individual levers on the floor by the drivers feet ( one for each jack ) with the indicators and switch on the dash. Level sensor is mounted on the front firewall.
Just looked on the HWH web site ( newer design than I remember ) and they had little info on the 100 series. Red indicator is "jack down" and green is "corner low" - leveled indication for us is all 4 reds lit and all 4 greens out.
Hope this helps --
PM'd you
Buck
1987 36' Beaver Marquis High Tech Wide body
3208T CAT, MT643 Allison in a Gillig MHA
Koni's & Toyo all around
FMCA, Good Sam
Jetta TDI
Marsha & Buck
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stevelv
Living on the island
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Joined: 05/24/2006
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Day 5 and we are making some progress. Whilst I waited for my help to arrive for the plumbing, I took a look at a couple areas of water penetration. This Monaco doesn't have laminated sides - the wood and aluminum frame was clad in plywood and then fiberglass sides were hung from the roof and the joins were sealed and covered with aluminum strips that were screwed every 6 inches - finally a vinyl trim piece is inserted into the aluminum strip to cover the screws.
Over time the mastic dries out causing leaks and the owner simply tried to seal them with oodles of silicon caulk. By now even that had pulled away from the seal allowing water penetration.
Here you can see the sorry state of the joint at then end cap after I removed the aluminum trim.
After cleaning with a combination of plastic scraper, prep-all and Goo Off it's cleaned and ready for new sealant. I'd like to find a supplier for that aluminum strip but not sure if I can - in which case I'll clean and polish the old stuff before reapplying.
A couple of other quick jobs before we start the plumbing - the Monaco has this really cool spot/flood light controlled with a switch and joystick in the cab - a broken wire and a snapped threaded part of the very expensive looking switch was repaired with a plastic epoxy and a 1c butt splice and is now working perfectly
Although the Monaco has some great solid wood cabinets, a lot of the surface finish was marked from water and 25 years of wear and tear. I dreaded having to strip and stain/varnish all those acres of Golden Oak wood until I found a miracle cure - it's called Howard Restor-A-Finish and although a bit pricey, it works miracles. It restored these two cabinet doors to almost as new condition with a single application. Made me extremely happy to have found it.
Well Mary-Ann turned up to help with the plumbing and this is what we started with - these are the Shark Fittings that we will be using but we also decided to use some copper (L grade which is thicker walled than the more common M) and solder joints (she's a bit of an expert plumber) to reduce the cost and to provide more secure connections in hard to reach places - so where we need a slight bend we will use PEX and where it's a straight run we will use copper.
We are going to make our lives a lot easier and reduce a lot of tension in the pipework by using braided steel fittings for all of the faucets and toilet. It's much more flexible than PEX and means that none of our joints have to be super critical in terms of placement.
This was the problem with the older pipework that pre-dated PEX - the fittings are simply dreadful and this cold water T had fractured and just snapped off as we removed it - it had been leaking for a long time.
New sink faucet was a reduced price bargain from Lowes
However the bath tub faucet was an expensive item as they are specially made for RVs and Mobile Homes. $55 and no choice in styles. At least this one will not leak although I will have to address the tub drain as that does look like it has been leaking (evidenced by more silicon caulk poorly applied).
So the bathroom is now almost finished except for the copper pipework which we will finish tomorrow - moving on to the kitchen tomorrow where I have a new ADC filter system to install under the sink plus some new valves for the water fill. We should be able to remove a large number of fittings too by careful use of more braided steel flexible pipes.
I'm starting to feel that we are actually making progress. Oh, by the way, I found the correct blower switch from Napa - plugged it in and the blower works fine - the hoses will need replacing though as everytime I touch one they disintegrate
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stevelv
Living on the island
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Joined: 05/24/2006
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Not many pictures today, well just 1 actually
Started the day with the news that the plumbing will have to wait another day as my help had an emergency to contend with.
So I started work on the outside out of the sun, slowly removing pounds of silicon sealer that a previous owner had plastered over every crack, seam and joint. By the ease at which it came off and the way it had pulled away from one edge, it's obvious why silicon sealer has no place on the outside of a motorhome - it was totally ineffective after a couple of years. That work continues and I have to tackle the side in the sun or turn the rig around.
I then started to finish off the dash work, replacing some wires and finally reinstalling the spot lamp controls and working out how the HWH levellers work - thanks to Buck for the really helpful pdfs!!
I also started to remove the steering wheel and the turn signal lever which has an ARA Speed Control lever on it which was completely fractured and floppy. I used the test lamp to work out the wiring and I have an ebay aftermarket lever that will replace it - only problem is that the SET button is normally ON and press to OFF - but the replacement is OFF and press to ON - I'll have to dig out a relay to reverse it's operation. Another small hitch.
To relieve my frustration, I got out the Restor-A-Finish and did the dash and the front cabinets - this stuff is a miracle - all the white stains and faded woodwork now gleams as if it just came out of the factory. I'll get some more pictures of it later.
I then discovered another 'problem' - I had left the AC systems on yesterday to test them and when they came on today I thought - hmm, that rear AC is cycling a lot. So up onto the roof and remove the shrouds to find the rear blower motor was completely seized and to top it all, as I removed it, the blower fan shattered into dust ggrrrrrr.
So, I started trawelling thru Ebay for a replacement Coleman AC motor and blower but eventually found them at pplmotorhomes.com and a few bucks cheaper than ebay including shipping!
Anyway, I have ordered 2 motors and blowers and will replace them both at the same time - can't not have good AC especially as we don't have dual pane windows.
Finally I got the batteries all sorted out - the shop that did the previous work had disconnected everything and left them all wrapped up with no labels as they were going to do alot of rewiring - but I have decided to do it myself as it's cheaper and the best way of learning is by doing. Everytime I discover what a wire is for, I label it Anyway it took some time to work out what was positive and what was negative - who on earth decided to use black for +ve and green for -ve I have no idea. I guess they just used what they had lying around as I have found several DIY splices that suddenly change color - going into an inline fuse with red and coming out as yellow - go figure!
More tomorrow and hopefully some more photos too.
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stevelv
Living on the island
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Joined: 05/24/2006
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A few more photos today but it was a later start and a very late finish
Started with a little exterior work removing more silicon - you can see from these two shots of the before and after - I managed to find a couple of plastic tools from Lowes that work really well at removing the old silicon and just need a sharp box cutter blade to carefully remove the final remnants - then a wipe over with goo off - a wipe with a dry towel and then a final wipe with pre-paint.
I also started to take a look at some rear damage that had been badly repaired. It sort of all came away in my hands as I started cleaning it so time for the aluminum mesh and the bondo - it's totally non-structural. I called into the local automotive paint shop to get some paint - the old girl is painted with a Dupont Imron paint but when I gave the guy the code he says that there are 3 alternatives and he didn't have much of a clue - so I may have to go to Vegas to get someone to mix me some. The stripes are green and gold but whilst the green cleans up and polishes really nicely, as soon as you touch the gold with any sort of abrasive paste it dulls and turns very dark - so I have a friend who does vinyl signs and he is going to do me some new gold stripes to match what was originally paint.
Whilst I was cleaning up the aluminum strips I removed the drip strip from the top edge - this is similar to the standard vinyl insert that goes into the channel but has a moulded drip channel that encourages rain water to run lengthways - called into our local RV store and went through all their books such as Coast to see if they sold it but I appear to be out of luck - will have to keep searching Ebay for some New Old Stock or may try Quartzite in January.
I did some more woodwork restoration and I know I keep going on about this Howard Restor-A-Finish but I am so happy with it - if I had any money left I'd buy shares in the company LOL
See that awful wood finish above - now check out the after shot.
Just before we started the plumbing, I did some more cleaning and you can see the sort of thing that accumulates after 25 years - this is the fan from the range hood - yeuch!
Lastly, the rear camera was not working so after pulling out the monitor which was working just fine, I removed the old camera - it's a tube model, black & white of course. Anyway, turns out the tube has gone and so I think I am going to have to go to a modern camera system unless I can find another camera from somewhere. Highly unlikely I know but I'd like to keep it for originality. If I can't source one then I may modify the housing and put a modern camera in the old camera shell.
So my help arrived and we could make a start on the plumbing. We had already replaced the bathroom sink and tub faucets and fitted braided hoses and as the run from bathroom to kitchen was a straight run, I decided to use 1/2" 'L grade' copper for reliability and reduced cost - it saved a couple of shark Ts and 90s. So we measured and built those, all solder joints and they are now in place just needing to be connected in the kitchen to the new PEX that will replace the gray pipwork.
Rather than try and remove the old fittings from the water box from inside, it was a lot easier to cut the old pipes and unscrew the box and then clean up the hole for refitting later. Rather than using numerous 90s to route the pipes, we are going to use braided hoses far easier and it reduces a lot of the stress on the pipework.
In this phot you can also see how the Monaco was constructed - ply inner wall, 1.5" of styrofoam, another 1/8" ply and then the fiberglass wall is hung over it and fixed with those aluminum strips.
The new pipes are now in and we will finish the plumbing tomorrow.
I haven't shown this before, but when I bought the Monaco, a previous owner had pulled out the old R12 AC system in it's entirety. The shop that did the initial repair work to get her going, built this new AC system - brand new compressor, new custom pipes and a high efficiency condensor. The fans were an absoulute bargain from Ebay - two variable speed fans from a Ford Focus - $30 brand new!
We still have to charge it up and put in a relay for those fans but we should have some cool dash air soon.
That's it for today - hopefully my new Coleman roof AC fans should arrive tomorrow but either way, I have some more plumbing to do and might get around to some bondo too
* This post was
edited 11/03/09 11:52pm by stevelv *
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Works2RV
Summerville, SC, USA
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Joined: 04/07/2004
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Morning!
Some interesting things about what you are finding - our Beaver has the same camera system but no one ( I have found ) supports it any longer, the Vidicon tube might be available - I'll do some looking.
The drip edge you are looking for - should you find a source - Please point me to it as I have been looking for that profile myself - need about 100'. Surprising it is no longer used - would be a big help in preventing black streaking.
Anyhow - your doin' great - my only question is do you sleep?? You sure get a lot more done than I ever can - 20 min. job turns into all day for me 
Buck
One other thing - as I remove anything outside I am replacing all the fasteners with marine grade stainless - fyi.
* This post was
edited 11/04/09 04:51am by Works2RV *
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Daveinet
il
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Joined: 10/29/2003
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Don't bother trying to find a tube camera. Modern CCD cameras are so much better. Their ability to handle low light or high contrast is much better than the old tube cameras. You want to look for a CCD camera, rather than a CMOS. CCD tends to be much sharper image and more accurate on color. I realize right now you are still using a tube monitor, but count on that failing sometime. You are trying to fix everything right, modernizing the design, no reason to not modernize the camera. The same case shouldn't matter as long as it looks factory.
Dave
FMCA F298817
'83 Revcon Prince 31' FWD
502 w/Howell/Edelbrock MPFI, Thorley's & Magnaflows,
Koni FSD, Class A built for gear heads 
??????
Revconeers Forum
There is nothing compassionate about taking someone elses money and giving to the poor.
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SGTJOE
Utah
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Joined: 01/12/2006
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If I may offer a suggestion, use fiberglass instead of bondo. On my mh the previous owner had used bondo where there was damage on the sidewall. A few years ago in Yuma there was a earthquake that caused some cracks in the repair area. When the repair shop started working on it they found someone had used bondo to fill in between the replacement section.
2001 Trade Winds 7390
Toad 03 Grand Am
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