Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Leak

Now lest you think we have escaped all problems, we have a leak.  Actually we have a leak that we've had for some time getting worse.  3 of our 4 slide outs and the generator slide out operate hydraulically, and the pump, reservoir, and control unit are located underneath our entry step.  It has had a little drip for awhile, but each time we park on a  concrete surface like we did in Moab, we are noticing the leak is increasing.  So the diesel mechanic crawled under when we got to Durango and tried to tighten the fitting, but was rewarded with a faceful of ATF, automatic transmission fluid, that is used in the system.  Not good!  It is too tight for me to get up under there.  Fortunately a friend of mine with a similar coach inquired as to whether or not I had removed the storage compartment in the step because as far as he knew it would gain access to the fitting.  Duh, feeling kind of stupid I did that and boom there it is!  Only the problem appears to be a bad fitting on the end of one of the hydraulic hoses.  No big deal I think, but I found out calling around that the hydraulic repair people want to replace the entire hose.  That wouldn't be a problem if I knew where it went and could get to it.  Right now it disappears into a bundle of about 25 different hoses and goes who knows where!  I call the manufacturer who surely knows where it goes, and find out.........no they don't know either!  Call a big service facility and.......they don't know either.  I finally found a repair guy who is willing to put on a new end as long as the hose is okay.  He is supposed to be here tomorrow and hopefully he can quickly repair the fitting and we'll be all set.

 We took a ride up to Silverton to find out that it is pretty dead with the end of the season coming up.  Shops are closing as winter approaches, in fact, they expect snow on Thursday-Friday above the 9000' level which easily includes the pass into Silverton.  We spied a dirt road south of town that we had somehow missed all these years so off we went, figured it would give us a different view of Silverton.  Looked a bit rough but up we went.
Up the shelf road 
It got very, very steep and very rough in about a mile so we called it quits.  It was a dead end road anyway, but we did get a different view of Silverton and the valley from the other, south side.
The mining town of Silverton
350-400 full time residents

Looking towards the Million Dollar Highway
towards Ouray
So down we came back to town.
Yeehaaa
We drove back to Durango, but had to stop in and see Lake Havilland on our way.  Beautiful and quiet now with the summer gone.
Gorgeous

Quiet
We then took a drive up to an overlook high above Durango cause if you remember it was smoke filled when we were here in June.  It was beautiful, but a bit hazy, always something, huh?  We putzed around here and there and came back to spend a quiet day enjoying the beautiful weather.
Posted by at

2 comments:

Mr. History said...

Cloud William,

To properly replace the end fitting it must be skived on to the hose which is usually done in a press or using a Ridgid type hydraulic vice. You have to put a solid piece on the inside of the hose so it doesn't collapse from the pressure coming from the fitting. Once the hose casing is in the fitting you can then crush the end around the hose. Takes a few moments in the proper machine but nearly impossible to do it by hand. An alternative would be to put a junction down stream, male/ female fittings that screw on then take the hose that attaches to pump or whatever that is specific to the coach. They make a variety of screw mount fittings, for different hoses just not all of them will mate to your pump/actuator. Having old construction equipment we got pretty good at ferreting out stuff like this. Most towns will have a Parker store which specializes in such things.

October 10, 2012 at 9:01 PM
Bill said...

Thank you Mr. History. I understand the challenges involved doing this in the field. The problem with this specific instance is I have no idea where this particular hose goes, and can't seem to find out. If it comes down to that, all the hose bundles that run the entire length of the coach will need to be opened up and that individual hose will need to be tracked down to it's end. Which may well have to be done if this guy or someone else cannot deal with the end while on the coach. He did mention some kind of splice, I guess what you are referring to. Hopefully later this morning I will have some better info.

October 11, 2012 at 8:31 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)