We interrupt our regularly scheduled posting for, yes, the repair of our leak

Jan and I are lucky to have already visited Yellowstone many, many times, otherwise this unplanned event would have frustrated us even more than just the problem.  I left you with discovering a leak while sitting outside, turned out it must have been leaking for awhile and it was the accumulated water inside that was making its way outside.  But, lucky for us not too long, as we could not discern any damage from the water.

Some background first.  Our coach has 4 slide outs, with one of them containing our galley.  The manufacturer, in fact all manufacturers have to design a system to allow wiring, gas lines, heating lines, water supply hoses, and water drain hoses to move in and out with the movement of the slide.  Most, like ours, use a flexible piping with a trolley that moves back and forth to accommodate the approximately 20" of movement.  As our coach is approaching its 11th year, that represents a LOT of in and out movement to wear on those connections.  I am active on several forums that mostly pertain to Monaco built coaches, especially since the brand is kind of a long lost child now, with the original Monaco long since out of business, and many people have experienced this issue. 

A few folks that have dealt with this problem before me have modified the hose used for the drain and I thought their ideas had merit.  Yes, our leak was from the large 1 1/2" flexible PVC (spa hose) hose that takes the drain water from our double sink.

And, of course, this would actually have been a fairly easy project except for the accessibility. Now this was discovered in West Yellowstone, a booming town of about 1300, so we had little hope of getting the parts we needed there, but I did give it a shot at the local hardware store, no dice.  After a few calls we thought we found what we needed in Bozeman, the nearest large town a mere 90 miles away:-)

Jan, aka the Diesel Mechanic,
with her small hands, releasing the tambour door to give us access

With the door out of the way
you can see the myriad number of wires and hoses
and especially the large white drain hose,
the culprit

Sure enough it wasn't hard to find our leak, always a good thing.

A good view of the cracked hose

So after measuring, contemplating, and planning our repair, we made a list and took off for Bozeman.  Initially we thought we could get up there, get the parts, and then race back to do the repair.  It didn't take too long to realize that wasn't going to happen, so we slowed down and decided to do a couple more errands and have lunch in the "big" city.  We would tackle the repair first thing the next morning.

The crux of our modification was going to be a replacement of the glued in 1 1/2" flexible PVC pipe with a 1" piece of flexible PVC, still a tough hose, but instead of glued fittings, we wanted to use barbed fittings that, if it ever happened again, we could easily replace the hose.  Also, we figure since this line only drains our sink, we wouldn't experience any problem reducing the size by 1/2".

The bad hose

Our modification

Our new fitting installed in the bottom

And at the top

I will mention this all looks simple, but with the access so poor, each task took way more time than expected.  

A beached whale we found,
oh, that's me, trying to get pipe dope that goes everywhere off:)

There is a trolley that the mass of hoses move along with that was challenging to remove and especially tough to get back in place with proper support for our new hose.

We put 2 hose clamps on each fitting for peace of mind

The trolley.
It has 4 connections which fought us one by one

We were successful, and we feel confident this repair is superior to the original system that Monaco installed.

Repair all done except for the wire ties to hold
everything together

The tambour door gave us a go also

But all is in, leak tested, and we only lost 2 days in the park:-(  Luckily we are going to be in the area for another 2 weeks, and it gave me a little extra time to accumulate items for my new hobby.......

Bert said all in all he liked having us around