Bearings arrived, floor torn apart. I'm debating whether I should Plastigauge the bearings, at least one of them, to confirm I don't have an undersized crank. I don't really see much point in doing them to confirm the exact tolerance, more that I need to make sure that I'm not 0.010" or 0.020" too big vs. what the bearings should be. Maybe I should be more concerned. The Cat experts on one of the Cat groups I'm on say not to bother. And, of course,
@NealRomeoGolf will be pleased to know that the bearings come in genuine yellow Cat boxes.
The water damage, well that was interesting. Before our last trip we found a soft spot in the floor in front of the bathroom where a couple of the tiles started falling through. The tiled area of the floor has two layers of plywood - the main subfloor plywood that the whole RV has, and then a second layer of the same stuff (both about 1/2" thick) to help make sure the tiles don't crack. Add material to prevent warranty claims, of course. When we got the tile torn up and the first layer of plywood up, it was apparent that the second layer around the center of the RV was also rotted through. Pics:
We haven't torn that up yet, but we're looking through sections. We also were (and still are) attempting to pinpoint the source of the leak. When we had the RV at the stop to fix the windshields falling out and find the propane leak (which they successfully found) they said the slide seals looked fine. Well, we do keep the RV outdoors (which we shouldn't but it's our limitation at the moment until the new shop is built) and yesterday was raining. I looked around the slide seals during the rain and, sure enough, found a leak right in the area where we had all the rot. There are also a lot of hoses there so it's very likely a combined root cause of multiple leaks.
Additionally, the big front slide doesn't seem to be going out all the way in the back. I need to look into that and reasons why that could be. More research is required, see below:
That white part shouldn't be visible, that's the slide wall. I don't know if that would necessarily seal out the water, but I can feel cold air coming through, so that's also bad.
While tearing the fridge area apart, we found more fun. The fridge support floor was covered in mold/rot (not surprising). It had insulation on either side, which was also moldy, especially because the fridge is right above the propane heater. This is just a bad design all around. So we're going to fix things and do something unconventional.
The propane heater is getting removed and relocated to the dumpster. We'll also remove the propane fridge, which, while I like the propane function of it in theory, creates a lot of problems between needing vents (which let in cold air and moisture, and rain in some cases) depending on the angle. I'm going to plug up all these holes/vents and add insulation to them. We've found we really hate the propane heater. Not only does it seem to create an environment for mold, but when we've used it to heat the RV at night we have gotten terrible sleep. The unit cycles on and off every time and, while not extremely loud per se, is right where you're sleeping so you hear it. With the heat pumps (remember it has two of them) we can leave the fan to run continuously, and so the compressor kicking on and off isn't too big of a deal. Yes, the heat pumps require electric (either generator or plug-in) but we've found that we essentially always have hook-ups or are running the generator anyway, including while driving down the road. End result: the propane heater is an extra system that we don't use, creates problems, and takes up space that would be better served being used for other functions.
We've removed the propane/electric fridge and we're going to replace it with a residential electric fridge which will be larger and better suited to our needs. I was originally against this idea because I liked the simplicity of propane for boondocking. But we've found we just don't boondock, and if we do, we leave the generator running anyway. Getting to plug up extra vents that are causing problems is a good thing.
Oh, and then the bathroom. Well we never liked the shower, and we had to pull it because of the rotted wood area. So we found a slightly larger residential shower that will still fit and will be a lot nicer.
End result: We didn't want to do this work, but the finished product will be a much nicer and much needed update from the factory. We'll solve some health/safety issues and this will be "ours", ready to go for a long time to come.