moparmaga2
Texas
Senior Member
Joined: 07/18/2006
View Profile
|
What was the brand of the Chinese 19.5 inch tire for $140 a piece if you don't mind my asking.
Where do you purchase these tires? I am assuing you ordered them online and had them shipped to you?
2000 National RV Tropi-Cal 37 ft Double Slide Ford V-10
1994 Toyota Celica on a Master Tow Dolly (40 MPG)
The Moparmaga guide to cheaply living in a RV while attending College
|
SGTJOE
Utah
Senior Member
Joined: 01/12/2006
View Profile
Good Sam RV Club
|
Steve,
Really enjoying this thread. Can't wait for the flooring pictures.
2001 Trade Winds 7390
Toad 03 Grand Am
|
QuietWater
MO
New Member
Joined: 10/15/2009
View Profile
|
This is a great narrative of how to. I recently acquired a 1984 Imperial that is almost identical to yours in construction and interior equipment. I need to do all the things you have done. I am particularly interested in how you replace the cruise control lever. Mine is an add-on as was the standard at that time. I want to update it to a more modern look and function. It works great but it has the wiring from the lever tie-wrapped down the steering column and looks tacky. Thanks for documenting everything you are doing so well. We all appreciate your work. I have to wonder how you manage to do so much in one day. I, like the other poster, can turn a 20 minute project into a whole day or more! BTW the mechanical fuel pump on my MH was replaced with an electric placed in the right front wheel well. It does NOT work well there. Lots of power loss, backfiring, and just plain runs out of gas when on demand. Got to replace the whole thing and start from scratch.
|
stevelv
Living on the island
Senior Member
Joined: 05/24/2006
View Profile
|
This is all I achieved yesterday - today I was going to replace the AC fan but found they had sent me the wrong one grrrr - so I'm just cleaning up the mess from the last 10 days and getting ready for flooring.
The old Cruise Control lever was hanging off and I managed to find another off Ebay for $10. Having cut the wires from the old one, I used the ohmeter to determine which wires had which function - I then removed the old one along with it's chrome stem cover and managed to push the new one onto the stem - a dab of epoxy held it firm.
I ran the wires down the back of the stem, covered them in black heat shrink and it looks pretty neat.
The wires I soldered and covered in miniature heat shrink and tucked them out of the way but I do have a problem 
The original SET function was 'Push to Break' whereas the new one is 'Push to Make' - I have therefore routed an extra wire down to the footwell and will be using 2 relays to provide the same functionality - I need 2 so that the SET button has no effect unless the unit is actually switched on. I'll post an electrical diagram later on.
Here's the nice new one alongside the tatty old one - it was completely broken and as the lever is also the turn signals, having it floppy was very disconcerting.
New one on and it's a perfect fit - it's actually about an inch longer than before which I like for fingertip control of the cruise as well as the turn signals.
RV Park Finder
Ex Fulltimers
Repairing/Restoring 1984 Monaco Regent 36' Gas to restart RVing
DH,DW,Jake and Indie
|
stevelv
Living on the island
Senior Member
Joined: 05/24/2006
View Profile
|
QuietWater
The electric fuelpump has to be close to the tank so that is pushes fuel rather than pulls it - the reason is that if it pulls fuel any distance then it lowers the pressure on the fuel which lowers it's boiling point.
On mine, we wired the new fuel pump to the 'tank' switch on the dash and retained the mechanical pump on the engine. The Tank switch was left over from the 1983 model that had twin fuel tanks but in 1984 they changed to a single tank but didn't change the dash so left a redundant switch. I now have the choice of swithing the electric pump on or off plus there must be an inertia switch mounted on the bulkhead too - so if you have an accident, the inertia switch kills the electric pump which may prevent a serious fire.
|
|
|
QuietWater
MO
New Member
Joined: 10/15/2009
View Profile
|
Thanks, Steve. Man, you were quick to get the pictures up. I truly appreciate it. In regard to the fuel pump, the PO had removed the mechanical and installed the electric. I was not aware of it until I had bought it. In fact, I jumped into this thing way too soon. I was under pressure from the DW to have a MH by Labor Day when we were to meet some friends at the lake. The PO said this was a MH ready to go except for new tires. To make a long story short, if I had inspected this thing like I should have, I would never have bought it. What sold me on it was that the odometer said it only had 26,000 miles on it. I figured it couldn't be in too bad of shape if that was all it was used. Well, it sure must have been rode hard for 26,000 miles because nothing I have found makes me believe that it only has that many miles. BTW, we never did take it to the lake. We took our old Class C Tioga Arrow, instead.
|
stevelv
Living on the island
Senior Member
Joined: 05/24/2006
View Profile
|
LOL
Yes, it's easy to underestimate the amount of work involved in bringing them back to an even usable condition. I'm probably half way through after 11 solid days of work - although a lot of that was my poor planning and the typical 20 minute job that takes all day
Someone asked about the tires and here they are - called Advance and 8R19.5 and are chinese - $140 each delivered from Ebay. These are going on the tag.
Other jobs completed today were to fix a couple of leaks at the water pump and remove the carpet and pad underneath it - it's located under the bed along with dual water tanks and sits on regular carpet so that every time a leak developed it soaked the carpet and caused the floor to start to rot - caught it in time and the floor is now drying out nicely.
Also removed the front AC cover to clean 25 years of dust and debris Also found the source of a very annoying rattle when the compressor kicks in.
I also finished off the shower/tub drain assembly - the old ABS was a different thread from the new stuff from Home Depot so had to remove a piece of ABS using a dremel with a sanding disk so that I could then insert an adaptor into the pipe which I fixed in there using plastic epoxy - I would have used the ABS glue but it wasn't the best fit as I was dremelling at a reverse angle in a 5" high space - it seems watertight now. I also drilled a hole in the floor under the tub drain and siliconed a piece of PEX tube in flush with the floor - if it does leak in the future, water will drain out of this instead of flooding the bathroom.
Tomorrow I have a local tile guy coming to take a look at replacing the countertop tile for me - I'd like to use granite if he's negotiable on price otherwise it'll be a nicer tile that what we currently have.
Started to prep the floor for the laminate but I've noticed that I have domed coach bolts down the floor - didn't think of that  I'm not sure how the laminate will react over the top of them so I'm thinking of grinding the tops off a bit and then using double thinkness underlayment. Thoughts?
|
Azsouth
Arizona
New Member
Joined: 12/09/2008
View Profile
 Offline
|
Hey Steve. Just found your thread this morning and have been enjoying reading about your progress. Looks great. We recently ripped out our carpet and replaced with vinyl tile. We considered the Allure flooring but decided to go with the 12x12 vinyl "stick-on" tiles for various reasons, however, after hearing from many people here on the threads regarding curling, we installed the tiles using a really good vinyl tile adhesive....we did this almost 5 months ago and have had no problems whatsoever. Looks great. What I did want to offer is prep of the floor prior to putting ANY flooring down. We were told to paint the subfloor with Kilz, so we put 2 good coats on before laying the underlayment (1/4 luan from HD). And....a nail gun and compressor are a MUST for this job. Be sure you have ALL the staples out of the subfloor (this took us ages to do!!)but ensured a nice smooth surface for the underlayment. Just in case you want to take a look (and have the time....) here is a link to the pictures of our flooring project.
RV carpet replacement
2001 Rexhall Aerbus 3550 gasser
1983 Jeep CJ7 (Restored) Toad
|
Azsouth
Arizona
New Member
Joined: 12/09/2008
View Profile
Offline
|
Steve,
Another thought re: the carriage bolts...we removed ours prior to doing the flooring. We made a template so we would know the position of the holes after the installment of the underlayment and tile. Once the tile job was complete, we used the template and drilled right through the tile and underlayment (the holes lined up perfectly) and re-installed the carriage bolts. I wouldn't recommend grinding them down and tiling over them...I would be afraid that the tile would be tempted to lift up all around that bolt area.
|
stevelv
Living on the island
Senior Member
Joined: 05/24/2006
View Profile
|
Thanks for that and some great photos!
As the tiles are completely adhesive is the luan floating or have you fixed it to the subfloor?
I did think about tile as they have some very cool designs available now but ended up choosing the 'hicory' wood strips that are floating in that they have a 1/8 gap around the edges which is covered with 1/4 round - this allows the floor to expand and contract with temperature changes - need something to handle our 120 degrees in the summer Gotta love AZ weather.
|
|
|
