ok-rver

Working on air leak in the rear driver side air bag circuit. While monitoring the pressure in one of the air bags, I had a few minutes to attack the foam inside the wheel well covers. Used my Ryobi Oscillating saw with the blade turned 90 degs. The non-serrated side of the blade cut thru the foam pretty easy. Removed excess foam and left foam that was at the interface between the wheel cover and the forward and rear bulkheads/compartments. In about 20 minutes, I had the wheel well cover up and had very good access to airbag top fittings and the hoses running to the tees at the frame rail. Picked up 8 new DOT 1/4" MNPT to 1/4" tubing and 20 foot of hose on the way home from storage. Also great access to the top of the shocks. As it will be rare that I have to get into these compartments, I will reinstall the screws. I have had the single screw into the steel frame shear the head off when trying to remove. I removed the two screws into the fiberglass of the cover. Will wire brush and PB the screws in the metal just incase they have to be removed at some time. Looking at front compartments, they do not look that easy to open. Will look at again but think the door and Forward Electrical Compartment overlap the front wheel well covers .

As the OP, I also am thankful for the pictures of your modification. Will start accumulating the parts and schedule time to get it installed. Our MH has hydraulic leveling so I could tilt using one rear jack. With a nominal 4" above the bottom of the fill nozzle, 2" of tilt reduces the air space in half with an additional 13 gal in tank. If driving more than 100 miles b4 storing, about 12 gal consumed, I would tilt and fill fuller. Anyone have a measurement of were the stand pipe to supply engine fuel is above the bottom of tank? A couple of inches up and you have lost 12 gal of usable capacity. Also read were someone extended their generator tube further into the tank. A quick look at the top of my tank and I thought the tubes were welded in place. Wonder if I missed something. Max amount of fuel we have pumped into tank has been around 60 gal. I had tried to start generator at this level and it started but did not continue running. It was early after we purchased the MH and I thought fuel level was below generator pipe. Now I prime b4 starting as the generator starts and runs better. Not sure if this would have allowed it to run. I would like to know at what full level the generator actually starts sucking air.

Probably most of the mid 2000 and maybe latter MHs have a nominal 100 gallon diesel tank that is the full width of the chassis and can be filled from both sides. My tank has around 2" diameter threaded caps at each side that screw on to a short metal tube. A hose is then used to connect to the boss on the tapered side of the tank. There is only 1" of rise between the entrance to the tank and the end of the fill tube. An Autodiesel pump nozzle will not stay in the fill tube so you have to hold it thru all 60 or so gallons of pumping. Usually the nozzle will shutoff just after the diesel enters into the tube. Occasionally, the nozzle does not shutoff until a small amount of diesel over flows. Has anyone found a hose that can replace the straight section and would curve the outside tube up a bit to have a better chance of the nozzle shutting off? I measured my tank several months ago to get an idea of capacity. There have been a few times when it has been filled at an angle and more went in than would have been expected by the gage reading. In the diagram attached, the calculations show that each inch of height in the tank is about 6.5 gallons. Some of the slopes at filling stations would have the MH 2" to 3" tilted away from the fill side which might account for the extra 15 or so gallons. There has also been discussion about leaving a reserve air space above the liquid level. Looks like maybe 18% capacity above when filled to the bottom of the neck.

Found all the parts I need

quick update. after over 3,000 miles and 3 months, monitor still working great. monitor is on most of the time so tanks and house electrical can be monitored. I do get occasional flashes in the monitor which is probably coming from the Aladdin system. While there is other info within the system that the Aladdin does not display and it could be rearranging for more usable info on the pages, I am very pleased with the $50 addition to the system.

2004 HR Scepter RR8S side radiator chassis with ISC. Noticed coolant on storage bay floor a few days ago. Found out that the threaded/barb fitting that run from the return radiator pipe up to the radiator fill reservoir is leaking at the thread. I thought it might be the hose fitting but tightened it up and it is seeping at the thread. Hose measures about 1.6" out side so a pretty big fitting. Getting a wrench on this is not going to be easy. I will be changing ira Posted accidentally. I will be changing the air cleaner and having it out will give me much more room. This is pretty close to the low point in the system and pulling the hose will mean most all of the coolant will have to be drained. Any one have to tighten the fitting? May have to buy a deep socket to get on all 6 points to turn the fitting.

blue ox baseplate installed, Hopkins light kit. Picked up blue ox Patriot II brake but no breakaway switch. Delivered and will install over next couple of days. getting close to hooking up and first pull. Roadmaster Bright-Lite module on MH when we purchased that I will have to trouble shot.

Thanks for all the replies. The picture was from a salvage yard take out engine and this might be a replacement fuel pump, never been run as it has the factory plugs in ports. Cumin of Tulsa replaced the accumulator on my fuel injection a little over a month ago. They ran the engine from a 5 gallon bucket with fluorescent die to check the injectors which were good and then checked the pump and found the leak at the accumulator. Guessing they used the pump for flow thru from the bucket. Cummins offered to look and see if it was something they missed at no cost. Problem is if a new issue, it's $100s per hour. I will check tightness myself and see what's up. My leak is more than a few drops.

Looking up from under the passenger side behind the rear wheels and I see this metal housing that looks like it might be a old style permanent housing filter. The housing had liquid on it that could be diesel or maybe ATF. Have not pulled the rear bedroom access panels off to get to it. The attached picture is of a pulled engine without hoses. What appears to be the housing is in the center of the picture with 3 hose fittings on it's top, the housing with electrical connection and nut for tightening at the bottom. What am I looking at and can it be tightened or a new gasket installed? It is located above the starter at the flywheel end of the engine.

Thanks for the clarification.

Van, Most of what I have gleamed from discussions here and on IRV2 have been from your posts. I go back to one of the posts were u talked about sliding a 2" tube into the receiver hitch and setting the MH to swaying by push/pulling on the bar. My recollection of the post was that there was visible movement of the H frame. Have I misunderstood how the H frames were reacting to this side to side movement? You used "twist" in the H frame in your above comment. My thoughts have been that there was a combination of rotation and side to side movement that was affecting the alignment of the H frames and the MH chassis. I am very interested in your comments.

Vito - can you provide a link too were they are moving the generator forward.

The air bags on the rear of our MH, sleeve type, have the internal metal cylinder that causes the bag to roll as the bag collapses. The cylinder is small enough to allow the bag to rolls inside. At ride height, maybe 1/3 of the bag is in contact with the sleeve. I do not believe it contributes any shear strength to resist movement until a lot of sideways movement. The front bags are the two chamber bellows type. No internal sleeve. Maybe not an exact comparison, but think of 4 balloons at each corner supporting a board. Even if the balloons were connected (glued) to the support and board so they did not roll, it would simply float as a sideways load was applied to the board. With regards to handling improving when at published road height, this positions the panhard rod horizontal. Think of a pendulum on a clock. It only goes up from the vertical position. If the panhard rod is not horizontal, it pushes the H frame away as it comes up to horizontal, pulls the H frame as it goes away from the current ride height position. When horizontal, there is very little initial movement. This might have been part of the wandering you experience. Been thinking about how the H frame reacts to bumps as that effects the functioning of the panhard rod. The trailing arms keep the vertical bracket at the axle pretty much vertical (parallel linkage) which means the H frame stays pretty much horizontal. Bushings distort so not a perfect parallel movement. Originally I though the front of the H frame would compress and then the rear as the tires hit a bump. Hitting a bump may cause a horizontal force from the wheel into the H frame pushing it backwards. This might cause the rear set of air bags to compress and fronts to extend. I pulled an old GoPro camera off the shelf last week and charged the batteries. Looking at maybe mounting it under the coach and recording the H frame movement.

Most of us with Roadmaster RR8R or RR8S chassises experience a bit of wandering of our MH direction from outside influences like wind, truck air buffeting and G-forces on long radius curves. There is a lot of verbal discussion on the forums about what is going on. Several gentlemen that have researched this and come up with physical devices to minimize this wandering have a very good understanding on what is going on with the relationship of the H-frame and the Roadmaster chassis. I understand their explanations but when I read thru many responses to their posts, I hear comments that show some are not understanding the engineering principles. I have created a few simple sketches that I hope will give some insight into what I interpret as happening. A review of the equipment. Front and rear H frames are very similar but I will discuss mostly the front. The H-frames are actually a double crossmember “H”. The vertical center line on an “H” is doubled and these run front to back on the chassis and will be referred to as H frame rails, as they run parallel to the rails of the chassis frame. The up down on an “H” will be referred to as H frame crossmembers, as they run across/perpendicular to the chassis frame at the front and rear of the H frame. Each corner of the H frame has an airbag and shock absorber. These air bags have very little horizontal stability. They are a fiber reenforced rubber tube with closed ends that supports the chassis frame using air pressure above the H frame. The front axle is bolted to the bottom center of the H frame. Typical front axle support about 10,000 lbs. Each of the 4 front airbags therefore support around 2,500 lbs. If the motor home goes around a long curve at about 0.25 Gs, a pretty easy turn, the front wheels carry 1/3 of the total MH weight and would experience 1/3 of 0.25 G force acting on 30k lbs MH weight with about 2,500 lbs of side force. The 4 airbags with no resistance to sideways force would be all over the place. The designers of the Roadmaster chassis provided two means to try and hold the H frame in place. The first are driver and passenger side pairs of trailing arms (5’ long square tubes with bushings/steel eyes at each end) that keep the H frame/axle pretty much perpendicular to the chassis. Each of the tubes runs parallel to the other, about 12” between them vertically on each side of the H frame. They are anchored to the chassis at the front and to a vertical post very close to the axle on the H frame. On the front axle when braking, a rotational force is transmitted into the axle, to the H frame and to the vertical post. One of the trailing arms will be in tension and the other in compression to resist the axle from winding up. The rear trailing arms are also responsible for the differential twisting during acceleration. Bushings will deform during these loads. The amount could be in the range of 1/64”. The bushing are an outer and inner steel sleeve with a flexible material, maybe polyurethane, in between. I used a pry bar to put about a 100 lbs side load on a trailing arm and the bushing allowed the arm moved sideways a lot. It would not take very much force at the end of a 5’ long arm to get the urethane to deform and the arm to rotate. These trailing arms allow the H frame to swing side to side, but still be perpendicular to the chassis. The designers also added a Panhard rod that connects, on my MH, from the top of the driver side rail of the H frame across the frame to the bottom of the passenger side frame rail of the chassis, perpendicular to the chassis, level to the ground when the chassis is at ride height. The same bushings used in the trailing arms are use in the ends of the Panhard rod to allow movement of the H frame vertically. The Panhard rod is about 4 ft long. With the Panhard rod mostly level to the ground at normal road height, the Panhard rod will cause the H frame to move towards the passenger chassis rail as the H frame moves up or down with respect to the chassis frame. With a 3” up or down movement of the H frame, the pivot point of the Panhard rod would be less than 1/8” closer to the passenger side chassis frame rail. My MH H-frame is about 60” long. The axle is in the center front to back and the Panhard rod is half way between the axle and the rear of the H frame. Back to our side load created by the curve, 2,500 lbs is a a lot of force. The force acting of the axle and the force resisting thru the Panhard rod are about 15” apart. Because there is the 15” between them, a circular moment is created and the H frame rotates until components in the suspension system can pick up these loads. The bushings in the trailing arms as they rotate to the side will eventually pick up some load. It would have been great if there had been a Panhard rod mounted front and back of the axle to equally pick up load, no rotation of the H frame with respect to the chassis. Many have contributed to the design of the Watts linkage and X-braces that are being sold to minimize the rotation of the H frame. Going to the rear suspension were the trailing arms are behind the differential with minimal equipment in-between the arms, the addition of X-braces does a very good job of minimizing the H frame rotation. Each member of the X-brace works mostly in tension to keep the trailing arm that it is attached to it at a right angle to the differential. This side load from driving around the curve (twice the front value) is transmitted along the trailing arm and is resisted by the bushing at each the end of the arm. The bushings give so not all the movement of the rear H frame is eliminated with the X-braces. It does minimize the swinging side to side of the differential housing/H-frame while under load. Not as good as a PanHard rod front and rear but probably reduces the rotational movement in the 80% range. The deflection in the bushings is what gives that 20% movement compared to the original with out X-braces movement. Many have stated that adding a watts linkage to the rear H frame helps stabilize the H frame a bit more than just the X-braces. Back to the front H frame, with the designers using most of the available space, the generator is mounted in-between the front trailing arms. Maybe very short X-braces could be install and not hit the equipment but they would not be very efficient. On some of the watts linkage kits, the watts lever is mounted to brackets off the hydraulic jack(s) attached to the chassis frame and the rods connect to the rear crossmember of the H-frame. The distance from the Panhard rod to the rear of the H-frame is around 15”. The load the watts linkage would see in our turn is equal to the side load generated by the tires, 2,500 lbs. The Panhard rod load has twice the load (5,000 lbs) generated by the tires. Even though the bushings in the Panhard rod give as well as the watts linkage gives some, there is much less rotation than the original (no watts linkage) suspension had. Those that have install a watts linkage in this rear position are very pleased with the improvement in steering/tracking of their MH. The pivot point on the lever at the center of the watts linkage moves vertically by the design of the linkage. A small amount of rotation of the H frame would occur when large bumps cause the axle/H frame to move up, caused by the watts going up straight and side deflection from the panhard rod. Under normal running down the road situations, the very slight side motion would not affect the steering. On my 2004 HR Scepter, the rear of the generator frame is a couple of inches in front of the front crossmember of the H frame. The forward air tank support frame is a couple of inches behind the front crossmember of the H frame. Around 6” of total clearance. A chassis frame crossmember is almost directly above the front H frame crossmember. A mock up has been with an 90% angle clamped to the bottom side of this chassis crossmember that allowed a piece of card board to be positioned vertically down from the angle to just in front to the H frame. The vertical plate would need to be about 14” tall. Mounting at this forward position, the watts linkage would be 45” from the Panhard rod. The side load at the front mounted watts linkage would be 1/3 of the load generated by the tires. The Panhard rod would see 2/3 of the load generated by the tires. If the watts linage deformed under load the same amount as the rear mounted watts linkage, the rotation of the H frame would be 1/3 of the rear mount rod due to the longer lever arm. As the front mounted load is much smaller, the actual deflection of the watts linkage would be even less. This is the direction I am moving to stabilize my front suspension. The correct offsets for mounting the watts linkage lever and brackets are being researched. So now to the sketches. Top view of H frame, axle, tires, chassis frame, front of MH to left. Solid line circle represent the bottom of the airbag mounted on the corners of the H frame. Dashed circles are the top of the airbag mounted to brackets on the chassis frame. Size difference is only so they can be seen when concentric in the non-rotated sketch. Chassis frame shown in blue. The first of the sketches has just trailing arms shown in the straight position. Second sketch with a side load applied that has pushed the H frame down in the sketch. No rotation of the H frame as this is a parallel linkage. The two trailing arms rotate with the bushings distorting at each end. The second pair of sketches has a Panhard rod across the H frame in orange. First sketch with everything aligned. Second sketch with a couple of degrees of rotation of the H frame due to a side load. The rotation center for the H frame was at the H frame mounted end of the Panhard rod. Note that trailing arms are not shown. This would have changed some of the rotation and the center point. Sketch is simple so the trailing arms were left out. The effects of the trailing arms on keeping the axle perpendicular to the frame is not simple. Additionally, the steering gear (not shown) is affixed to the frame and the axle end of the drag link is moving with the H frame. As the center of gravity is very high on out MHs, this causes the body to roll and more movement between the H frame and chassis. This is all pretty complex. Without the rear MonacoWatts X-bars, I might have sold my MH as it required extreme concentration to drive. I have over 3,500 miles since the X-bar install and I am much more comfortable with the handling. I am sure with Mike’s help, I will make another major reduction in the wandering of my MH with a front watts linkage. I am new to MHs but have 50 years of mechanical design experience. This explanation is simplified as a starting basis for a discussion. When I started this search for better handling, I read thru over 80 pages on one discussion on IRV2 about watts linkage and X-braces. About 60% of the posts were “Now I understand” or completely off topic. I am hoping that comments like those “just to be comments” will not be included in this discussion so that those looking for technical details have a good resource. I would hope that things I have stated that are wrong, confusing or right will be discussed. Just my thoughts on how all this works.

My leak down of one jack was not as fast as yours, maybe an inch overnight. No leaking fluid externally so back thru the solenoid valve. Does not appear to be manual releases on my valve body. System is PowerGear. We have owned the coach for 4 months. About a month ago, I siphoned out most of the ATF in the reservoir and pulled the drain plug with only a cup or so of fluid remaining. Much less of a mess. Refiled. No longer leaking down over night. I am thinking that replacing the 15 year old fluid with new may have helped with better lubing/cleaning of the orings and valve seats. Old fluid looked OK. $30 for 2 gallons of ATF. Your cylinder rods, just above the pads, look pretty dirty. That can be tuff on the seals. WD40 can be a good cleaning fluid. Some PowerGear jacks, maybe others, have grease zerks at the cylinder end. My jacks were slow to retract or would not come up fully. A couple of squirts of grease 45 days ago and about 40 cycles with full retraction. This last week, two were a bit slow. Will lube this week. PG recommends lube ever 25 to 30 cycles.

I would have thought this had been discussed but could not find as a topic. I have bumped into the side to side adjust shower control valve a couple of times and when moved left, pretty much scalded myself. Have not measured water temp but expect it is over 120 deg F. Would like to leave water heater settings as is to have the hot reserve of water. Water heater has rear access thru rear closet so I would be able to add adjustable mixing valve to rear in the area of the bypass valve for winterizing. Would set around 110 for all water so wife has water at a temp she likes for rinsing dishes. I have read a few posts on getting behind the shower enclosure by going under the sink and thru the side wall of the kitchen slide. This would be good to have full temp water at the kitchen sink but it is very difficult to get thru the access panel. Wondering what others have done. Also wondering if anyone has installed a hot water loop back to the main water tank to allow flow of water in the hot line to return until hot gets to the kitchen sink. A lot of water goes into the gray water tank to get hot water out the faucet.

New to us MH, 2004 HR Scepter. The steps were held up with a bungee cord when we checked out the MH. Condition of purchase was that steps worked correctly. Little did I know, there is more to steps than just the motor moving the steps in and out. 6 of the 12 bolts had been replaced with 5/16" bolts and double nutted to keep every thing in place and one additional bolt thread was bunged up and not usable. Lippert sells the shoulder bolt, flanged bushing, washer, nut for $17 an assembly. over a $100 for parts seemed a little expensive. Measured shoulder bolt and pretty much exact replacement available. Washer has 0.4" hole and is .025" thick. Nominal washer is around 0.05" thick. Flanged bushing available in .25 or .5 length. Original bushing in step is only .312" long. Flanged nuts available. I bought 10 of the .5" long bushings, 8 shoulder bolts, and way too many washers and flanged nuts for $60 delivered from McMaster-Carr. Needed to come up with a way to cut the bushings to .312" OAL. Digging thru my junk box I came up with a packet of 3/8" anchor bolts. Slide flanged end of bushing on first then washer and nut. Nice thing about these anchor bolts is there is a taper at the transition from the thread to the wedging part that the bushing would just slide up on. Chucked in drill, tightened the nut just a bit. Added spacer to the side of a hack saw blade to cut the bushing to length while spinning with the drill. This can be dangerous if the blade grabs and starts spinning around so I am not recommending you do it this way. If you do cut bushings off, find a safe way. Cleaned up cut end of bushing by pulling down a mill file. First pic shows bushing, washer and nut on the anchor bolt chucked in drill just before the bushing was cut into 2 pieces. A shoulder bolt, washer and cut to length bushing are next to it. It is best for a bushing to only rotate against a smooth surface, like the shoulder bolt inside the bushing. The inside of the holes in the step frame are not very smooth and a bit oversize so looked for a way to expand the bushing to fit a bit tighter in the hole. Found a 3/8" diameter punch with a nice taper. In the picture, the bushing (flange exposed) is installed thru the hole in the step linkage. The shinny cylinder is a deep socket that just fit on the the punch. Set the end of the socket on concrete, slide all the surfaces together, whack the punch a couple of times with a hammer and the taper on the punch expands the end of the bushing opposite the flange. The flange on the bushing is used to space between the step frame members. The length of the combined bushing and washer has to be less than the .375" bolt shoulder length so that when the nut is pulled up tight, the bushing and frame member can swivel. My measurements showed .04" clearance with the factory parts. The thicker washer has taken up .03" of this. Keeping this clean and lubed will be important. At .312" OAL, the sleeve that fits into the .25" thick linkage is .25" long (.312 OAL minus .062" length of the flange) so it's not just cutting the bushing shorter. The original thinner washers are all dished out, maybe from the frame twisting on loose bolts. This is one of the reasons I went with thicker washers. One of my original bolts did not have a nut, the thread was just hung up in the hole and might have contributed to a nasty fall if it had slipped out. Several of the nuts on "good" bolts were loose and over of time probably would have come off. McMaster had grade 5 and grade 8 shoulder bolts. I bought the G8. The normal bolt was out of stock and McM recommended a replacement that was available. The difference is that these shoulder bolts have a Nylock insert that should keep the nut from backing off. Maybe $.50 more expensive. WD40 has a no drip grease in an aerosol can. I used this as I was assembling parts. If you are local to Tulsa, I have nuts and washers to spare. A bushing and shoulder bolt are under $7 plus shipping. Might even throw in a anchor bolt if you can come up with a safe way to cut the bushing to length. I can send part numbers if you send me a PM. My wife never calls me cheap but does say I sometimes have difficultly letting go of money. I now have a few spares for the future, learned a few things, feel good about taking on a project and getting it resolved, and saved a few buck. Step is now pretty solid without the movement from the undersize bolts and no bushings. Mission accomplished.

New to MH. No solar on roof, 2004 HR Scepter, 40 ft diesel. On the 10 or so trips we have taken, about half have been parked in the shade. Installed solar on sailboat so pretty familiar with the equipment. some of the boats we traveled with could tilt panels to get best orientation or some even had panels on tilt/rotation mounts to manually track the sun. They typically got 20 % to 40% more output, much closer to the rated wattage of their panels. We plane to spend Jan/Feb/Mar on the Gulf coast of Texas. RV park does not have big trees. Electricity is $0.14 a kilowatt. Been told $50 electric bills are typical. If you had enough solar, you might provide half of that during the day with enough panels. Does anyone have ground mounted panels and do you track the sun during the day? Panels are getting pretty inexpensive and thinking about maybe building slide in rack in basement to hold 2 or 3 200 watt panels. Last winter was brutal with the power outages. Having the solar panels might have reduced the need to run generator. Not sure how must boondocking with out shore power we will do in the future. Just a mental thought process as it probably does not make economic sense.

Picked up Roadmaster from Jim. a day later I picked up a Blue Ox tow bar. Amazon had a CR-V baseplate at half price and should be here next week. Still looking for a brake system. Also looking for input as to how to wire in the tail lights. Not real wild about cutting the factory wires and splicing in diodes. If I drill holes and install additional lights in the the rear housings, the housings could be replaced if next owner not happy about the extra light bulbs. wondering what others have done.

My headlight switch on 2004 HR Scepter gets very warm to the touch. Probably in the dimmer resistor for the dash lights. Headlight circuits include relays for high and low so minimum current. Do others notice the heat? Do you have a part number for a replacement switch?

Articles/Technical papers/ a closer look... will get you to his PDF that has all of the post combined.

Bob Nodine has a very good, detailed method to replace the Nason pressure switch with a reliable spst, (on/off), switch and relay. When mine started acting up a week ago, I came very close to using his method but I did not feel I had the time to get it working. REV wanted $140 plus shipping for the switch. Airline Hydraulics had the part for under $45 with $22 shipping (ouch, no free Prime). Received part in 3 days. A brief discussion of how I replaced mine in a 2004 HR Scepter. About 8 screws around the perimeter of my side console plastic filler plate with the air switch, Allison pad and other switches. Two of the three screws the cup holder were holding the plate down. There is a trim ring on the cup holder that pops off and gives access to the screw. The plate would only come up an inch or so. Pulled the 5 or so screws holding the side console to the wall of the motorhome. It turns out the Nason connector was the short wire. Once it was disconnected, the console tilted away from the wall. Remove the air switch knob and lock nut, unscrewed the very long bolts that held the valve to the plate and the valve was accessible. Unscrewed the pressure switch (very tight) and screwed in the new one with thread lube. bolted back together and everything worked correctly. Less than an hour of time. New switch is slightly different than the old. Failure mode was as Bob and others have discussed. . The NC contact with out air showed open. Now that I have a failed switch, I will cut off the wiring harness and maybe pick up the parts needed to make up Bob's system. Or if this one lasts the 18 years the first one did, I will never replace it.

Just purchased 2011 CR-V. Looking for used base plates and any other stuff to tow it. Brake controller, don't really know enough to know what I need. What have you got that will work? Live in Tulsa OK but can travel a bit to pick up

2004 HR Scepter with propane tank mounted across the MH just in front of passenger rear wheels. Solenoid valve with integral manual valve, flare nut connector, 2 stage regulator and hose to black iron pipe for distribution. About a 24" reach in narrow opening between tank and compartment to get to fittings. Cut hole thru plastic in rear compartment in between the structural supports and installed 7" marine access port ($17 on Amazon). Now have pretty good access to fittings. Second picture is thru the access port showing old system with the new tee/valve above (#8 SAE flare and 3/8" tee/valve). Having propane hose made to go from the elbow above tee and to the fill/vent fitting bulkhead plate at outside of compartment. The new tee and fittings will be longer than the original connector and will push regulator to the right about an inch. There is plenty of hose connected to the regulator to push the regulator further away and will install screws into the regulator support plate from below. For those that have connected an external tank, what fitting did you use? The extend-a-stay tee kits have a propane bottle 1"-20 fitting and a 1/4" male flare fitting (probably #6 SAE) with cap. As this will be used for mostly hi-press gas going to a grill or fire ring, I have been thinking about using a 3/8" hi-press quick connect. Would carry a few fittings and would be able to tie in a hose from a bulk tank. Above my propane tank is the iron pipe distribution for the furnace and stove top. I plan to remove the end elbow and replace with a tee to add a Low press fitting for other consumers of propane. I have never hooked up a bulk tank and looking for input as too if the propane supplier furnished the hose and what fitting does it have. Thanks

2004 HR ISC with LN "DUVAC" alternator. There are several connectors in the battery compartment and one is labeled DUVAC. The MH has a battery bank combiner but it is not like the ones I am seeing in these posts. It is a simple White-Rogers/RBM relay. Purple and white wires connected to the coil terminals. Relay posts connected to both battery banks, one cable is much smaller. Looks to be the original installation. I do not have the finned component shown in the OP pictures. I am not getting charging between the battery banks. The dash combine switch works correctly as I use it when we have been on shore power for some time to boast the start battery. I have jumped 12v to the coil to close relay and see 70 amps going from house to start when on shore power. Was the big boy an option or am I missing something that is not in the battery compartment? I looked at the ML-ACR specs. Does the ACR charge both directions? I would be good if when on shore power the chassis batteries were charged. bright red plastic in picture is lead to my volt meter