Latent Manufacturing Defects

[chasfm11]

People have often asked me why I bother to do my own oil changes. On the MH, it takes a little while to drain the crankcase through the Fumoto valve and while I'm waiting, I'm looking and poking around.

Last Fall, I was examining where a group of hoses came together on the passenger side frame rail. One of them didn't look right. With a flashlight, I looked closer and found a kink that had obviously been there a while. I discovered that the hose lead from the reservoir to the power steering pump, found the size and purchased it from a local hose specialty shop. This past weekend, as a part of my scheduled power steering fluid replacement. I changed that hose.



In this first picture, you can see how severe the bend was and how much of the capacity of the hose was reduced as a result.




In this second picture, you many not be able to see it clearly but there is severe cracking inside of the bend. To my eyes, that cracking goes more than half way through the hose material so it was a breakdown just waiting to happen.

To prevent the problem with the replacement, I routed the hose differently, not trying to cram it inside the frame rail. I then made sure that the hose would not chafe on any of the surrounding hoses or frame, positioning the protective plastic around it carefully.

Our RV is now 8 years old. We've had it 4 years and have put over 30K miles on it. I'm sure that we will have problems that need to be solved but a recent Kwikee step controller failure was the first time where we have not been able to take a planned trip. By watching everything carefully, I'm trying my best to keep those kinds of situations to a minimum.

Charlie

_{Edited to fix URL for photos.}

[chasfm11]

People have often asked me why I bother to do my own oil changes. On the MH, it takes a little while to drain the crankcase through the Fumoto valve and while I'm waiting, I'm looking and poking around.

Last Fall, I was examining where a group of hoses came together on the passenger side frame rail. One of them didn't look right. With a flashlight, I looked closer and found a kink that had obviously been there a while. I discovered that the hose lead from the reservoir to the power steering pump, found the size and purchased it from a local hose specialty shop. This past weekend, as a part of my scheduled power steering fluid replacement. I changed that hose.



In this first picture, you can see how severe the bend was and how much of the capacity of the hose was reduced as a result.




In this second picture, you many not be able to see it clearly but there is severe cracking inside of the bend. To my eyes, that cracking goes more than half way through the hose material so it was a breakdown just waiting to happen.

To prevent the problem with the replacement, I routed the hose differently, not trying to cram it inside the frame rail. I then made sure that the hose would not chafe on any of the surrounding hoses or frame, positioning the protective plastic around it carefully.

Our RV is now 8 years old. We've had it 4 years and have put over 30K miles on it. I'm sure that we will have problems that need to be solved but a recent Kwikee step controller failure was the first time where we have not been able to take a planned trip. By watching everything carefully, I'm trying my best to keep those kinds of situations to a minimum.

Charlie

_{Edited to fix URL for photos.}

[Chief]

Charlie, thanks for the post. Next time I'm under the beast I too shall start looking around a little closer.

[chasfm11]

A friend with a MH on the same XCS chassis as mine reports finding a similar kink in the same hose and will replace it. From that, it appears that this is a Freightliner manufacturing problem since our two coaches were built by different body manufacturers.

I had found and shared information about the A/C belt on our chassis. The factory installed belt was too small. To mount it, Freightliner production mis-mounted the adjustment screw. The small belt cannot be removed across the fan blades. When the adjustment screw is re-mounted according to Freightliner's own technical diagram and a 2" longer belt is installed, everything works fine - mine has for the past two years. To this day, Freightliner shows that same incorrect belt length as the correct part number for my chassis. This has led shops to do things like remove the fan (at great owner expense) to install that wrong sized A/C belt. The Bounder diesel forum documented the number of owners of that RV who had the short belt problem.

My purpose is not to bash Freightliner because of these kinds of problems but simply the share my discoveries so that others can benefit. I've found FCC very cooperative in working through this and other problems that I've had and am overall very pleased with their product.