5er fresh water plumbing

[TheOldMan76]

working on a 30 yr old Alpenlite 5er. Well built rig, but PO was pretty negligent. Fixing water damage, and finally got to the plumbing. Water fill and pump etc. located under jacknife sofa, with external access storage box built around sofa legs. What a mess! Finally got it all tore out, and replumbed with a combination of polybutalene and pex. had to pull the hot water tank to accomplish replumb.
PO had removed the gas furnace, and I think most of the floor level water damage was due to fittings he left loose on the hw tank. Got all that repaired, hw tank re-installed, storage box rebuilt with the water pump in that area to allow external service, and sofa back in place, no longer installed thru the storage compartment. Tank works great on 120, no more water leaks, so fired up the gas. Pilot light orifice was plugged. Of course I twisted off the aluminum tube feeding it, so am waiting on a new one to arrive. Hope the rest of the valve is ok. They certainly didn't build these things to work on!!!

[Skip426]

There were ( are ) designers and engineers involved, of course they don't care if you ( or the repair tech ) can work on it.
Fixing it ain't their job.. man!

And trust me the problem just got worse when, computer CAD programs were introduced, now the computer says it'll fit, some poor human has to figure out , how to get the part in and out.

" Now , to suit the great computer, you're magnetic ink "

[TheOldMan76]

Even at the early date this unit was built, they must have designed wiring to be universal to suit whatever configuration they built. There are huge bundles of wires everywhere, branching off, most branches going nowhere. If they still do that kind of thing today, copper cost must be a major factor.