For the last couple weeks, we have been camping at Tres Rios RV Resort in Glen Rose, TX. A review of it will be out later this week, so make sure you follow us on social media and here on our blog to see when that comes out! Anyway, We had an absolute blast while we were there, and none of us wanted to go home. Unfortunately, we did have a choice because we had to get our camper worked on and when we got home I found out I have a problems with my airbags as well!

After we got home, I noticed that my airbags would go off about every 30 seconds or so. That told me that I probably had a leak. So I aired up my airbags to about 40 PSI and went to both sides of my truck to see if I could hear anything.

I watched my app for it when I was airing it up and saw that it showed the current PSI as it was airing the bags up. So I sat and watched it for a minute. It would air that airbags up to 40 PSI and turn off. When it turned back on it showed that it was at 30 PSI! That told me that I definitely had a leak! I was loosing 10 PSI every thirty seconds or so.

I was sitting on the passenger side of my truck while I was doing this so I checked it first. I got down as close to them as possible and listened. I didn’t hear anything. So I went around to the other side. I waited for the compressor to air them back up and shut off and listened again. This time I hear a hissing sound!

Down on my hands and knees I went. I looked at the airbags hoping to see something but I didn’t I figured I’d probably have to get some soap solution to find it so I started to get up. That’s when I noticed this…

Well, I didn’t have a leak. I had a full break! Well more of a melting of the air line. The air line was melted against the exhaust! Why the air line wasn’t tied to something to keep it away, I don’t know.

Camper Problems

The reason that we had to come home in the first place was because we were having some issues with our camper and had to take it in for service. Our black tank valve would not close, our toilet wouldn’t stop leaking and one of the A/C units would freeze up on us.

We made the appointment with the dealer that we bought it from and they advised us that once we brought it in for the initial appointment, it would take about a week for our RV to be looked at. After that they would have to send the diagnosis into the warranty place and see what was covered and order parts if needed. That could take up to 4-6 weeks to get the parts in and then the time it took to install them! We really didnt want to be without a camper for two months, so we tried to call a Mobile RV repair person that worked with out warranty.

We called about six different people and most of them all told us that they don’t work on black tank issues! We finally found one that said he did, but he charged $150 an hour for it! Hoping that it would be just replacing the black tank gate and it should take more than an hour to do, we decided to have him come and look at it before we took it to the dealership.

While waiting on him to get there, we looked at the issues and tried to see if we could fix it ourselves.

First off the Toilet

On the back of the toilet, there is a supply hose that goes from that water intake line to the back of the toilet. I disconnected it from the back of the toilet and put some teflon tape on the treads and put it back on. I ran our water hose to the RV and gave it a shot. I flushed it several times and didn’t see a leak. Awesome, maybe I fixed it. I let it sit for a few minutes and then came back to see that there was water on the floor behind the toilet!

I got down and watched it for a while.

Drip…Drip…Drip…

Yep it was still leaking. I felt around and tried to see where it was coming from. Unfortunately it was coming from the connection where the hose screwed into, but on the top side. That meant that the entire back assembly would have to be replaced. Something that I had no idea on how to do

Black Tank Issue

The valve handle for the black tank was stuck in the out position and it would not go in.

Our RV is equipped with a black tank flush out, so we ran it for a while to make sure there wasn’t anything inside. Then we ran a water hose up the outlet pipe and got a bunch of stuff out of it. Thankfully we had something to catch all the stuff coming out. We tried that valve again. I got it move out some but it wouldn’t go in any more. So we tried the hose again.

We worked on it for about an hour and never could get it to close. So we tried sending our camera snake up the outlet and see if we could see anything. What we found surprised us, but also to our surprise, both the mobile RV tech and the intake person at the dealership said it didnt surprise them.

Yep, that is a chunk of insulation from the floor sitting at the gate of our black tank. No wonder it wouldn’t close!

Camper Dropped off

The next morning, I took the RV to the dealership and got it dropped off and went to the place that I got the airbags installed to talk to them. I was all ready to cause a big stink about how they should’ve secured the lines. I didn’t get to cause that stink though because when I showed the service guy the picture, he said, “Oh my goodness, those lines should’ve been secure so that wouldn’t happen, do you have about 15 minutes to wait and we can get that fixed for you?”

So here I sit, writing this blog post while I wait for them to get done with my truck. Sure enough, 15 minutes later, they pulled up with my truck all fixed. Actually it is better than it was before. When they first installed them, I had to keep them at 10 PSI for the compressor not to run every 10-20 minutes, instead of the 5 PSI that is the minimum. So far, I have driven to another store about 20 minutes away to get some other things, and I have not heard the compressor kick on once.

Now We Wait!

Now that my truck is fixed, and the RV is dropped off, now we wait to hear back from the service department on how long it will take to get our RV fixed before we can go camping again. I hope it doesn’t take to long and we can make it to our next scheduled trip.

I will post again when we know more, so until then…

Happy Camping!

NOTE: This post was originally posted the first part of this year(2023) when we first started our blog. I am posting old blog posts to get us caught up with the present and then I will start posting new ones.