Into the belly of the beast - Day 4

 8:58 am - Friday - February 4th - Newell House, AZ - 42° F, 20% humidity, wind 7  mph out of the northeast.....sunny, clear, blue skies today with a forecast high of 63° F.  On this day in 2017 we were at the 'Desert Bar' near Parker, AZ with Steve and Candy Landry.......↴

Thursday was a bad day for me.  I woke up feeling totally drained of energy after 3 days of toil in the belly of the beast.  All I had to do was reconnect the airlines to the 8 airbags, right?  On a normal day when I had not already spent 3 days expending large amounts of energy this really would have been an easy day. This task is not a strenuous one, especially on the four front airbags where there is plenty of room to actually sit up while screwing in the various brass fittings, and connecting each bag with 3/8" lengths of new air lines.  All that being said, I was out of gas before I began the day.  

In preparation for the reconnection of the airlines I bought all new brass fittings, except for the 40 year old brass T's, which were in very good shape.  The first thing I needed to do was install the new brass elbows, and nipples into each of the T's.....to be sure I got it right I took a picture several days of one of the T's to aid me in assembling the new ones.....

.....in all it took me about 45 minutes to assemble them before I crawled under the coach for the first time Thursday..... 

The red tool in the picture is a hose cutter

.....I took time a couple of days ago to polish up the 40 year old T's.  Once I cut the new air lines to length it was time to begin the installation, and thus began the hard part of day 4 in the belly of the beast. I only took 3 tools under the coach with me, and I ended up not needing the open end wrench on the right in the picture below....I only used the crescent wrench and the ratcheting wrench....

.....I had the new fittings installed, and the air lines connected on the front four bags in less than an hour.....

.....in the picture above the blue air line on the right is the supply line from the coach.  The new black line connects the airbags on each side of the shock.  As I crawled out from under the front of the coach I was dead beat, and knew the hard part was now to come.  There is no way to sit up in the rear of the coach to install the brass fittings, and air lines, so I had to do everything lying on my side, or back extending my arm (left, or right) to it maximum length to thread in the fittings, and connect the air lines....most of what I did was done 'blind' as I could not see what I was doing most the time.  Finally, after another 2 hours I was tightening the final air line fitting.....I was way past exhausted by this point, and felt slightly sick to my stomach.  I've only been that tired a few times in my life, and it is not a pleasant feeling.

After three days of finding each step easier than I thought it would be the 4th day proved to be my undoing, as reconnecting those air lines was far more difficult than I expected, and took more energy than I had left in the tank.  What did I expect?  I expected it to take less than 2 hours, and it took me about 3.5 hours.

Now that the airlines were reconnected I plugged into Tom's air system to air up the coach once again, and to see if there were any obvious leaks.  All 8 airbags inflated as they should, and there were no obvious air leaks.  By 'obvious' I mean there was no sound of hissing air to be heard.  Next I went under the coach with one of those air leak 'sniffers' (an electronic device that magnifies sound with the air of a headset)....

 

....no leaks of the quieter variety were detected!  On Friday I'll raise the coach off the jack stands, move them to the side, and then see if the coach settles, or stays in the same position over time.  If it settles I'll have go under the coach again with a spray bottle of soapy solution to spray on each fitting to find the leak.  Other than that I am doing nothing except resting and recuperating Friday, and taking a couple of Jacuzzis.  There will be no celebrating until we know the airbags will hold air.   If they do then the celebrations will begin!

Of course, there was another long, hot shower and an equally long time spent in the Jacuzzi before I began to feel better.  As I write this morning I feel fine, but tired, and ready for a day of relaxation.

Thanks for stopping by!

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which over the course of a year adds up to enough to buy a tank of diesel for which we thank you very much!