Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Avoided paying $100 for a $2 piece of hose

This is a prime example of why it's imperative that you learn to do your own repairs whenever possible, especially if you are a full time RVer in an older RV.

This is a 10" long, 3/8" piece of hose that is used as the return line for the power steering, and it would have cost me $100+ to have a shop replace it.


A shop would have gone by what their computer says and used a new $20+ hose with a metal line fitting on the end, charged several dollars for a small amount of fluid, and charged an hour's labor at around $75/hr.


For just $2.30 including tax, I bought a new 10" piece of high quality 3/8" Continental hose that's made in USA.


It required a small amount of Type F fluid in the power steering pump, due to some draining out when the hose was removed, but I already had it for topping off from the hose leak so that cost me nothing extra. The only other expense was a bunch of paper towels.

The old USA made clamps were still in excellent condition, not chewed up like cheap Chinese ones get almost instantly, so I reused them. They tightened down great, so that saved me a couple more dollars.

It was a VERY messy job, way worse than changing the differential oil, but now it should be good for many years before it needs replacing again. It required laying on the ground and reaching up to get to, as it was almost impossible to reach from above.

So yes, I would have paid $100+ for a $2 piece of hose, if I hadn't replaced it myself.

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Don't forget the differential!

Yep, it was just like I thought. I don't think the RV has ever had a differential oil change. Sure, it's only got 70k miles, but it's been 34 years!!

I bought a Lube Locker Dana 60/70 differential gasket since I need to do a bunch of short oil change intervals (ie: 1,000 miles per fill) to clean it up. Differentials don't have filters like engines and transmissions, so clean oil is very important. It lubricates a LOT of bearings and gears. The gasket will pay for itself in RTV savings, since it uses none. It'll also make it super easy to change the oil next time, no scraping away used RTV.

I bought a Performance Tool W54150 pump at the local hardware store to make filling tidy. It's very slow going but it worked great. It fits most 1 quart and 1 gallon oil jugs, so it was a good purchase for future uses too.

I'm running $15/gal SuperTech 80w90 conventional since I don't want to waste money on expensive oil, just to run it for a few months and less than 2,000 miles.

So yeah, that's one of the first things you should do when you buy an old RV or other rear wheel drive vehicle, change the differential oil! Differentials are NOT cheap to have rebuilt, about $1,500! And finding a shop who will even do them can be hard to find unless you are in a fairly good sized city.

Freshly opened. yuck!!


The inside of the cover is nice and clean now!


 Refilling with fresh oil.


All done! (For this time)