Tab 400 FW tank vent separation @ tank

fwunder

This is a bit of a hassle! While camping the other day, I filled water tank via four 7 gallon water containers via Nautilus "Sanitize" function. The tank gauge showed 1/3 before I began filling. Overflow vent was/is clear. I was surprised it took all four containers but chalked it up to gauge malfunction. When I lowered the tongue to hook up when leaving water started flowing out around the coroplast. A lot of water. I figured there must be a leak either @ intake or fw pickup somewhere. There was no water on the floor of the Tab anywhere so I concluded it must be where the vent attaches to tank or where in vents to outside and flowed down around the tank and trapped above coroplast. So just now I exposed the plumbing below the fridge.

The vent at the top of the tank is completely separated. Wow! How/when did that happen? PA Turnpike roads suck, but that should not have rattled loose. It looks like the port is supposed to screw into top of tank, pex to flex tube to outside vent. It was then gooped up with what looks like a mess of epoxy. I'm guessing the hole through the floor was not placed properly and there was a lot of stress on the vent port.

The repair is going to be a little tricky. Looks like I will have to expose the top of the tank more to properly seat a new vent port and attach vent hose.

Anyone ever seen this?

fwunder

Tab 400 FW tank vent separation @ tank - The Fix

Just in case anyone else runs into this. The hole in the floor for the FW vent/overflow was misplaced and rather than correctly fixing it someone decided to just jam the connection into the threads at an angle and cover it with goop. That worked for a while until it worked itself loose and allowed water to come out the top of the tank and fill the space below the floor and above the cororplast. It always pisses me off when a find something like this when it could have and should have been properly addressed during assembly. I corrected the problem.

I first removed the overflow line from the tank end. I used a Dremmel to cutoff Pex fitting. I then cleaned up all the goop from the fitting.

Using some scrap wood and a 2 inch hole saw, I made a template/guide to cut a proper hole above the overflow fitting on the tank. I carefully cut a section of the Azdell floor down to the top of the tank without hitting the tank. A piece of rag was stuffed into the tank fitting to keep crap out of the tank. Then inspected and cleaned and vacuumed the area around the fitting. Finally, I dry fitted the overflow fitting to make sure the threads were good and it would seat as it should.

I applied some silicone to the fitting and around connections and allowed it to dry. A stainless hose clamp was used to attach the flexible overflow line. 

After I was happy with the way it looked, I filled, overfilled the FW tank using Powerfill connection. When tank was (over)filled water came out of the overfill vent as expected. Everything around the connection on the inside was perfectly dry. I filled the wound alone the connection with expanding poly foam, put the cabinet back together and called it fixed!!

With my previous Forrest River trailer, I ran into a lot of “lazy factory floor stupids”. This was the first I found in my Tab. I hope it’s the last.