Umarang's Black Water Tank Repairs, Part 2

A couple of days ago, after a test fill, there was still water splashing out of the black water tank's top side.  

It was time to take the tank off to see what was going on.  Dammit.

First though, I removed the toilet to see what could be seen from within the VRRV:

This black fitting secures the toilet to itself and the floor of the VRRV.  Interestingly, its a fitting which is readily available at Home Depot.

At first, I thought a locking ring had broken, which

linked the toilet to the tank.

Took a while and a heated socket before I could remove the four bolts shown above.  The problem then was clear, big cracks atop the tank.  Note the alignment of the tank's hole to the hole in the VRRV's floor.

I believe Jayco, the manufacturers of the RV, didn't drill the hole in the RV floor in quite the right spot, which explains why the fitting's mounting points were all on one side!

So I spent a delightful afternoon removing the tank from the underside of the VRRV.  It required cutting the plumbing at two points (could have done it in one had I given it further thought).

I got the tank out though, minimal cursing and no blood letting aside:

Yep, pretty large cracks. 

I believe the cracks were caused when the tank dropped down earlier this month, since the toilet flange screws onto the large hole atop the tank, it didn't want to release upon the tank's dropping; eventually pulling out when the cracks occurred.  Sigh.

After some cleanup, I used wire mesh and JBWeld Plastiweld/Bonder along with staples to provide mechanical support to seal the cracks.

Below, you can see the toilet flange which attaches to atop the tank from within and secures the toilet as well.  I had it in place to line things up hopefully as the JBweld dried and cured.

The strap was to ensure the toilet flange was straight

up and down as things cured.

There's also Eternabond tape shoring up the underside of the cracks within the tank itself.  I also placed Eternabond tape on the topside as further sealing and reinforcement.  Note: The JBWeld had attached and hardened rather nicely overnight.

Yesterday, Friday November 21

Started the installation of the repaired water tank at mid-morning.  Things went pretty well but some minor issues were encountered.

Once the tank was in place and secured, the toilet flange's threads wouldn't reach the threads in the top of the tank!  Luckily, I found an adapter at Home Depot which extended the reach of the flange enough, though instead of a threaded seal, it was now sealed with Gorilla Glue Sealant.  Should be fine.

I had fortunately picked up appropriate Fernco connectors to rejoin the sections of pipe I had cut to make the removal of the holding tank easier.  The flexibility of such connectors allowed me to reconnect sections with little effort.  The connectors are the rubber tubes with worm gear clamps.

I didn't use ABS cement to seal the black water tank's outlet to the dump gate assembly.  This way, removing it is doable hopefully without damaging things.  Hopefully, I never again have to do it but you never know.

This bit took a while to line up correctly, and I had to remove an unused PVC pipe that was in the way of the dump gate now.  The removed PVC pipe was unused storage for sewer pipe.  You can see the cut off end, on the left side of the pic below.

Once I got things lined up correctly, and straps adjusted, everything seems pretty secure.  

Today, DEC 21

After a quick leak test on the driveway at home, after putting 6 gallons in both gray and black tanks, things looked good.

I then drove the VRRV to Buckley SFB's FamCamp and did further testing for leaks while flushing both tanks.  I had also gotten a water meter from Amazon and determined that I was right, they'd increased the throughput of the water faucet at the dump station!  It recorded a flow of 12 gallons/Minute!  No wonder there'd been water splashing out the top of the tank.

Anyways, things are good to go for now, we'll see how long things last.

Hopefully, there's no part 3 to this subject.