Just got to throw this up in the air for discussion.
Three things got me dreaming about this during the night:
Kennyb's leak.
Brett Wolfe's comment re bulkhead condition.
My surprise that a 1988 GV might have undercarriage protection and/or bulkhead issues.
So, here goes.
In 45 years of design of metal working machines, fixtures, tooling, and gauges there were certain rules I tried to follow. One of which was that if I couldn't design a fixture to keep chips out then I would design the fixture so the chips could get out.
Now here is my question. Why, if moisture couldn't be kept out of the bulkhead frame, wasn't something done to get it out?
Apparently, from what pictures I have seen, moisture is/was causing the rust and rot.
WHAT IF? 1/4" stainless steel washers, knurled on both sides, were inserted between the angle iron and the fiberglass bulkheads with the huck bolts thru the washers. Coat the washers with grease. The pointed surfaces on the washers would hold location and the grease. The 1/4" gap would let air circulate thru the join.
Think about it. These coaches spend most of their time just sitting in nice, warm, dry places. But if they were driven thru rain or snow and moisture or condensation got into the joins what makes you think the moisture will come out? Unless. UNLESS it were possible to have some type of warm air induction that forced the air throughout the underside cavity enough to cause the moisture to evaporate. A furnace? Just a ducted fan if in a warm climate? Wouldn't have to be on ALL the time.
To me, it is one thing to get water in where it does not belong, but it is something else to leave it there to do damage.
For sure having a completely enclosed belly on a coach is both good and bad.
I think the FOT designers did a fairly good job of keeping water encountered when driving (road splash) out of the delicate bits.
Most of the "rust" problems seem to be the result of water entering the enclosed belly skin from above IE uncorrected water leaks in plumbing.
When coaches were brand new they were pretty well sealed at the floor/wall joints, etc. to deal with water leakage in the bays, but after 20-30 years of banging down the road all the caulked joints have opened up.
I don't know if anything (affordable) could have been done to render the original design totally rust proof. Build the whole structure out of stainless steel?
The best defense at this point is eternal vigilance on the part of the owner. Watch for leaks, fix leaks promptly, DO NOT allow errant water to migrate into the belly skin insulation.
They could have primed and painted it, could have hot dipped galvanized it but it's just a bad design, especially where the big angle iron bolts to the tubing. Don't get me started on the choice of Roloks. Lots of poor choice of fasteners in the coach.
Pierce
If for any reason you have to take your wet bay completely apart and remove the tanks consider a drain pan under the tanks and plumbing to catch and drain out any overflow or leaks that might occur. A big molded heavy plastic one would be nice but after the fact maybe a formed and welded aluminum one. If I have to pull tanks it is what I would do.
Short of that I have shallow aluminum sheet pans (for cakes) under the waste valves now.
Bingo!!! Even before I owned an RV. I was aware of the saying that water was enemy #1 of an RV. So in my honest opinion. A coach in the price bracket of a Foretravel. EVERY effort should have been taken to mitigate water intrusion and if water did get in, It should have a way out as well. Such a shame that Foretravel couldn't see the forest for all those trees and choose to not spend a couple of hundred dollars per coach to install catchment pans that drain outside and a can or two of paint to cover the bulkhead tubing.
I am by no means an expert. But having rebuilt my basement floor and rear bulkhead . The majority of water intrusion is from the fresh water tank fill overflow. It discharges at the top of the rear bulkhead just in front of the rear tire. It then runs down onto the rear bulkhead angle iron and leaches in between the angle iron and rear basement floor framing. Fill your tanks water runs out. Every left curve with full tank water runs out and down. Over a number of years you have frame rot and seperation.
If you do repairs or not put some kind of extension to get overflow drain below or behind the basement floor. This is just my opinion and I am no expert.
A lot of us redirect it right through the floor next to the water manifold. That's how I did mine. I fill the water until it just starts to run out. Get quite a bit more in that tank than the conservative approach.
jor
What might have been done differently or better 20 years ago is not relevant today. No amount of whining complaining or speculation changes the facts. And it is not all coaches that have a problem but some have significant problems. The only things relevant right now is what can you do to prevent any further damage, what do you do to inspect for damage and what do you do to fix it if there is a problem. Unless you have a time machine, move on.
The only reason any of us see this problem is that our FTs have lasted 20+ years. Not a lot of 20+ year old Winnebagos to compare them to other then the ones in the junk yards.
A couple days later ....
So maybe "whining" isn't the best choice of words but that is just what it is. If you think it applies to you perhaps it does. It is done, nothing is going to change it, deal with it in whatever way make sense to you. If nothing makes sense then maybe it is time to not be a FT owner.
Roger, as always, brings up some great truths. I get the grief of those who have experienced this failure. I have seen so many failures of other brands, non are exempt, and thus I have never posted about my not being surprised before.
Country Coach wanted to build a perfect rv certified for full time use by the state of California. And so they, paid to have, and turned over a new CC Magna for certification. In the recommended changes, one was to use certified welders on the chassis. This was in their research and experience impossible to do, and stay competitive in the market place. I was told by a VP this was the only reccomendation they could not do. They were happy to implement most of the other recommendations, and did.
I bought my coach assuming I'd have to rebuild the structure below. I did not, not to say in the future I may have to. It is not a worry for me.
And so my solution is this: I will continue to inspect the basement area, and continue to maintain that area as well as others.
As many others on this forum have seen, other brands are often so destroyed that we would describe them as throw away units. In other words if you paid anything for the rv or got it free, you were in it too many dollars.
Our basement issue is far from that, in fact several forum members have successfully tackled repairing this issue themselves. I post the following links to not pick on any one brand, however to show one of many issues that are common in other brands. Even in stick and brick homes, water intrusion where it was not wanted, can become a huge issue.
If you disagree with my post you might try to Google "rusting basement bay rv" and that will posibly make you more pleased you invested in a FT, instead of some other brand.
American Eagle
American Coach Basement Rust Repair - iRV2 Forums (https://www.irv2.com/forums/f107/basement-rust-repair-468123.html)
Tiffin
Wet Bay | Travel Blog (https://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Alabama/blog-738285.html)
Travel Supreme
Rotted floor under water holding tank - iRV2 Forums (https://www.irv2.com/forums/f274/rotted-floor-under-water-holding-tank-373288.html)
Winnebago
Rust on compartment bays | The RV Forum Community (https://www.rvforum.net/threads/rust-on-compartment-bays.64597/)
Thor
Basement floor rotting - iRV2 Forums (https://www.irv2.com/forums/f281/basement-floor-rotting-477282.html)
Thor
Venetian Basement - Thor Forums (https://www.thorforums.com/forums/f17/venetian-basement-20129.html)
I think that whining and a statement of fact have been confused as being one in the same.
The facts are that all RV manufacturers are guilty to some degree (some more guilty than others) of having little to zero foresight concerning water intrusion in such a vital area as a monocoque frame that keeps it from breaking in half.
And while it is bad that SoB of RV has some water damage. They tend to have subflooring damage from water (not a rotted frame) With a subfloor one can at least get to it with a body on frame design. Not so much with a hidden and unprotected monocoque/ bulkhead design encased in water absorbing foam.
Truth be told. I think that most higher end older coaches that are around 20 years later. Are here because of the sizable budgets of their owners who could afford them when new and so the maintenance and needed repairs were more likely to have been done when needed.
Golly gee. Here I was suggesting that it might be better to be proactive when it comes to minimizing water damage instead of being reactive, knowing that water damage can be expensive compared to doing a little modification that might cost only a couple hundred.
And now I am called a whiner? Just because I was trying to suggest something?
Some of you had better think about what you are advocating. Let your coach go to hell just because it is getting older.
These beautifully built and designed machines!
Bigdog, what you say is so true. Just think what our FTs cost new, what the new owner spent on maintenence and upgrades, and what that would have bought in the way of sticks and bricks and dirt in the same years.
I bought my FT in 2017, the original owner kept it until 2015 when he sold it to buy a new American Eagle with a MSRP of close to $700,000. Before trading the FT, deciding he would keep it forever, he took it to Extreme for paint and the factory at FT, writing checks for over $50,000 for full body paint, updating the headlights, and upgrading the interior. When I finally reached him by phone in 2018, the first thing I did was thank him for taking care of my rv for 17 years. He laughed.
Jack Lewis:
I think you worked at Monaco ?
Was curious, lower structure of my 97 Dynasty appears to be quite close to the FT design, 8 airbags, but the frame work is only enclosed at the wet bay area. Lower frame is otherwise totally exposed and appears to be undercoated. FW overflow goes directly under the wet bay. Have never read of any bulkhead type issue on the Monaco Roadmaster Chassis. Would you happen to know what the differences might be ?
Nothing wrong about being proactive and bringing the subject up. Foretravels are bought and sold all the time and keeping the bulkhead topic active with possible ideas is a good way of letting prospective buyers and new forum members know about the issue and how to best minimize or eliminate the damage. Every time I think about the bulkhead design and the crazy hydraulic fan system, I "whine" or worse.
Pierce
Pierce,
Is that "whine" or
"WINE"?
Every time I hear someone on The forum act like a grumpy old man I just have to laugh. Truth is is it's a problem and when it happens to you we get pissed off rightly so. My coach had a basement problem so bad that the previous owner took it to an idiot and nacogdoches who had really no experience in rebuilding basements and charged the insurance company greater than $30,000 to repair it and did a crappy job of it. Just like when they replaced the fuel lines. A crappy job of it. Truth is that anytime there is going to be rust affecting the bulkhead of anything on the road that's made out of steel. And I believe that it's correct that leakage from the inside it's more likely to be the cause than what's coming out of the overflow drain. I too re located my drain from the back bulkhead to the basement under the manifold block. But I still have a slow leak drip from an older PEX fitting that I have to replace. Best thing to do is don't overfill your tank and keep an eye on any trips and leaks. also whenever possible I open both sides of my wet bay doors and let the air flow through there. I hope I never have to redo the poor job that was done on this coach to repair the basement. Yeah in hindsight it could have been done differently but it wasn't so we just have to deal with what we have. I love my foretravel coach. But there's plenty of issues with it as we all know.
But I really don't think that it helps to call out someone who is upset about an issue a quote unquote whiner. Doesn't help at all.
That reminds me of an Italian restaurant in Germany when w...................................................
Pierce
We're heading to MOT this summer for bulkhead repairs. We would have done them last summer, but our plans got turned upside down Yes, it is going to cost us several CBs. No, we're not going to get all of it back when we sell, and probably none of it if we trade. That's life.
Back to an earlier discussion: are there current sources for the Roloks? I plan to use through-bolts for front and rear bulkheads on my U225, but I have a little rust on some of the Roloks holding the bottom floor up to the bay wall bulkheads. I don't want any rust on those bolts and I don't think through-bolts would be practical there.
I googled Rolox bolts, came up with Semblex Corp. I didn't go further. Hope it helps.
I got mine from MOT when I rebuilt my basement. They had plenty in stock. Foretravel had none.
I
Use galvanized or stainless. Roloks were never intended for this application.
Pierce
Actually for those vertical bulkheads, I don't have a problem with the Rolocks IF (yes big IF) you use a sealant around the serrated head so water can't migrate in.
But, I agree with Pierce, if you can find SS or galvanized bolts with the same thread pattern as the Rolocks you are removing, an excellent choice.
And, if there is any FG damage around the Rolocks on those vertical bulkheads, use fender washers to span the damaged area and caulk well.
Sure worth pulling out one of the Rolocks you are going to replace and take a quick trip to a good hardware store.
The difficult situation with the divider walls and those Roloks is if you are going to use bolts. You are going yo have to open up those sidewalls to do it. Thst could entail removing water tanks etc to access. As have ssid in other posts relocated the fresh water tank overflow so it does not run down the rear bulkhead. That is what caused the corrosion in the first place as far as Im concerned.
While much discussion has taken place about the fresh water over fill, and I agree that is not the best place for it. It's not the sole cause of the bulk head issues. What about rain road salt, door leaking. Just my opinion.
All the above can certainly contribute to degradation of the bulkheads.
I don't understand all the concern over the fresh water overflow. I'll admit that I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed but this area of the bulkhead gets soaked every time you drive on wet roads. It gets far wetter and for a much longer time when driving in the rain or just on wet roads. I have examined this area of the bulkhead every time I stop at a rest area after driving in the rain. It's dripping wet. It is my opinion ( not worth more than you pay for it ) that the time spent relocating an overflow pipe for the rare instances when an overflow occurs, would be better spent sealing this area from water intrusion from water spray from the rear duals.
If I'm missing something here, then by all means please inform me so I'll understand all this concern over the fresh water overflow.
Submitted with all do respect to those whom disagree.
Another factor sometimes not considered is the hole prep for the bolts holding things together.
I quote Holo-Krome here: "Drill sizes provide for maximum allowable runout and bow of longest standard screws and for some misalignment of holes in parts to be fastened. In order to avoid any risk of interference with the radius under the head (of the bolt) it will be necessary to countersink slightly all recommended clearance bolt holes.
I personally have seen leakage as a result of not chamfering clearance holes.
Such a simple step to do to when prepping for assembly between two disparate materials.
We all do it--I do it. Most of the times no harm. But who knows in this case of bulkhead assembly.
Such a little thing but history has shown the results of ignoring "little things".
I think I posted before that as soon as I found out about bulkhead issues on the forum, I used Pennzoil undercoat treatment and sealed that area up including the bolts themselves. It makes it a pain to scrape the bolt head to check torque but rather that than worry about water intrusion.
Here is a link to a thread I did regarding using through fasteners on the basement floor to compartment walls and the problems of reusing Roloks for this purpose.
Basement fastener updates... (http://www.foreforums.com/index.php?topic=17900.msg121215#msg121215)
There are the standard solutions to any given mechanical project, and then there's Don's way of doing it. He sets a high bar, indeed.
After all his laborious frame restoration efforts, Don's coach is now built stronger than the RMS Titanic!
(On second thought, perhaps not the best analogy...)
Yes, the 1/4" thick ANGLE ("L" shaped piece where you see the heads of the Rolock bolts) does get wet. No problem.
It is the box beams into which the Rolocks screw that are vulnerable to water in the wet bay as that water seeps down into the basement "sandwich" and rusts those thin-wall box beams.
So, indeed, most of the rear bulkhead failures I have seen on inspections is caused by water getting into the basement sandwich from the wet bay.
Our U300's bulkhead and angle iron were really clean when we bought it. As I previously posted, I used a chisel and single jack to spread the angle iron and tubing apart to see if there was any rust present and was surprised what the back side of the angle iron looked like. What you see in the photos represents the amount of rust I could get out in about 2 feet. I used a Sawzall to loosen and break off chunks of rust. None of this came from tank overflow but from just driving in wet conditions where road spray gets on the angle iron and drains down into the back of the angle iron. I also had quite a few Roloks fail in the exact area where the rust was removed. You can see the one Rolok in the photo and where it failed. As I said, the angle iron looks like new on the bottom, top, etc. And all this is from a very rust free (from all appearances) coach.
Pierce
I would suggest if most of that rust came from the 1/4" angle-- no big deal It is really stout. But, if that amount came from the thin-wall box beams immediately forward, MAJOR problem. Most likely some of each.
Yes, absolutely, the angle can rust. But it is really robust. I have never seen a failed bulkhead where the angle was the failure. Angle rust jacking and breaking Rolocks-- sure.
Failed box beams absolutely.
Rolocks usually break from rust jacking where they start into the "closest to angle" side/first side of the box beam).
Yes, the big angle is really stout and very fortunate that it is. Also fortunate it that most of the rust and failed Roloks are on the curb side where the most water and chemicals are thrown up behind the tire tracks both front and rear. The crown in the road keeps the left side from having as many failures. I did drill and stick a borescope in the tubing to make sure there was. no internal rust. Yes, rust jacking and hydrogen embroilment weakens the Roloks until they fail.
And you can see the broken Rolok failed just about where water ran down between the angle iron and the tin bulkhead.
You could spray undercoat there but if water does get in, it won't dry and will continue to damage the area. We don't drive in snow at all and try to avoid rain on roads that may have been treated. Not saying that untreated wet roads are same but better.
Once the Rolok fails, you can't remove what is left so have to drill and sister next to it. I went to 3/8" in stainless where I had failures.
Pierce
Pierce,
I have had good luck (100% success) in removing the broken remainder of the Rolocks.
Start as you would for through-bolting by drilling an access hole in the fiberglass (to match size of the waterproof plug you have available to seal it when finished.
After drilling through the very thin bottom FG, use a screwdriver or other tool to remove the foam insulation.
Spray down with a penetrating oil and leave overnight if possible.
Double nut the "thread end" (toward from of coach on rear bulkhead). Unscrew it. There are usually very few threads holding the back (back of coach) part of the box beam-- that is where it is broken. So, all you are really unscrewing is the grade 8 Rolock from the thin from wall of the box beam.
MUCH easier to start with that hole to enlarge it a little so you can through bolt it.
Let us know if anyone tries this and is not able to make it work.
Yes, sistering a broken Rolock is fine. But drilling an all new hold is a lot of work from an awkward position.
I didn't make any holes in the bottom of the coach but used a 90 degree drill and drilled it with the correct bit for tapping to 3/8". I then bought a long tap so I could tap both the near side as well as the far side. I tapped the holes and then just screwed in the stainless bolt. You are quite right as in several places, there are things that get in the way. One of the reasons for a 90 degree drill. Also hard to drill a straight hole so the far side follows a perpendicular line from the near side.
If you want to use a hole cutting bit, you can open up the bottom and up through the foam, drill 3/8" from the angle iron side and then put a nylock with washer on the end.
Up front by the fuel tank, there is a spot where you can get at both sides. I used a 3/8" grade 8 with washers on both ends. I could torque to grade 8 specs with no deformity on the tubing so grade 8 in 3/8" should be able to be torqued (or nylock) with no damage unless the tubing has been compromised by rust.
There really is no need for insulation in the bottom as a layer in the compartment with flooring over it would do the same thing and allow ventilation below. My 4107 bus was this way.
Pierce
Clearly Not!
Our coaches are twenty years old or so. Foretravel built and still does a very good coach. Yes it's a shame that better corrosion control wasn't implemented during construction or possibly fully recognized. This directly adds to the cost of construction. Stainless steel is expensive and difficult to work with, not to mention heavy.
IMO good metal prep, acid etching, priming and painting followed by proper sealing would of extended the life considerable. All of my bulkheads will eventually get these treatments because there still in great shape and can be proactively compleated. No paint should allow corrosion and no area should be allowed to hold moisture. I think allowing to drain would also allow a pathway in. I also apply sealant tape to all seams inside as I work in a particular area. Eventually it will get done. Manufacturers for everthing fight this problem and it costs them for failure. Drain control, water deflection flaps, proper exit points all help. Personally I probably couldn't afford to have it performed to my expectations.
Scott