First pic of the black algae in the flushing water tank, second pic of the stripped down toilet

 

Ew...not nice!

Good job though Roger. I can recall black crud coming out of the flush when we had left the MH laid up for a while between trips. I found the separate toilet flush tank to be a bit of a PITA tbh.

Good idea to stop using the pink stuff, after all most of us don't use anything extra at home do we?

I recall that I mixed up a small spray bottle of pink stuff and water and we used to use that after a flush, just to keep things sp1ck and span.

Let us know how it goes with the new pump.

 

Ew...not nice!

Good job though Roger. I can recall black crud coming out of the flush when we had left the MH laid up for a while between trips. I found the separate toilet flush tank to be a bit of a PITA tbh.

Good idea to stop using the pink stuff, after all most of us don't use anything extra at home do we?

I recall that I mixed up a small spray bottle of pink stuff and water and we used to use that after a flush, just to keep things sp1ck and span.

Let us know how it goes with the new pump.

I’ve. never been a user of the pink stuff but unfortunately the previous owner was. The spray idea is a good one as it could be useful for keeping the brown clean as you say, definitely not in the tank though.

Waiting for the pump to arrive, and i’ll give an update when I fit it.

 

We need to do ours, it stopped working some time ago and we’ve been using a spray bottle, we’ve already tried the fuse.

we had the same issue in our last van so Phill has experience of stripping down the workings

 

It’s a mucky old job but worth it when it’s done.

 

Nice work Roger. Mine had to be rewired earlier this year. It just happened to pack up while I was staying at a pals place getting the solar sorted. We tried all sorts to get it working and discovered at the pump there was no power and it wasn't a fuse. Had to take a new feed behind the bathroom from the batteries I think.

 

They are a bit of a pain to work on without any instructions, took me the best part of an hour to strip down by taking it one step at a time. Hopefully it will go back together quicker.

 

The pump arrived yesterday, so today I took it over to the van and started working on plumbing it in and cleaning out the tank. I could just get my hand in to clean the tank but there are a lot of sharp plastic edges so I ended up with every knuckle bleeding. Looked like I’d been in a scrap. There is a filter in the pipe between the pump and the flush output, so I managed to get the pipes back in place either side of the filter and re wired the switch. Feeling please with myself, I tested it only to find that the filter is one way and all the water was shooting out of a bypass flap on it. So another 30 minutes taking it apart again and changing the pipes round before it worked properly. Not bad though for just over £8.

Found another problem working on the toilet. There should be a trap that opens and closes by moving a lever on the side when you flush it. There is a plastic bit that swings across when the lever moves but it is underneath where the trap is. I can see the edge of the trap, and I assume that the other bit of plastic is supposed to move it but it’s not happening. The next job is to work out how to get to it, probably from underneath.

 

The pump arrived yesterday, so today I took it over to the van and started working on plumbing it in and cleaning out the tank. I could just get my hand in to clean the tank but there are a lot of sharp plastic edges so I ended up with every knuckle bleeding. Looked like I’d been in a scrap. There is a filter in the pipe between the pump and the flush output, so I managed to get the pipes back in place either side of the filter and re wired the switch. Feeling please with myself, I tested it only to find that the filter is one way and all the water was shooting out of a bypass flap on it. So another 30 minutes taking it apart again and changing the pipes round before it worked properly. Not bad though for just over £8.

Found another problem working on the toilet. There should be a trap that opens and closes by moving a lever on the side when you flush it. There is a plastic bit that swings across when the lever moves but it is underneath where the trap is. I can see the edge of the trap, and I assume that the other bit of plastic is supposed to move it but it’s not happening. The next job is to work out how to get to it, probably from underneath.

Dunno what shape you are but i think you need to be wiry and pixie shaped to work on motorhomes with good knees which Im not! It always results in pain. Everything is impossible to get at. I have a nice easy job of replacing a smashed wing mirror indicator at some point which the nice council white van man took out today.

 

It seems to move freely when I poke it, just doesn’t move with the lever.

 

Sounds like a fiddley job checking and tightening the mechanism.

It may be worth investing in a Refresher kit. I bought one a few years ago to get a spare cassette. From memory I think they come with the cassette and a new toilet seat! It might be worth googling to see if there is a kit for your cassette/toilet type. I think I paid around 80 quid back 8-9 years ago.

Having a spare cassette if you can find the room, is not too bad an idea in case you get caught out or want to go 'off grid' for a few days.

 

I decided to bring the toilet cassette home to work on it in the shed and see if I could work out how to get into it. I tried Googling and Youtubing and didn’t realize how many slightly different versions of the toilet there were. Several different trap mechanisms, so I just dived in and started taking screws out. One of the videos said to rotate the plate in the top of the cassette to remove it, That didn’t work, so having removed the two fixing screws I tried levering it out. That didn’t work, so after a bit of head scratching I found that the two raised ridges that the blanking plate slides in actually pull off and reveal six more screws. With those removed the plate lifted straight off with the rubber seal revealing a lot more of the gubbins inside. I could immediately see that the plastic gizmo that the trap lever operated, had a track molded into it which should have been connected to a plastic peg on the trap that slides freely in the track. The peg had come out of the track somehow, so the trap was going nowhere. A bit of judicious levering with two screwdrivers and the peg finally popped back into the track. I gave the cassette a good clean up and recharge and all good to go back in tomorrow. Another job done out of many still to do, but slowly ticking them off. The next job is a trip to Clacton in the morning to pick up a cooker for the start of the kitchen rebuild.
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Do you know how the peg came out of the track and do you think you've stopped it happening again in the future Roger?

 

Hi Graham, I couldn’t see any obvious reason why the peg had come out, but there has been quite a lot of shoddy work on the van and I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been accidentally dislodged whilst doing some over enthusiastic cleaning of the cassette interior. It took quite a bit of force to get it back in so probably just as much to pop it out.