Starting to mod the new TT! *Now with added pics!**

[SargeW]

Well, the mods have begun on our new 2023 Passport 2400RBWE. This is our 8th new RV in 25 years, and have modded them all. Sometimes out of necessity, other times it's just fun. So far this is what has been done.

First the drawer and cabinet pulls were terrible. The DW has some arthritis in her hands, and getting them open was near impossible. So heavy brushed stainless pulls were installed.

Then several hooks, towel bars, and various necessary "holders" were added.

An Andersen No Sway Load Distributing Hitch was put on.

A back up cam was put on the back of the TT to assist with getting into camp spots.

A electronic Bluetooth leveling device was installed to simplify the leveling and set up process as much as possible.

Also a remote display for the Xantrex Inverter was installed in the bedroom area.

The Lippert Tire Sense TPMS was installed. The mounting dock was pre-installed by Keystone.

I added water connections in the water bay to ease the city water hook up and a splitter to the black tank flush is a one hose option. A "plunger" was added to the water bay opening to seal it up against critters that may want to check into a nice warm storage area.

Also ran a Starlink cable through the water bay to the bedroom area for the Starlink router. It has a sealed entry point as well.

I bought and installed 1/2" rubber foam flooring in the storage bay to keep stuff from flying around as much going down the road.

A Girard tankless water heater is on the bench prepping to install in place of the Suburban 6 gallon tank WH that came with the unit.

After that I will be starting to shop for a Combo washer/Dryer for the rig. That was one of the DW's big necessities.

And after that, a new remote control Fantastic Fan for the bathroom.

So there has been no time to get bored. And that's just the stuff I have though of so far:lol:

 

[jackiemac]

Glutton for punishment

Mods sound fantastic

 

[SpencerPJ]

Congrats on your new TT. Now ya need to update your signature . I googled it, nice trailer.

 

[IBTripping]

Congrats on the new rig. I'm envious. Nice mods you are making.

 

[CharlesinGA]

Well, the mods have begun on our new 2023 Passport 2400RBWE. This is our 8th new RV in 25 years, and have modded them all. Sometimes out of necessity, other times it's just fun. So far this is what has been done.

SNIP................

The Lippert Tire Sense TPMS was installed. The mounting dock was pre-installed by Keystone.

SNIP.............

And after that, a new remote control Fantastic Fan for the bathroom.

So there has been no time to get bored. And that's just the stuff I have though of so far:lol:

Lippert TireLink? Were you able to pair up the sensors without any issue? (Android or Apple for the app?) I had huge headaches with this system getting everything working. The Lippert One Control App simply would not work (fairly new Motorolla Android) and the app had basically one star reviews. I ended up deleting it and installing Lippert Connect. It was an apparently new app that had no reviews or rating when I downloaded it. It works, sorta. (wished I was an app developer, the hardware is great, the app implementation sucks) Major problem is the app does not have a "I'm done, quit running" button, you can still exit it, but it will sit there and run your phone battery down. (My phone has a 5000ma battery and will go three to four days, however this app, running in the background will kill the phone in about 18 hrs.) Sometimes the phone will give me a warning that the app is still running and offer to kill it, sometimes it takes a restart and that does not always stop it.

There is an alerter device that you can buy, rather than depend on the phone or the optional dash display device, The alerter will sound off instantly when pressure drops below the preset minimum, or temp exceeds the preset max and then you can just pull off (which you are going to do anyway) and use your phone to check the readings, or get out and look. No sense having a dash display to clutter up the cab and take your attention away from driving.

The alerter is great, it has a battery in it, but needs to be powered by a USB port to alert instantly, and when you are pairing it, you need to plug it into a USB battery such as a Pocket Juice to keep it awake during the pairing process. Also during sensor or alerter pairing, keep pressing the button on the repeater to keep it awake too.

You will want to determine if the docking station power is shut off with the battery disconnect. If it is hot wired, it will kill your trailer battery. It apparently has non-volatile memory as mine retained all the pairing and functions when the power was removed from it for 24 hrs. Of course you will need to tow with the trailer battery on, but most people do I suppose (to keep fridge running if nothing else).

My trailer is plugged up 24/7 at home so I take the alerter and put it on a USB charger at the dinette to keep it charged up.

I installed metal valve stems when I installed new wheels, in anticipation of a TPMS system installation.

With the large fan in the bathroom, remember to turn it OFF before flushing or you will draw fumes from the black tank into the bathroom.

Enjoy your new toy.

Charles

 

[SargeW]

Thanks for the info Charles. So far the One Control app has worked for me without issue. My phone is a 2 year old Samsung, and so far no issues. I did note the day of the install that the app was still active and my phone battery was going much faster. Now after being on the road I just go to the phone and hit the "close all apps" function. I have an older Motorolla that I may set up for the sole purpose of running the TPMS app, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

One advantage of this trailer is that it came with 400 watts of solar installed and 2 lithium batteries, so there is a constant charge going to the rig, plugged in or not. I am still learning about the system though, my first real experience with on board solar.

 

[SMR]

"I added water connections in the water bay to ease the city water hook up and a splitter to the black tank flush is a one hose option. A "plunger" was added to the water bay opening to seal it up against critters that may want to check into a nice warm storage area."

Sounds like you have been busy!
Any pics of the splitter and plunger. Thanks

 

[SargeW]

I'll take one tomorrow Steve and post it up.

 

[Kirk]

You are doing the sort of thing that most experienced RV users do when they get a new rig. Enjoy!

 

[SargeW]

The water bay mod is easy and pretty cheap. A $3 plunger from the store is all that is needed. I flipped the plunger over and used a 1" spade bit to drill out the center of the plunger for the hose to slip through. Then for my purposes I drilled a second on for a 3/4" pvc fitting for my Starlink cable to slide through.

Then the plunger fits up into the usual screw in fitting in the bottom of the water bay.

I use a 3' piece of water hose to connect to the water inlet in the water bay. This way I don't have to remove the hose every time I disconnect. A quick connect at the end allows easy on and off of the water hose that goes to the water faucet. The water bay was modded to attach a water "Y" to the existing city water inlet and black flush inlet. A back flow preventer was put at the inlet to the black flush to prevent any possibility of back flow into the fresh water system. Then I can switch from city water to tank flush with a turn of the valve on the water "Y".

The in line pressure regulator is set at 60 psi. Most RV water systems are tested to 100 psi. A 3/4" plug is available to block the cable entrance if the Starlink system isn't needed. The hardest part was just figuring out what fittings would be required to hook the system together. Fortunately I always have an assortment of water fittings on board. All together I have less than $10 in the mod.

 

[SargeW]

I also finished the swap out of the 6 gallon Suburban tank WH for a Girard tankless yesterday. Not a difficult swap, the most detailed part was I had to extend the existing Pex water lines to reach the inlets on the far edge of the Girard. The Suburban fittings were on the center of the tank so each line needed to be extended about 6". Fortunately I had the fittings and Pex on hand. I will post a few pics of it a bit later today.

 

[SMR]

Thanks for sharing, I will definitely be doing that. It's amazing how fast a bird can build a nest in the water bay.

 

[SargeW]

That and mice. I have had my share of mice in RV's, and they can be a bear to get rid of. Anything you do to keep out the critters is a good thing.

 

[SargeW]

I finished the swap out of the Tankless Water heater. The Girard is pretty much plug and play. 3 basic steps for the hook up, hook up the propane line, only 2 wires are needed for the electrical portion as it is just a 12 volt operations, connect the red to positive and the black to negative, and the water lines. The only adjustment I needed to do was to extend the Pex lines about 6" each as the inlets on the Girard are on the edge of the unit and the inlets on the Suburban were in the center of the tank. I already had the Pex tools and some left over red and blue Pex line from a previous fix on the Bus.


The only real challenge was to find a source for the door and trim ring for the new WH. It doesn't come with one, mostly due to it is often used as an upgrade/replacement unit for an older gas/electric tank unit. An extensive Google search wasn't finding much, and what I did find was stupid expensive.


I finally found the door and trim ring as a set for a reasonable price of $40 from Home Depot of all places. It took about a week to get it delivered to my local store, but it was in perfect condition and the right size. Gerard (Lippert) makes 3 different size doors for the WH to allow the door to cover the excess space left when an older, larger WH is replaced. I just needed the smaller one, about 14X14", and that was the one that was out of stock everywhere. Once I had the door with the trim attached the install was pretty smooth. The new WH also includes a remote panel that allows you to adjust the temp of the water delivered to between 92-125 degrees. I can recommend it if you need a new WH and are looking to upgrade.

 

[PancakeBill]

Let us know how you like it after using a bit. I hear they take some getting used to.

 

[TonyL]

We never went as far as replacing the onboard water heater on our fifth wheel, but I do agree that little tweaks to get to the trailer/RV you want can be enjoyable. Once they're done, it's the normal maintenance issues that take over. One of the biggest issues with our layout was the huge corner cabinet for the TV. We noticed that it was starting to come away from the wall so we put some timber supports to the floor cabinet below. We then put additional support behind the electric fire to brace everything.

 

[SC5thWheeler]

View attachment 162117

@SargeW I really like this setup.

How did you get everythingto line up? Did you just get lucky that the Y connector and the elbow pieces happened to line up with the two inlet ports?

 

[SargeW]

The hook ups were pretty straight forward. I did have to extend the water lines 6" to reach the inlet ports on the Girard. Other than that the propane line was plenty long enough, and the electrical connections had lots of extra wire.

Let us know how you like it after using a bit. I hear they take some getting used to.

We have had tankless in the last 2 RV's and the DW loves it. There really is not much of an adjustment period, as they work pretty smoothly.

 

[SargeW]

So more mods on the TT. Changed out the cheapo manual hand crank vent with the 4" fan in the bath to a Maxxair vent with remote. The PIA was getting the old one off with the excessive Dicor that the factory used to glue the old one down ( along with 32 screws!)

The Dicor was so sticky that it deformed the paper thin EPDM roof around the vent while trying to get it to release. It's been a long time since I had a EPDM roof on a RV, but I sure don't remember them being that paper thin. So after I got the old one off and cleaned up as best as I could, the install of the new one was a breeze. In order to address the messed up roof material around the vent, I picked up some 4" Eternabond type tape. I put down a layer around the entire vent, 3/16" away from the fan. Then I finished it with a bead of Dicor around the vent and all of the screws. It should be there for a long time, and the DW loves being able to control the vent without having to stand on the toilet.


I also have a Maxxair vent cover coming to attach to the fan. Amazon loves me lately...

Next I start on the washer/dryer install.

 

[Lou Schneider]

EDPM sheds material as it ages so it becomes thinner with time. If it was paper thin around the vent it's probably in similar shape throughout the roof. You can get liquid EDPM coatings that will renew the roofing material.