The Dreaded Heater

It's time to get the floor going. I am supposed to seal all of the holes left by the seats ... but had to remove the HUGE, useless heater in the back. Each line has antifreeze in it and while you can turn the valve off on the radiator ... you cannot close off the line that goes to the engine ... what fun!

This was not a project that I could do by myself, so I had to bribe my son, Nathan, to come over ... it was promise of dinner LOL I was glad he came to help cause I knew it would be a mess but didn't anticipate that much of a mess! 🙄 A-N-T-I-F-R-E-E-Z-E every where ... literally!

Nathan and I were working along when I almost messed up the whole project by trying to by-pass the antifreeze lines under the hood. Daddy 💕 wanted to make sure that the heater by the driver worked ... OOPS! Glad I caught it before it was too late ... well, good thing we had lots of extra hose ... shhh! Don't tell Daddy 💕!

During the whole process, we ran to the auto parts store like 100 times trying to find the right parts to by-pass the heater in the back but maintain the drivers heater ... yikes! After cutting, removing and getting literally drenched in antifreeze ... we called it a day and I ordered the special 90º brass elbow we needed (I was able to find it here).

Once the elbow arrived ... it was time to get this part of the project completed! It only took 2-days to get the part! YAY!

There were lots and lots of hose ... but thankfully Nathan is smaller than me and can fit under the steering wheel .. LOL Here he is being a doll and getting under the steering wheel to work with the hoses ...

Tools you will need:

• exacto knife to cut hose
• wire cutters to cut power lines
• 90º brass elbow
• replacement hose clamps incase any of yours are damaged or missing (we didn't have to replace any)
• 5/8" ratchet/socket
• philips screw driver to remove the control panel under the steering wheel, there's two of them
• patience
• a small person ... LOL it's tight under the steering wheel
• and replacement antifreeze, you're going to lose some

So ... what did we do?

• turn the shut-off valve to the off position; under the hood that goes from the radiator to the heater box
• disconnected the heater and lifted the hoses so that the antifreeze would not run out onto the bus ... oops! That still happened because the hose fell out of the window ... it didn't get tons of antifreeze on the bus but it was enough to be annoying!
• cut the power lines and wrapped them up for Daddy to remove from the main control panel later (still waiting for that to get done LOL)
• drag the heater off the bus into a safe place, lots of people are looking for those! Might be able to sell it
• remove the main two hoses
• the return hose from the heater unit is what required the 90º elbow; we had to reconnect it under the hood on the drivers side
• refill lost antifreeze
• turn valve back on

That's it ... if we had the 90º elbow ... it would've taken only a few hours to complete the job. 

Happy RV'ing!!