Among those who have SMC coaches with sewer flanges that protrude below the basement, I suspect I'm not the only one who has hit one on a rock or other otherwise innocuous obstacle. At a CG in Maine a week ago I smacked mine (again) and this time I had a problem that was evidenced fortunately by leakage during both gray and black tank draining. The leakage was obviously going onto the floor of the wet compartment and then out of the ground around the low point drain openings.
We limped along until we could get to a city (Halifax) where parts would be available and yesterday I removed the wet compartment "control" cover. The damage had resulted from the "torquing" that the drain connection gets when it strikes an object while driving by it. The torque creates a twisting motion which had fractured the flanges that seal the Valterra valves to the manifold. In the accompanying picture the arrow points to the fracture on the gray water valve flange; there was a similar fracture on the black water flange.
The good news is that the piece labeled "manifold" in the photo is a common Valterra part and comes complete with both valves. Since there was no damage to the outer flanges, I didn't need to replace them or deal with cutting the pipe onto which they were glued. The only issue was coming up with the proper set of ABS pipe pieces to create the extended drain onto which the sewer hose is connected. The Valterra manifold is too short to even protrude through the bottom of the deck let alone to be long enough to reach from beside the vehicle.
After all the piping was set and glued the hole in the deck was filled with spray foam which I will cover on the outside with caulking. All that remained to do was to replace the water control panel.
Start to finish ~5 hours including 3 trips to RV and hardware stores. I didn't think that was too bad, especially being a stranger in a "foreign country". The parts folks at Fraserway RV were great; their help was invaluable. (The parts manager told me not to feel bad since they replace dozens of these same parts on their rental fleet each year! LOL)
A long day, but a successful one!
