Tank Valves - RV-Dreams Community Forum

cpaxton · RV-Dreams Community Member

Tank Valves

Terry and Jo · RV-Dreams Family Member

Cindy and Bob,

First of all, let me welcome you to the RV Dreams forums. There are a lot of knowledgeable folks here that are friendly and helpful. These folks all are in different types of RV's, so there is a lot of advice available.

I've heard of the vegetable oil thing several times. I think the concensus is that it works. It is certainly worth trying before going to the expense of replacing valves.

In the past, when many thought the had a problem with the lubrication of the cable, the vegetable oil fix helped most of them as well.

Terry

RickandJanice · RV-Dreams Family Member

Cindy & Bob,

Yes, Vegetable oil works great. Had same problem this fall with our black tank valve. Bought a gallon of the cheapest oil available, drained and rinsed tank with on board tank rinse until water ran completely clear and then poured oil in tank in tank through the toilet. You will need to work the valve several times as the oil is released to work it into the seal as it drains. I actually caught ours in a bucket and ran it through the black tank twice before disposing.

Hope you are as amazed by the results as I was. Valves actually work better than when new.

Alie and Jims Carrilite · RV-Dreams Family Member

I used the veggie oil flush as a last resort to taking a 16 year old system apart. It worked great!

Bill and Linda · RV-Dreams Family Member

The Vegi-oil thing may work and please give it a try. However, we have, as you can see below in the sig, an almost identical trailer as far as the holding tanks valves are concerned so I provide this information should it help.

KZ put the valves inside to avoid freezing; that’s the good news. The bad news is the cables were run in such a way that after this long a time, with the wear on the values, these cables bind and the valves can’t fully close.

We chose to have the values replaced at the factory service center after 6 years of almost full-time service. The technicians rerouted the cables and advised us that it was their experience that this re-routing, not possible during construction, would work better. It has thus far for us.

If you would like some direct contact names and numbers for KZ service please PM me. Any good RV repair technician can do the job. But if by any chance your able to go by the factory service center it will most likely cost much less and they have a habit of taking care of small issues for their trailers at extremely, at least in comparison to most, very good pricing. We have been extremely pleased with our service from KZ.

Safe travels

Bill

rclvnv · RV-Dreams Family Member

Veggie oil sounds like a great idea. How did you dispose of the oil when done?

Richard

skipwest · RV-Dreams Community Member

Cpaxton,

Hi, and welcome! This year when I took our shiny new Coachmen Brookstone out for its first shakedown cruise and then came home to dump, I was using a macerator for the first time. It has a clear body where it attaches to the coach. The dump valve was very sticky and it took a lot of force to open and close it several times. Finally it opened fully and to my surprise I saw two small disks, one round black and round white flapping around in the fitting. When dumping finished, I flushed the line and disconnected from the dump line. There were these two disks which were obviously the remnants of the "install" that had been done in the factory. Some doofus had let the disks fall into the tank and left them there from attaching the lines. Haven't seen one since and hope to never see one again. I wish you luck with your problem. Wish I had a great solution, but thought I'd throw this in as a possibility.

NorCal Dan · RV-Dreams Family Member

Another welcome to the forum. You can clean the valve. I took mine off to clean it, but I've read others used a coat hangar to clean the slot. The valve is like a disk that slides back and forth in a slot. It's very easy for "junk" to get trapped in the slot just from normal dumping. Then when you close the valve the "junk" gets crammed into the slot, then drys to a hard crust and after a while you will find the valve very hard to both open/close. After I cleaned my black valve it worked like new. If you want to remove the valve for cleaning I recommend you dump and flush the tank real good, then if possible, tilt your rig to the passenger side before removing the valve. On mine it was only 4 bolts to remove the valve.