2018 Eagle HT 29.5 BHDS Mods and Maintenance

[ciollika]

Starting a thread to capture all of the mods and maintenance procedures on our Eagle HT fifth wheel. The intent is that this thread will hopefully help others, and also be a place for me to share ideas and ask questions of the community here.

By way of introduction, my name is Kyle, and my family and I love camping all over WA state. My wife and I have a 2 year old daughter, a 2 month old son, and a big ole chocolate lab.

We bought a brand new 2014 WhiteHawk 21DSRB right after we got married in 2013. We loved that trailer, and used it a ton. We upsized to a 2015 JayFlight 27RLS after our daughter was born, getting an amazing deal on a used unit. We used the heck out of that trailer for years. When we were expecting our 2nd child, we knew that we needed bunks. So we started watching the local ads (knowing that we didn't want to buy new again), and last fall an almost new fifth wheel came up for sale.

We jumped on it, and are now happy owners of a fifth wheel. Here is our 2018 Eagle HT 29.5 BHDS on our maiden voyage.



Our tow vehicle is a 2006 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 CCSB with the LBZ Duramax. Mods I have done to it are the B&W turnover ball, air bags in the rear, it is tuned by MotorOps, has a S&B intake and full turbo back MBRP exhaust, and I use the Edge CTS2 gauge cluster with EGT probe. This has been a great truck, but I am very much considering upgrading to a '14+ Dodge 3500 MegaCab with the Cummins.

[Force]

Great rig. I have quite a few mods of my own on my 2016 29.5 BHDS if you are looking for any ideas : )


https://www.jaycoowners.com/forums/f...age-36065.html

[ciollika]

Originally Posted by Force

Great rig. I have quite a few mods of my own on my 2016 29.5 BHDS if you are looking for any ideas : )


https://www.jaycoowners.com/forums/f...age-36065.html

Mr. Force... I was hoping you'd come aboard! Your mods thread was the inspiration for this one.

[Force]

Originally Posted by ciollika

Mr. Force... I was hoping you'd come aboard! Your mods thread was the inspiration for this one.

Well, I'm flattered then


I have been offline for the winter months, but I'm back for another season! Well, as soon as I get the cover off mine anyway lol

[ciollika]

On of my spring maintenance projects is to lubricate all of my exterior mechanical systems and check all of my seals.

Had to add some dicor to the seam where the front cap meets the roof, and around one of the vents.

Also used the Thetford spray lube on the living room slide track, and the Thetford rubber gasket conditioner on both slides.

Hit the rear stabilizers and entry stair hinges with WD40 dry lube.

Moving to the front landing gear. First I’m replacing the straight grease zerks with 90* zerks.


I also build a grease applicator for the leg screws. Will be testing this out soon!



While I’m working on the landing gear, I wanted to straighten them out, unless any of you all can tel me why they’d be canted inward like this...

[ciollika]

Few small mods to share

First a couple 5 min updates, cup holders and cup hooks!




Next I decided to enlarge the water pump access and build a hinged door, inspired by Force

Made a panel door with some hemlock stock I had and used the OE door as the panel, then enlarged the hole and painted the frame black




I reinforced where the hinges would attach with some scrap plywood, picking up top and bottom structure and gluing with poly construction adhesive

[Shokyle1]

I have the 2018 29.5bhds as well. One 5 minute mod I did was move the back wall of the cabinet over the sink area as far back as it would go. It is now deep enough to store plates. Here is the before and after. Only a couple inches but worth it.

[ciollika]

Originally Posted by Shokyle1

I have the 2018 29.5bhds as well. One 5 minute mod I did was move the back wall of the cabinet over the sink area as far back as it would go. It is now deep enough to store plates. Here is the before and after. Only a couple inches but worth it.

That’s a great idea I will take a look at that

[ciollika]

Another small mod, added the camco screen door handle

[DBuley]

I did something similar, food for thought, put diagram on back of door panel to show valve position for winterizing so anyone could check and adjust.

[ciollika]

Originally Posted by DBuley

I did something similar, food for thought, put diagram on back of door panel to show valve position for winterizing so anyone could check and adjust.

Good idea!

[ciollika]

Spent a lot of time on the rig this weekend

First, I was able to get the landing gear straightened out a bit. Got it all completely cleaned and lubricated.

The “grease sleeve” I made for the landing gear screws worked great.

Used spray on white lithium on the tubes and spring pins.





Hard to get a good pic but this method worked to get new grease coated on the entire screw



In disassembling everything to clean/degrease all the components, I noticed the landing gear feet were in pretty rough shape, one pretty badly bent. So I ordered a set of the 9” round lippert feet



I’ve also started on my electrical upgrade project. Details to come in future posts!

[DBuley]

That grease tube tool you made, what type of ends are on it? Looks like nylon with a brass fitting... looking to do something similar and dont want to reinvent the wheel so to speak.

[ciollika]

There’s a close up pic earlier in this thread. I just grabbed the cheapest combination of fittings needed to reduce down from 1” ID clear tubing to a 1/8 grease zerk

[ciollika]

Ok, time to upgrade the batteries and add a battery monitor. We don’t do a lot of boondocking, but the dual group 24 batteries that I had struggled to keep up with the slides and landing gear needs, so it was time for an upgrade. I did hours of research, and just could not justify the cost for Lithium, so opted to go with 6v golf cart batteries. I know many folks prefer Trojans, but after talking with my local battery dealer, they recommended the US Battery 2200 GCX. I saw horrible reviews on the Costco GC batteries, so did not go that route although that was my original plan. To monitor the battery bank, I splurged and got the Victron BMV-712, which has bluetooth connectivity also. The main use case for this unit is being able to tell when i need to fire up the Honda EU2000 to charge up the batts when needed.

Given that the new batteries required maintenance, the original battery compartment was going to work. To tight, and I didn’t want to have to remove the batts to water them, so I planned to remove the metal battery box altogether… But after talking it over with a trusted friend, he really recommended keeping the steel battery box for fire suppression…. So that pointed to the only viable option of a sliding battery tray.



The first step was to beef it up with some plywood, to give rigidity but also to be a mounting board for components and drawer slides. Using ¾ birch ply here





Building the battery tray





Getting everything painted and starting to install components



Used some beefy spring latches to keep the tray secure when not extended





Here’s the install of the Shunt for the Victron battery monitory, and a distribution block for the positive side. I also swapped the 40 am fuse opn the hot side to a 40 amp breaker, intalled in the battery bay

[ciollika]

Installed in the rig







Here’s the install of the Victron BMV-712 battery monitor. I had wanted to install it in the upper cabinet over the sink with the rest of the system controls, but running the wire from there would have been a huge pain, so i opted to install in the wall outside of the bathroom next to the thermostat. Upon inspection, I could see that it would be in easy run of wire down the largely hollow wall, through the subfloor with the plumbing, and then through the basement to the front storage bay.







Next up will probably be figuring out how to mount the cordless Dyson v6 in the front basement storage bay.

[Shokyle1]

Funny how different the same year and model can be. Mine came with the one touch system instead of the remote control. With one touch you can monitor battery voltage with your phone.

[DBuley]

Mine is a 2020 and i dont have one touch. I like the drawer idea, i think i would still pull that whole metal enclosure as many other coaches dont use any surround. I understand fire suppression but considering all wood around it, it gonna burn anyways. How much were those batteries and controller? Might go that route.

[ciollika]

Batteries were $130ish each at a local battery dealer. The Victron 712 was $207 I think on Amazon

[ciollika]

On the passenger side there is a storage compartment for a third propane tank, but I use it for storage of chocks and blocks. There is a mounting bracket in there that I used to attach a shelf to, making the space much more usable for what I use jt for!