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Old 11-12-2009, 09:49 AM   #1
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SeeLevel II in Winne 32V

Help,

I just started to install the SeeLevel 709 and ran into a brick wall. I pulled off the steel panel in the water compartment (not an easy task) and all I see is the black water tank and the monitor wires. I go to the main storage bay on the passenger side and I see the fresh water tank (actually 2 connected with a large hose), but no monitor level wires. I can't even find the grey water tank. Not a nice easy install like I see in the pics of the Journey.

Has anyone installed the SeeLevel on this 32 V Adventurer (2002)?
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Ole and Anne Anderson, Highland, Michigan
'02 Adventurer 32V, Ford F-53, ours since 4/08,Goodyears, Konis, SeeLevel, CHF
'84 CJ-7 , 5.3 Chevy, 3" lift, 33's, Detroit Locker, Fiberglas tub, winch, hi-lift
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Old 11-12-2009, 07:33 PM   #2
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I called Winnebago and a service tech pointed me to the service manuals:

Manuals & Diagrams

With those diagrams and his help, I was able to determine that the wires for the fresh water tank were just hidden behind the mounting plate for the emergency slide winch in the compartment behind the entrance door. 2 screws removed the storage plate and it was right there, under the jack handle.

The grey water access was above the next compartment back. That required removing the body panel around the wheel well to get access to the last of the screws on the steel access plate above the compartment. The plate is held in with that nasty butyl rubber. With that stuff, who needs screws?

Here is a shot of those 2 tanks:



Note that the end of the grey water tank is supported by styrofoam 2.5" thick meant to slope the tank to the outlet. So when it shows empty, there is still 3 inches of water in the other end of the 6" deep tank.
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Ole and Anne Anderson, Highland, Michigan
'02 Adventurer 32V, Ford F-53, ours since 4/08,Goodyears, Konis, SeeLevel, CHF
'84 CJ-7 , 5.3 Chevy, 3" lift, 33's, Detroit Locker, Fiberglas tub, winch, hi-lift
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Old 11-12-2009, 08:06 PM   #3
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Removing the panel in the water compartment took some doing. The plumbing came undone quite easily, the electrical connectors for the light and pump switches were really stuck. With all that removed and the screws out, it was a VERY tight fit to get the panel out. With a little bending and a lot of grunting it did come out.

I elected to reuse the wires and abandon the old sensors. To do that, simply cut the white and yellow wires, splice the new black wire to the old white and the new blue to the old yellow and they will be joined together behind the display later on. If you want a real clean job, unscrew the old wires at the tank and replace the screw. The screw goes directly into the tank so if you don't drain the tank first, they will start peeing all over. My black and grey tanks were quite full and I wanted to check the sensor at full, so I elected to just remove the connectors on the frsh water tank which was just above the 1/3 full sensor.

I used crimp connectors with the build-in heat shrink. Over a buck apiece, but the heat shrink/adhesive gives me piece of mind as to the mechanical connection.

I cleaned the tank surface with rubbing alcohol and stuck the sensors on temporarily with narrow strips of duct tape after splicing the wires.

Up top, 2 screws in the trim remove the whole electrical panel in the hall. Referring to the panel wiring diagram, I cut all of the wires between the circuit board and the plug. I left the wires to the small connector, for the solar panel indicator, intact. The grey, brown and red wires in pins 4, 5 and 6 of the plug get twisted together and crimped in a sleeve. Those get spliced to the blue wire in the SeeLevel 4 wire harness. The green/white wire gets spliced to the green SeeLevel wire for the LP sensor. The black SeeLevel wire splices to the white ground wire and the red SeeLevel wire splices to the black wire going to the house battery/engine battery switch. If you do the single display as I did, you don't need to do any separate chassis grounds, it all goes through the existing wiring.
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Ole and Anne Anderson, Highland, Michigan
'02 Adventurer 32V, Ford F-53, ours since 4/08,Goodyears, Konis, SeeLevel, CHF
'84 CJ-7 , 5.3 Chevy, 3" lift, 33's, Detroit Locker, Fiberglas tub, winch, hi-lift
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Old 11-12-2009, 08:38 PM   #4
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With that done, I plugged the display panel to the SeeLevel 4 wire harness. Voltage read 12.4 (engine battery), LP was at 87%, agreeing with the tank gauge (87% of the 80% capacity), fresh water read 35% which agrees with my visual, the grey measured 58% which was reasonable, but I got a big fat zero on the black water tank which I knew wasn't empty. Hoping that there was an air gap behind the sensor, I pushed in it with my hand and it started reading., so I removed the paper backing and stuck it down permanently, as I then did with the other two sensors.

Here is how they looked before I buttoned them up:

Black water first:



Followed by grey water:



and finally, fresh water:



Finally, I am following the suggestion of another and moving the thermostat up to cover the old level monitor readout, and installing the SeeLevel II panel where the thermostat had previously been. Sure wish the old panel was plastic or aluminum, not steel, that is tough enough to work with if I were home in my shop, but I am down in Florida with a minimum of tools, I did bring my cordless drill however, that will have to do.

I filled the tanks, they hit 100% with about a 5 gallon safety margin, and read zero when emptied, I am one happy camper.
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Ole and Anne Anderson, Highland, Michigan
'02 Adventurer 32V, Ford F-53, ours since 4/08,Goodyears, Konis, SeeLevel, CHF
'84 CJ-7 , 5.3 Chevy, 3" lift, 33's, Detroit Locker, Fiberglas tub, winch, hi-lift
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Old 11-15-2009, 05:56 PM   #5
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In looking at the photo of the black water tank, I see that it, too, sits on a styrofoam block to drain it toward the middle tank outlet. That explains all of the flushes so far and I am still reading zero. I only had 8% when I installed the gage, and I had to run the hose into the toilet a long time to get it to 100%. Did the same on the grey water to verify that it would reach 100%, then I drained both to make sure they would reach 0%. I did note that after they hit 100%, I probably got another 5 gallons in each which is not all bad.

All of this is ok as I am most interested as to how close am I to needing to drain them. A linear reading would be nice, but it wasn't worth getting access to the area where the tank drain, and the full height of the tank, was located.

I ended up going to Walmart and buying the least expensive Dremil tool to make the cuts in the steel interior display panel. The little mini cut off blades worked great, only used 3 to cut the steel and the wood behind the steel plate. The drill was just going to be too ugly and difficult.

Also as noted in another post, I cut off the corner of the circuit board that has the solar charging indicator light and one mounting hole so I was able to save that function. The rest of the board got tossed.
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Ole and Anne Anderson, Highland, Michigan
'02 Adventurer 32V, Ford F-53, ours since 4/08,Goodyears, Konis, SeeLevel, CHF
'84 CJ-7 , 5.3 Chevy, 3" lift, 33's, Detroit Locker, Fiberglas tub, winch, hi-lift
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Old 11-15-2009, 07:44 PM   #6
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Here is a pic of the rear of the panel showing my splices.



And here is the final product:

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Ole and Anne Anderson, Highland, Michigan
'02 Adventurer 32V, Ford F-53, ours since 4/08,Goodyears, Konis, SeeLevel, CHF
'84 CJ-7 , 5.3 Chevy, 3" lift, 33's, Detroit Locker, Fiberglas tub, winch, hi-lift
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Old 11-18-2009, 10:36 PM   #7
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Nice writeup!
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