Broken Dometic Toilet

[katanapilot]

When cleaning our never used Dometic flush toilet a couple of days ago, I noticed the ball valve did not open when I pushed the flush pedal.  Water flowed, so the flush valve is working ok.  I was able to move the ball valve by hand - it's obviously disconnected from the flush lever.

My local Dometic service center is 4-6 weeks out and so far, no luck with a mobile service center.

This failure seems to be pretty common according to the numerous negative reviews of this toilet on the Dometic web site.

The parts are not available from Dometic and Jason indicated the toilet needs to be replaced.  However, I have found some aftermarket parts that claim to be more robust than the plastic pieces Dometic uses. So I assume a repair is possible.

If anyone has had this failure and if so, have you attempted to repair the toilet yourself?  I dislike RV dealers even more than auto dealers and would rather have a root canal than leave my new trailer at a dealer for an indeterminate amount of time.

[bhncb]

Given the age of your LEII, and your location, I'd tow it back to Hohenwald and have them replace the toilet. In the long run, you'll save both time and aggravation.

[Dean]

A broken toilet  mechanism?  If I was younger I would get into the RV components business and put Dometic and the rest the yahoos out of business.

Edited September 17, 2020 by Dean

[katanapilot]

19 hours ago, bhncb said:

Given the age of your LEII, and your location, I'd tow it back to Hohenwald and have them replace the toilet. In the long run, you'll save both time and aggravation.

Let's see - 10 hours of driving plus a couple of hours at Oliver. 668 miles round trip at (IRS rate) $0.58 per mile - $387.44 plus a night in a hotel (can't stay in the trailer without a toilet) = approximately $500.00

Dometic 311 toilet - less than $200 plus an hour or so of my work (in addition I'll learn how to replace the toilet).

Doesn't really make sense to me...

[Mainiac]

Is there an RV junkyard around? Some of the SOB (some other brands) fall apart before the toilets do. Get parts or whole fixtures from them?

[Buck]

Are you talking about the ball valve where the supply line comes through the floor?

[katanapilot]

15 minutes ago, Buck said:

Are you talking about the ball valve where the supply line comes through the floor?

No, it's the flush ball valve in the bottom of the toilet bowl.  The water valve works fine.  This is apparently a common failure mode for this toilet based on comments on the Dometic website.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I found a mobile service person that will come and replace the toilet on Dometic's dime.

[ScubaRx]

3 hours ago, katanapilot said:

... (can't stay in the trailer without a toilet) ...

You stated in your original post: “When cleaning our never used Dometic flush toilet....”

????

[katanapilot]

33 minutes ago, ScubaRx said:

You stated in your original post: “When cleaning our never used Dometic flush toilet....”

????

Yep, never used (at least by us - don't know about any of the Oliver folks).  We picked up the trailer in Hohenwald and towed it directly home. The weather forecast was lousy so we didn't stay in David Crockett.

We haven't used the trailer yet and I was cleaning the toilet since there was some slime in it.  That's when I discovered the ball flush valve wasn't connected to the foot pedal.

 

[katanapilot]

Turns out the failure was due to the lack of a $0.05 screw that was never installed by Dometic. I found that it was missing today when I removed the flush ball valve. 
 

Fortunately, Cindy at Oliver service was able to source the screw and is sending it to me.

Domestic doesn’t provide any parts breakdown or replacement parts except for the ball valve seal and the water valve.