Air Pressure Leak Testing

[cwf]

Anyone here a "patent lawyer"??? I have an idea....about mitigating these leaks.

[SCOTTinNJ]

Originally Posted by cwf

Anyone here a "patent lawyer"??? I have an idea....about mitigating these leaks.

I am. PM me.

[nickclifford]

Originally Posted by dbj216

I used a little dish wash soap in a container of water. I used a foam brush to soak the vents, seams, exterior lights, window frames, and anything else that looks like a leak source. The soap solution bubbles up like mad when you brush it over a leak.

You can see exactly where the leak is, and a bit of sealant usually takes care of it.

However, a good moisture detector along the interior wall to floor seam is always the prudent thing to do every now and then.

David

i know plenty of sealant postings, but which did you use ?

[dbj216]

There are several good sealants, but silicone based one isn't good for Airstreams.

I prefer the Acyl-R. I buy it from the Airstream.com store. I like it because it does a great job on seams. And I like to keep the "bead" small so I can see where the leak might be coming from. And the service techs at Jackson Center all had a can of it on their tool boxes.

Acyl-R wicks into the seam pretty good.

David

[sgschwend]

The guys at work use them, they say the ambient noise is the only reason they have troubles, in their case the machine room is full of noisy machines.

I think in our case we will be able to hear the transmitted sound.

The concept was developed back in the 80s. I won't try and explain it, but I would point out that the concept is much more than just sound wave transmission. It involved highly directional transmission, with a much higher speed of sound.

[sgschwend]

OK, I have tried two ultrasonic leak detectors with generators.
Here is what I found:
The low cost one could find large leaks but not small ones, in a scale of 1-10 it could perform as good as the Amprobe ULD-100 when it was on it number 2 setting, not very sensitive.

The Amprobe ULD-100 seems to work well, not sure if it is good enough, I plan on running the soap bubble test and compare that way.

The one leak I was having trouble finding was found by the Amprobe, it was the seam for the front vent.

Steve

[dbj216]

Very interesting experimentation with sonic "noise" leak testing. I had not heard of it before. Thanks for keeping us posted on how it works.

Are the units expensive?

David

[sgschwend]

New they are, used the price is reasonable, I took a look this weekend and found two different sales of Amprobe 100 for about $50. Receiver only, but my guess is that if I keep looking I can eventually find a good deal on the the transmitter too.

However, I still need to prove that it works as well as the bubble test.