“Get a handle on life, man!”
On my last trip (TX to IL), I settled into my RV spot and founs my Gray tank drain handle was missing. The rod is still there, but the little knob that’s supposed to bne on there was not… it apparently had enough of this life and let go somewhere….
The immediate answer of course was to grab my trusty multiu tool from my belt, pull the rod, and voila! gray water was flowing. Long term, however, I really prefer to have a knob on there.
So, I got to looking around, and visited all the usual suspects; Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, even Ace hardware, and not a one of them had a replacement handle in stock.
I decided to have a quick google search for the thread size, and I was delighted to find many posts asking for the same information, and, more importantly, getting answers!
Across the board(s), the overwhelming answer was ‘1/4″ x 20’, so I took a gander down the hardware aisle at Walmart and let the brain juices start flowing. Finding nothing of any use there, I made the trip down to Home Depot a whole 10 minutes from where I was visiting) and perused the hardware aisle for a few minutes.
Suddenly, a light bulb! Ok, ok, just a figurative one over my head, but still, I had an idea!
Threaded rod uses long threaded nuts as couplers, and I wondered if I could just use one of those to attach some kind of home made handle to the existing rod.
Being pretty sure it would, I bought my parts:
1) two foot stick of 1/2″ PVC
1) 1/4″ x 20 x 1 1/2″ bolt
2) 1/4″ flat washers
1) 1/4″ hext nut
1) bag of (3) coupler nuts
I checked all the sizes in store to make sure the length was right for the width of the pipe, and then scurried home to see if my idea would work.
I started by checking how long I COULD make the handle, so that it would still spin in a circle and not hit the camper floor, then selected a size I liked based on my hand size. That came out to about 6.5″ long, and form there I just drilled a 15/64″ hole through the pipe handle, right in the center, then assembled the hardware with some blue threadlocker.
Once dry and cleaned up, I gave it a test tug, and it works great!
I even made sure to make it neat and aerodynamic to minimize wind resistance!
I cleaned up, put all my stuff away, stowed the extra set of hardware for when the other knob flys off the handle, and had a celebratory beverage to commemorate the event.
Happy Trails!
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