First, the tank bracket is mounted on a scrap piece of 3/4 inch plywood that I rounded over, glassed, and painted with Rustoleum Hammer Finish. First mistake was using a rattle can primer that we had a few of. The reason we had them in the first place was that we used it on our floor, after the epoxy and before the silver Rustoleum Hammer finish or sand finish. In both cases, it turns out the primer doesn't really adhere to the epoxy all that well, and is brittle for quite awhile after application. I'd forgotten all that, of course, or I wouldn't have used it here.
Then, with much trepidation, I drilled the 6 holes through the tear into the utility compartment for the bolts mounting the plywood.
Guess I didn't measure right, and caused minor damage to the safety light junction box (repaired with more epoxy) and I had a bolt dangerously close to the cable coming from the tow vehicle. Fixed that by remounting the junction box on stand-offs about 5/8 of an inch away from the wall. Oh, the plywood is actually about a half inch from the front of the tear, held away by washers. That wasn't part of the original plan, but was done to let any rainwater that got trapped between the two run right out. I wanted to caulk, but Shelly suggested the spacing, and I couldn't think of a good reason not to, at the time. Now, I'm wondering if having the board mounted right to the face of the tear wouldn't be stronger, which my intuition says is so, but my one semester of mechanical engineering can't confirm. I guess we'll see this Summer if it's strong enough.
I did use Butyl tape around the bolts, so hopefully they'll be water-proof despite the leading edge winds.
Oh, I mounted the tank bracket to the plywood using stainless bolts into stainless T-nuts held with ten year old red Loctite. First, as I discovered later, Loctite has a shelf life measured in months. However, it may be good enough, as I couldn't get the bolts out after discovering this, and also realizing I hadn't quite water-proofed the wood around them with more epoxy as I'd originally planned. It may be that the Loctite worked anyway; but more likely, I was meeting resistance from the stainless-stainless interface between the bolts and nuts.
All-in-all, I'm thinking I may redo the mount next Winter!
Anyway, we explored having several propane vendors, and other experienced folks (balloonists mostly), custom make our gas connections, but finally discovered it was cheaper (both senses of the term, probably) to buy the parts from the high quality Chinese companies represented on Amazon.
We couldn't find the 10 foot 4 inch hose we needed, so settled for a 12 foot gas hose with steel braided outer cover, that we ran under the tear
I added some scrap wood blocks (epoxied for water-proofness) screwed and glued with epoxy to our floor, so the hose wouldn't rub against the cross braces in the trailer frame. I off-set the blocks to take up the extra length of the hose.
Found a reasonably good place to mount the quick-connect.
That's held there by another wood block and a piece of 3/16 inch aluminum. I used U bolts around some of the joints into the aluminum to hold it firmly.
In my investigations,
I learned that while bar-be-ques have regulators with pressures of less than 1/2 PSI, camp stove regulators are in the 15 to 27 PSI range. That means the quick connects one finds on Amazon aren't rated for what we're doing 
So I ordered a higher pressure quick connect from a propane vendor in Texas.Since the hose that we got for cheap has 3/8 inch flange connectors, we needed some converters for 1/4 inch NPT. We also needed some gender changers here and there. Once we had all the parts figured out, and in hand, we tried using yellow teflon tape to make the junctions all gas tight. Knowing better than buying $8/bottle "gas leak test fluid" from Amazon, we mixed up some soapy water and tested. What a disaster!
Bubbles everywhere!Ok, first thing, NEVER USE TAPE OR PIPE DOPE ON 3/8 INCH FLANGE CONNECTORS! I know that now.
We ended up taking our parts to our own propane dealer who gladly doped them together for us free. (We also filled the tank on the same trip, not so free.) We didn't bother to test it there, as he said he was "almost certain" it wouldn't leak. When we got home, we only found two leaks.
The first one was our fault, we were talking to him as he worked, and he missed a joint entirely. The other leak was at the regulator. We decided the hardware store was closer than the gas supplier, and we saw what he did with pipe dope, so we figured we could do the same. That fixed the first joint, but after two tries we were convinced one of us had deformed the regulator to the point where we were in deep. At that point we took it back to the propane dealer, who wasn't as worried as we were. After apologizing for not testing it on premises, he tried a different pipe dope and screwed it on tighter. Now it works fine!
So, after all was done, I tested the stove and it actually works!
I also timed how long it takes once the main tank is turned off, for the propane to burn out, and I think I could heat a cup of coffee in the interim.
But anyway, I think we're ready for some field testing. But if you hear a loud explosion somewhere near 4-corners, it may not be a Russian nuke. (We are alerting NORAD of same--wouldn't want to start an accidental war or anything!)
Think our next mod will be safer: We bought a coffee maker for camps with shore power, and I want to install it on a pull out drawer in the galley (assuming we live so long.)
Tom
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