Thankfully, I was wrong.

Dinosaur N series board

This new board replaces the following Norcold part numbers:
621267,   621667.001,   621268,   621268.001,    621269,   621269.001,
621270,   621270.001,   621271,   621271.001,   619360,   619361,   632168.001

You can read more about it at the Dinosaur website

1977 Airstream

factory parts for it, though a door lock is a mind numbing $500+, simply because it is hand machined, but I can still buy one.
On the Norcold burner, there is a new burner that will fit right in. The only difference is the original uses a compression connection, with a ferrule and copper sealing ring, and the new one uses a flare connection. A modification to a flare connection should not be at all hard, and it really wouldn’t be hard for Norcold to come up with a retrofit kit- a more reasonable one than the $200+ kit they have for the 900 series. All the kit would need would be the burner and a new tube (soft aluminum). I just cannot see telling a customer that their perfectly good 1996 refrigerator is not repairable because I cannot get a $30 part, and they have to spend $1200-1500 for a new one. On the other hand- I take a bit of liability on my shoulders by modifying a part like this, so…..

Even though I grew up in a very affluent period (relatively), a large reason was my parents remembering and observing the old adage- “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”

I’ve also been running in to range parts being not available (safety valves and thermostats)- this time due to mercury content. While I understand this a bit more, it still isn’t easy to deal with.

Ah, well….

–Chris

There is a difference between Digital and HD. If you are going to buy a digital converter box for your RV, if you have an “HD capable” television, you will need to buy a high definition converter box. If, however, you have a standard tube type “SDTV”, one of the cheap , err…. inexpensive converter boxes will do just fine.
There is a good comparison of “Coupon Eligable converter boxes” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_CECB_units

Called to order a new cooling unit, and was told that Dometic is no longer replacing failed cooling units out of the warranty period.

Needless to say, I am not a happy camper.

–Chris

–Chris

The first is a fairly simple thing, but one that has potentially very bad consequences.. and that is a vent lid (yep- about the simplest thing there is).

I’ve had 2 separate people, with rigs built by different manufacturers have their “new style” Jensen vent lids disintegrate within 6 months- they looked like they were 20 years old. The new style vents are not used on many brands- the 2 I saw were Holiday Rambler and Trail Lite, but others may use them as well. Just a tip- check them often.

The second failures came to mind while I was writing my RV.Net Blog post about water heater maintenance, and that is the Atwood pilot type water heater gas valves. While they seem to have corrected the problem (and are, in fact, using a different supplier to make the valves), there for a while I would get just over a year out of them before they went bad, and the thermal fuse opened (to add insult to injury, one was on my just over 1 year old water heater in my Airstream).

One of the ones I had to replace a couple of weeks ago (though it was pretty old, and had given good service, so it wasn’t what I would call a premature failure) turned in to a can of worms- trying to remove it from the tank, the “probe” broke off in the tank. No amount of “persuading” could break it loose (which is a first from me). Luckily, I was able to get the customer hot water (which is what they wanted), so everything worked out, but man oh man…

The other odd failure I had in one of these was a short in the thermal fuse- customer complained that the pilot would not stay lit. I tested, cleaned and adjusted it to within an inch of its life, lit the pilot, let it run for 10 minutes and thought I had it.

But… the next morning, same thing. It turned out that there was a short in the valve which was fine until it got up to temperture, then it would go out and not relight until it cooled. I cut off an old thermocouple to get easy access to measuring the resistance of the fuse, lit it and let it run until it shut down (about 1/2 hour), then was able to measure the short. New valve (this one came out easily) , and everything was fine.

Today I had (on the end of a list of things to service) an Onan Microquiet 4K which would crank but not start. In trying to start it, I could smell the unmistakable smell of old gasoline.

The gasoline we buy today has a very limited “shelf life”, a couple of months and it gets, for lack of a better term, “funky”. In an automobile, this is no problem, as few people keep a tank of gas for months, but in an RV which might sit for quite a while between uses, this can be a problem. The RV engine is usually not troubled much by bad gas- it might run rough until it is used, but a generator has such a small carburetor that varnish and plugging up is a common occurrence.

The use of a fuel additive such as Stabil is generally recommended. I know of people who swear that it causes harm, but I have used it frequently, and as long as I use it with fresh gasoline, I have never had a problem- and it has saved me hours of cleaning.

But… what if you didn’t use a fuel stabilizer? For this Onan, I did what I often recommend, and disconnected the fuel line at the generator, hooked a short piece of fuel line to it and ran it in to a 5 gallon gas can in which I had a very concentrated mixture of gasoline and Seafoam fuel treatment. Seafoam is a product that I don’t sell, but have used for several years, and it has never let me down. With todays problem generator, it took me several tries to get the treated fuel up in to the carb, then I let it sit for an hour, tried it again and it barely started. I then let it run for a bit, which should get the Seafoam treated fuel filling the carb. I will now let it sit overnight and tomorrow it should start and run like a champ.

The alternative to this would be either rebuilding or replacing the carburetor, which would be hundreds of dollars- yet a full can of Seafoam is under $6 (listed to treat around 20 gallons- I put it in 5 gallons to clean the generator).

Seafoam is also said to be a fuel stabilizer, but I have not ever used it for that, so I cannot comment on its effectiveness in that use, but as a cleaner, it’s great!

The area we had to install them was previously occupied by the frame mount LP tank, so the height was somewhat limited (no room for 6 volt GC batteries), but the group 29s fit quite well.

The trouble with it was that accessing the batteries for maintenance would be a nightmare- between the 4/0 cable and temperature sensor it would be a several hour job to remove the batteries… just to check the water level. I had recently read about a fairly new product- the Flow Rite battery watering system . I ordered 4 kits, and I must say, this system is great!

The system consists of small float valve inserts which replace the battery cell caps, tubing, and a squeeze bulb. Once hooked up, you just put a hose in to a bottle of distilled water, squeeze the bulb until it gives some resistance, and you are done! All of the cells are filled properly. While at first glance the price seems fairly stiff (~$80 for a 2 battery kit), the engineering that went in to the system is fairly significant- among other things, the caps have flame arresting mechanisms built in.

As one who has burned up his fair share of batteries through neglect, I only wish I had this system back when I fulltimed- it would have paid for itself in short order.

Highly recommended.

I’ll write an article about the inverter install in a bit- it’s a pretty cool install. Xantrex RS3000 sine wave inverter with auto generator start and 2 Evergreen 120 watt solar panels- panels were on sale from the good people at Northern Arizona Wind and Sun.

Whenever I have a furnace problem, the first step I take is to go to the thermostat. This one had a simple heat only, mechanical thermostat. I pull the cover off, switch my multimeter leads to read amperage and hook up the leads across the thermostat terminals.

On this furnace, I immediately read a 1 – 1.4 amp draw, which dropped quickly to around .2 amps. This told me the time delay fan relay in the furnace was good (on [b]most[/b] furnaces built in the past 20 years, this will be a valid test- the exceptions will be new models with “fan control” circuit boards, or models where the board has been retrfitted with a Dinosaur brand fan control board).

After about 40 seconds, the blower came on, and the amperage rose a bit to around .5 amps. After another 45 seconds, the amperage rose again to about 1 amp.

What these readings told me was 1- the relay was good and the furnace had power (the initial high amperage reading was the heating element in the relay heating up), the second amperage jump (after the blower came up to speed) told me that the limit switch and sail switch were both OK, and power was getting through to the circuit board, the last amperage jump told me that the gas valve was getting power, and the circuit board was opening it. (A side point is that the final amperage reading- 1 amp- is the setting that the “anticipator” should be set at on mechanical thermostats).

For that job, I was lucky- the only problem was a bad connection in the thermostat- I repaired that connection and the furnace worked fine, but I hope you can use this method of troubleshooting to diagnose furnace problems (if you have a combination heat and AC thermostat, the same method can be used, but you have to find and break the correct thermostat wire to the furnace, which is usually easiest to find right at the furnace, and will nearly always be one of the two blue wires).

–Chris

Both items were special Carefree orders, the price quote was for a sunshade- pretty nice items, they mount on the outside of the rig and work just like roller blinds, but Carefree uses their “fullview” fabric, which lets you see out, but not in. They are perfect for the rear windows when you cannot use a regular window awning because of a ladder.

Anyway- I was in a rush, and gave a quote of about 80% of what the dealer cost is- oh well, that taught me lesson number one for the week.

The second mistake was for a replacement slideout cover fabric. Ever since around the year 2000, A&E has had pretty bad problems with the vinyl they use on their slide covers- they tend to delaminate, so to replace them, I use Carefree of Colorado vinyl, and I’ve had very good luck with those.

That is- as long as I measure and order correctly. I always insist on doing the measurement myself, or I give the customer the order fax sheet showing the measurements needed, but this time I just made a stupid math error (11 feet 11 inches is 143 inches not 123 inches…. oops!).

But, Carefree is fast enough that I can have the correct replacement here in plenty of time (of course, I have to eat the second day shipping charges, plus find someone who needs a 123″ fabric…. cheap!)- so in both cases, the customers are happy, and I’ve learned to not rush so much, and measure twice (though I swear I had learned that already!).

–Chris