I recently had a furnace come in- complaint was that nothing happened- no fan, no heat.. nothing.
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.
When I mess up, I have a tendency to mess up repeatedly! This past week I managed to make two good mistakes, once in a price quote, once in a special order…
Well, the past couple of weeks have seen a slew of air conditioner service- starting with a simply check out of a new (used) rig.
On this rig (1995, or 11 years old), everything checked out fine- standard cleaning of the LP appliances, testing 120 volt and 12 volt systems, leak testing the LP system, etc. Then I get up to the air conditioner. One glance at the filters, and I figured it would be a candidate for a good cleaning, and I was right.
One of this weeks tasks was troubleshooting a non working electric step. When the appointment was first made, I thought “No Problem”, as Kwikee steps are pretty easy to troubleshoot and repair.
But… when the coach arrived, I discovered that the step is a B & L electric step- no longer in business.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Kincor kit I mention below is no longer available- Kwikee changed the motor enough that it is not possible to take it apart- the unit is not sealed.
An alternate repair method using an Auto Parts store motor is discussed in this RV.NET forum posting.
Original post below——————————–
Electric steps are one of those luxuries that are a near necessity- in a Motor Home, you often need a step to enter, and yet once you are in, you cannot push a manual step in, and when you are in the rig, pulling the step out is impossible.
I work on a lot of RV refrigerators. A “not insignificant” portion of those have cooling units which have gone bad (see my webpage on absorption refrigerators) .
For nearly 10 years, I have been using, with very good results, remanufactured cooling units from Midwest Products, of Corning Iowa. Midwest had been rebuilding cooling units for nearly 20 years, they did a great job, produced a quality product, and were generally good people to deal with.
In the auto industry, there are many, many companies producing aftermarket parts- you simply have to check out the nearest auto parts store to see that.
Many of these parts are of a great quality- designed to remedy the short comings of the stock parts and provide superior performance and longevity. On the other hand, many are…. to put it mildly… junk. Aftermarket parts are often called “will fit”, because they will fit (but whether they will last, or do what they are supposed to do…)
In the Recreation Vehicle industry, by and large, the market simply isn’t there for a wide variety of aftermarket parts- after all, even to build a cheap part takes a large investment in design and tooling.
But… there are a few notable exceptions, and because of market forces, they generally fall in to the superior category. Two manufacturers I can highly recommend are Dinosaur Electronics and Flight Systems.
Being an RV tech, and owning an RV repair company, my business is customer service. A person comes in with a problem with their rig, and they pay me to fix it.
Sometimes, even the best of us need help from the people who make the items in question, so we, in turn, need to call upon the “next level” of customer service, and talk to technical support. In the service industry, we have “super secret- I cannot reveal it” phone numbers for tech support- the reason being that tech support can much more effectively talk to a trained technician to diagnose a problem than trying to deal with the end consumer (you ;)). This saves time, and as long as the local tech is knowledgeable, will usually quickly result in a solution to the problem. Having a separate contact for service people really is a good thing.
A FWIW- Norcold has launched a campaign to register all of its refrigerators. I’m not sure of the reason, but both Norcold and Dometic have become quite strict about having the VIN numbers for rigs their products are installed in- Norcold will not even give tech advice unless they have the refrigerators serial numbers(s) and the rig make, model, year and VIN number.
They are having a sweepstakes to entice people to register- this is not limited to original owners, it is meant for anyone with a rig that has a Norcold refrigerator.
Visit the Norcold website for more information.
The industry has seen an influx of electronics not only built in China, but designed and marketed by apparently offshore companies. Many of these items are pretty difficult to obtain parts and/or service manuals for (a problem not limited to offshore manufacturers).
I recently had to deal with a Centurion CS3000 45 amp converter/load center which was working, except the cooling fans would not run. A quick check of the fans (typical computer type “muffin” fans) said they were good, they just were not getting any power. Normally this would require the replacement of the converter, but after a few minutes of research, it appears that this is no longer available (a part that’s only a few years old).
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