Patterns of Failure
Sometimes I run in to patterns of failure on different items- bad batches from the manufacturers, faulty designs, etc. The past few weeks I have run in to 2 different items that have been giving me problems.
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.
Comments
One Comment on Patterns of Failure
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Jim Patton on
Sun, 16th Mar 2008 3:49 pm
Chris,
You have an interesting and informative site. Obviously you are very knowledgeable about the RV Industry.
I have just launched a negotiation services business to help RV’ers avoid hiring an attorney and litigating their problems with manufacturers and RV Dealers. If any of your customers or bloggers are having such difficulties, they may benefit from checking out my website: http://www.rvadvocate.com
Keep up the good work!
Thanks.
Jim
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