On RVNetBlog- 5 Ways to Assist the RV Service Facility.
Gary Bunzer, the RV Doctor is writing a great series of posts on things that people can do to help the RV Service center.
Highly recommended.
–Chris
Design vs. Quality vs…
I know life is full of compromises, but they can sometimes drive a person crazy. I’m always wanting features and items from each of the travel trailers and tow vehicles we’ve owned and put them all together in to one ‘perfect’ rig. Now I’m wanting to take materials and designs from different RV equipment makers and roll them in to one perfect product..
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). Read more
Dometic recall, part 2
In my last post about the Dometic cooling unit issues, I said:
This recall does nothing to actually fix what is a defect in design and construction, it simply makes it so that when your thousand dollar plus appliance fails after a few years, it will not destroy your entire RV
It appears there may be hope, though, as Dometic has put up a web page for people to enter serial number and model number information to receive information about the upcoming recall.
Generators and bad gasoline
Disclaimer… I’m not a generator tech- I do have a rudimentary understanding of them, have had a few introductory classes on them, and service our own Onan Emerald, so…
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.
Battery Maintenance
I’m just finishing up my second custom inverter install for a client, and for this coach we had room for 9 group 29 batteries (yowza!).
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.
Furnace Troubleshooting (the first step)
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.
Air Conditioners and more Air Conditioners
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.
