Our RV Adventures

First off, the link for the Funeral Potatoes got messed up and was pointing to my old Our RV Adventures website, so no recipe there. But it’s here on Jan’s Favorite Recipe page now.

After coffee I got back on my air conditioner problem. Based on what I found yesterday, I’ve come to the conclusion that the problem is not with the AC itself, but with the missing control signal, i.e. the one that turns on the compressor.

Obviously there is some sort of junction box somewhere, because the yellow wire that comes out from the side of the coach roof  to the AC unit is a slightly different gauge and has a different type of insulation than the yellow wire that ends up at the thermostat, plus it has to pick up the 12v from somewhere. So that’s what I need to locate.

So my next step was to put in a call to American Coach to see if they had any insight on my problem. But unlike most times, they weren’t any help. They kept trying to tell me about the control box inside the old AC unit, and how it was located in the duct.

Well, it’s not.

I’ll probably call back tomorrow and hopefully get another tech, and another idea. So my next task was to post my problem on RV.net and the Yahoo American Coach group to see if the Cloud Mind can be of any help.

With all this done, and no more things to check, it was time to put my theory to the test. The theory that this is all a control signal problem, and not a AC unit problem.

My thought was that the 12v fan signal is working and will turn the fan on. So I figured that all I need to do is bridge the fan voltage over to the compressor contact, like this.


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The red test clip jumps from the fan connection to the compressor connection, so that when the thermostat sends voltage to turn on the fan, it also turns on the compressor. The yellow clip lead is just a temporary jumper for the freeze sensor.

So I turned to the thermostat to Cool, and about 30 seconds later I had this.

Not bad for an 85 degree day.

So we’re cool again, but I still need to figure out what’s causing the problem to start with. But that’s for tomorrow.

Brandi, Lowell, and Landon went up to the Dallas area to visit friends over the Easter weekend.

Looks like Landon got in some fishing,

and some drumming.

He may be taking after his mother, Brandi, who played drums, both in the marching band and a trap set like these.

Finishing up, our granddaughter Piper, has moved down to Galveston to be closer to her job. She an Emergency Room Tech at UTMB Hospital, while working toward her R.N. degree.

She’s got an apartment 3 blocks from the Seawall, near the Bishop’s Palace, and only 5 blocks from work. A lot better than the 60 mile round-trip commute from Friendswood she had before.

Looks like she’s got a nice place.

Saturday we’re meeting up with Brandi, et al, and heading down to Galveston to check out her new place. Really looking forward to it.

When they play Monopoly in prison, what do they do about the “Get Out of Jail Free” card?

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After coffee this morning, I got back to looking at my AC problem, this time starting to run tests at the control box from inside the unit.

The first test was to look for 12vdc between the ‘Y’ terminal and the ‘B’ terminal on the control box, and there’s where it went off the rails.

Instead of 12v, I found 0.77v, not quite enough. This voltage is what pulls in the relay that turns on the compressor. So if it’s not right, then no compressor, no cooling.

Looks like I’m on the right track.

Since this 12v signal is supposed to be coming from the thermostat, I thought I’d next eliminate the thermostat itself by swapping out the control heads between the front and back units..

I was hoping this might be a quick fix, but no. So next I measured the voltages on the thermostat base plate.

To get a baseline on a working unit, I measured the voltages on the unit in the bedroom, and found that from the red wire connection on the left, I had 12v on the White, Yellow and Red wires. The switch is something I added a while back to let me manually switch between HIGH and LOW fan speeds.

But when I measured the unit up front, I got 12v, 5.9v and 12v. And the 5.9 volts is on the Yellow wire which is the compressor signal. So I’m still on the trail.

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OK, but why when I measure the voltage on the yellow wire at the control box I get .77v, but when I measure it at the thermostat base, I get 5.9 v. It’s supposed to be the same wire. I mean, according to the diagrams, it is.

But, next, when I checked the continuity between the two yellow wires, I get nothing. It’s completely open. But it couldn’t have been this way to start with. Otherwise it wouldn’t have worked . . . ever.

Then in looking over the Coleman diagrams again, I suddenly realized something. I don’t know where the 12v is coming from that feeds all this. On a home system there’s a 24VAC transformer that provides the power to the thermostat and to the relays. But this thermostat runs on 2 AA batteries.

Thinking maybe it was coming from the AC unit somehow, I switched off the breaker feeding the AC, and still found the 12, 5.9, 12 voltages at the thermostat base. So next I checked the rig’s12 volt fuse panel, but found nothing there either.

So the 12v must be coming from the rig somewhere, but where? The wires just feed out the side of the opening where the AC unit mounts and into the area between the roof and the ceiling, and the 120vac wires do just the same.

At this point I called it a night, and I’ll call American Coach tomorrow to see if they can help me out.

A number of you ask about Jan’s Funeral Potatoes recipe. First off, Jan will be the first to tell you it’s not hers, it’s Ree Drummond’s, from The Pioneer Woman cooking show. But if you want to try it out, I’ve posted it on Jan’s Favorite Recipe page.

Bon Appétit !

Thought for the Day:

“Of course I talk to myself, sometimes I need expert advice!!!”

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