roof air failures

I think it was the Heartland Forum where someone posted they were on their 4th Dometic AC while still in warranty. I have a personal friend who had a new Dometic unit installed last year and the coil rusted thru within a year and was replaced under warranty.

Something is up with the Dometic AC's

I work in the air conditioning field and its nothing more than the units are being built as cheaply as possible. Most of the electrical parts are foreign made and the copper tubing is very thin. Very few compressors are made here anymore.

We live in a disposable world now so any failure in warranty and they just replace the unit. Its now cheaper to build a new one than pay the labor to make a warranty repair.

The cheaper they make them, the more failures we'll see.

I do service AC as side job and have rescued few units from junk yard, but it is tricky job.
When I DIY my own unit, I install a valve and charge it, what cost about $15, but the point is that knowing the unit lost the charge once, the risk it will loose the charge again is pretty high, therefore you don't want to give warranty for such fix.
My repairs last me for over 2 years, so adding $3 of refrigerant later with my free labor is good deal, but once you pay the technician 3-digits rates, it very fast make no economical sense.

Some of the Coleman Mach units were using plastic fans and they crack and throw the parts inside the cover itself taking out the whole unit with them...While Entegra Coach has been plagued with these, they do have a revised fan available....

what failed? was it electrical and did they have a multi function surge protector to protect against low voltages?
bumpy

I agree that most of the parts now are foreign made and cost is one of the main design factors.
As a point of reference, I am the second owner of a 5 cent Vendo 39 Coke machine. It was built in 1946 and I have owned it since 1967. It's compressor and cooling unit still works perfectly even tho it has been running almost continuously for almost 70 years.
You might be better off repairing an older AC unit, with better parts, than buying a new one that may fail sooner.

When we bought our DSDP new in 05 the a/c units were nice and quiet. When the rear unit failed we had a new Dometic installed and it sounded like a helo was landing on the roof. Many hours of attempting to quiet it down has been unsuccessful. One thing I did notice when I pulled the cover was most of the parts are now plastic. The old unit was mostly aluminum but the new units are plastic and not very sturdy plastic at that. It shakes and rattles to no end. Over time I have gotten used to it but the quality is less than superior. Even the foam lining is like thin paper and degrades quickly. I guess it's all about making a profit not a quality part.

chuckftboy wrote:
I work in the air conditioning field and its nothing more than the units are being built as cheaply as possible. Most of the electrical parts are foreign made and the copper tubing is very thin. Very few compressors are made here anymore.

We live in a disposable world now so any failure in warranty and they just replace the unit. Its now cheaper to build a new one than pay the labor to make a warranty repair.

The cheaper they make them, the more failures we'll see.

AS someone who ACTUALLY works in the RV service Industry and is certified to work on both RVP and Dometic, ALL the electrical parts except the compressor and The evaporator and condenser can be replaced and will be under warranty. The REASON the Compressor and the evap and condenser is NEVER fixed is simple. With Repair Labor hourly rates at $100 plus, they will not pay someone to spend $300 plus parts on a warranty repair. It is cheaper to replace the upper complete unit. Capacitiors/relay's/fan motors/control boards/tstats are ALL replaced under warranty if defective. The Sealed system CAN be repaired by someone that knows how(I DO), but it costs more than it is worth to do it. They do not even OFFER Compressors as a separate part from both RVP and Dometic, because of the cost. The reason you see more failures is twofold.
1. 410 operates at higher pressures to get the same BTU cooling capacity as the old Freon 22. higher pressures means more work for the compressors
2. With millions sold, with only 2 real OEM's (RVP/coleman and Dometic), you will have more perceived failures. If you only had Ford and Chevy building cars, the perception would mean they have a HIGH Automobile failure rate. But only because they would be the only makers of Auto/trucks.
3. The poster that complained of his Newmar replacement, he must have had the New Penguin installed with 410. The FIRST 2 years of that 410 penguin DID have a hi noise problem. Dometic traced it to the compressor and re-engineered the compressors and rubber mounts to avoid the noise. The past 2 years on those Penguins are extremely quiet. Newmars always had a higher than normal roof AC noise as the design of the roof cavity acted like a speaker box and amplified the noise from the roof top Penguins. The Brisk airs if installed on a Newmar did not have that noise. Doug

As someone who has had an AC fail I can also say GOOD LUCK getting anyone to repair it. We have a 2013 Winnebago Adventurer with 2 RVP roof air conditioners. They have less than 50 hours total runtime, and probably less than 5 hours runtime in the heat mode. The front AC will no longer switch to the heat mode. It has either a bad switching valve solenoid or a bad switching valve.

We took it in to the factory service center in Forest City IA and the only the only repair they would do is replace the entire unit for $1,600.00. We declined the repair and contacted our local authorized RVP facility to see if they would be able to repair the unit. They gave us the same answer.

The next step was to contact RVP to see who would be able to repair the unit. Again we got an almost identical answer. The only difference being that if in fact it was the solenoid it could be replaced for around $30.00. If it was the valve itself they recommended replacing the entire unit.

The justification all around was that replacing the valve would be more expense than the unit was worth. The valve itself costs about $200.00. The estimated labor to replace it would bring the price close to half the price of a new unit.

It's hard for me to believe it would cost $600.00 in labor and materials to replace a switching valve. It's even more difficult to believe that no one saw anything out of the ordinary with an air conditioner only having a 50 hour service life.

Hikerdogs wrote:
As someone who has had an AC fail I can also say GOOD LUCK getting anyone to repair it. We have a 2013 Winnebago Adventurer with 2 RVP roof air conditioners. They have less than 50 hours total runtime, and probably less than 5 hours runtime in the heat mode. The front AC will no longer switch to the heat mode. It has either a bad switching valve solenoid or a bad switching valve.

We took it in to the factory service center in Forest City IA and the only the only repair they would do is replace the entire unit for $1,600.00. We declined the repair and contacted our local authorized RVP facility to see if they would be able to repair the unit. They gave us the same answer.

The next step was to contact RVP to see who would be able to repair the unit. Again we got an almost identical answer. The only difference being that if in fact it was the solenoid it could be replaced for around $30.00. If it was the valve itself they recommended replacing the entire unit.

The justification all around was that replacing the valve would be more expense than the unit was worth. The valve itself costs about $200.00. The estimated labor to replace it would bring the price close to half the price of a new unit.

It's hard for me to believe it would cost $600.00 in labor and materials to replace a switching valve. It's even more difficult to believe that no one saw anything out of the ordinary with an air conditioner only having a 50 hour service life.

reversing valves are like 90$ so even if it cost 600$ to replace
plus Freon $750 is a lot lot less money than 1600.00

but then again if u look around a 15000BTU Brisk air roof units are only $480 + install (easy)