Advent a/c replacement

Well, just as I figured, Cathy at Advent just called me to say they were not going to honor their 2 yr warranty on a 14 month old A/C unit. Since I took it upon myself on a Sunday when it was 88 degrees out to have my Advent A/C replaced on the second day of a seven day vacation I should have contacted them and had a new unit overnighted by them. Funny thing is that I just got off the phone with my dealer who advised that Advent is no longer the A/C of choice by many manufacturers even though they seem to be the cheapest. In a nut shell, all the things you have read about their warranty, workmanship etc are all true, they really do stink and my advise to all of you is to spend a little more and get the quality. I would think anyone buying a brand new RV would think the A/C unit would last more than 14 months. I also hope none of you are on a trip somewhere on a Sunday and your air goes out in 88 degree weather and you get no satisfaction from the manufacturer. If you're having good luck with your Advent A/C unit good for you, this is one guy who will never have a good thing to say about this product.

A problem most, many owners are not aware of....

Running an RV A/C on a genset can cause failures without notice.

The A/C does a compressor restart with high side pressure already elevated, the compressor stalls since the genset cannot ramp up to 3000W load quick enough and now the A/C motor's protective CB trips due to winding overheating. The stall/trip/reset sequence repeats until the heat pressure falls enough to allow a compressor restart.

Eventually the CB fails due to so many cycles.

Especially bad with inverter type gensets since the engine may be at idle when the 3000-5000W load comes online.

Trailer makers use multiple suppliers, to them the only difference between an Advent, a Dometic, a Coleman and some other A/C is which cost the least TODAY, that's what goes on the roof.

I have half an Advent Air 15000 BTU in my bedroom, it is my primary A/C and is the one that runs most every day and night, it is running as I type, it is 2 years old come August if I recall correctly, if not it's 3,, The other half of the A/C is a Carrier Air V. the Air V had a manufacturing defect and died, but alas Carrier no longer makes.. The only thing I've done to the Advent is routine cleaning.. (It is a direct replacement for the Carrier roof-top unit, you change the roof top uint and one conector on the control board is all, They sell an adapt-a-kit, consists of 4 new mounting bolts, a "Y" cable, the new Molex snap in connector (I had to teach the dealer technician how to install those,, thankfully I am an electronics technician, (Certified no less) we are kind of used to MOLEX products.. I will not tell you what many of us think of them though... Do not wish to melt your monitor,, (There are better connectors))

Works great.

I got 1,500 more BTU's and it draws the same 13.5 amps as the 13,500 Carrier it replaced.

I think Advent is making their way into the RV market because they sell cheap to the manufacturers. Stories about Advent's customer service, parts distribution and warranty centers(or lack of) have been around or a wile. I would never accept delivery of a trailer with one of these rice-burner air conditioners.

Well, it has been a week and nobody has gotten back to me like they said they would. No surprise of course. DW wanted the phone number and ladie's name I spoke to. DW called and was told somebody would get back to her by Thursday. Let's see what happens tomorrow.

Just got off the phone with a customer service supervisor from Advent. Of course she told me everything I already knew and I explained to her that it was a Sunday and I was 4 hours from home in a area I was not all that familiar with. I faxed her all the paperwork I had and she was going to contact Keystone who now owns Dutchmen and see if between the two of them they can get me some money back. Yes, as I researched Advent I did find out that they are a Chinese knockoff of Dometic. We'll see what happens. I hope this will save some others a little aggravation.

Maybe we made the rite decision. We just added a second A/C. We were going to go wirh the Advent 15K but we ended up with a Dometic Low profile Penquin 2 . Hope it works out well for us.

Advent...Chinese knock-off