Good morning, John, WA8YXM;
Trust me, sir, I do understand.
In the Summer of 2015, the venerable Chevrolet 454 cid "LE8" gasoline engine in the equally venerable Winnebago Elandan WCP31RT announced, in a most impolite way, that it did not like driving for hours through the 108 F. weather in Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington that day at the end of June. It quit.
It turned out that the major cause of the overheating in my engine was the gap between the air conditioner condenser and the front of the engine cooling radiator where the draw of air through the radiator core from the engine cooling fan behind the radiator had pulled up a lot of straw, wheat chaff, leaves, seeds, some feathers, bits of paper, and other stuff that had covered the front of the engine radiator core. That poor thing could not breathe.
This unfortunate situation could not be seen until the air conditioner condenser had been unbolted and pulled forward and down to reveal the covered front of the radiator core.
Some additional sheet metal paneling has been installed to prevent picking up stuff that will go up onto the radiator core. Also, the automatic transmission fluid that went to the "cool" side of the radiator has been re-routed to its own separate radiator for cooling. It no longer adds to the engine radiator cooling load.
A Jasper rebuilt engine was installed in the Winnebago. So far, it has worked quite well. The Jasper engine does come with a six (6) month warranty, but that is all. The Jasper Extended Warranty Plan is not available for engines that are put into motor homes. I guess that means that we really do need to take care of our engines. You know, engine oil changes, air filters, fuel filters, checking things, and all that other stuff you need to do to keep an engine going.
John, sometime it might be nice to talk with you about radios in motor homes; how to power them, how to get coaxial cables to the outside of a motor home, how to mount antennas, and identifying all the things in a motor home that can talk to our radios. I was surprised at the replacement LED lights that talked to my radios. The Anritsu MS-2711B portable spectrum analyzer did help in locating a lot of those offenders. And I was really surprised when I learned that the older "RV 12 VDC power converter" actually puts out a full wave rectified pulsating sine wave where the "average" voltage is 13.6 VDC. There is a reason why the instructions for the B-W 6345 "RV 12 VDC power converter" say to "use a true RMS reading voltmeter" for checking the output voltage. The output was not a simple straight level DC voltage that I expected to see, much like what we would see from a battery. Now it has been replaced with a Progressive Dynamics PD-9655 power supply with filtering and voltage regulation, and the batteries are much happier with the 4 stage charging algorithm. The radios are much happier also (no more "AC hum"). And the new LED lights are lasting for months or longer now, instead of just weeks.
Enjoy, and 73, John;
Ralph, N7KGA
Lattรฉ Land, Washington
and a venerable Winnebago Elandan WCP31RT
Ham Radio HF Mobile
