roof air failures

Dometic can have a poorly soldered board. I had 3 new units installed on my 12 year old RV last year. When the last one went in, there were 12v issues, the unit was slow to turn on, and sometimes would not turn on.
The Tech came back and did a visual inspection of the board and found that some of the components were not fully soldered in to the circuit board. He replaced it and the issues are gone.
I worked as a manufacturing eng for 10 years, and even in the best soldering machines you can have fluctuations in the solder wave as boards flow over it. This causes cold solder joints and lack of a complete solder joint. It happens. And several hundred boards can be made before it is discovered.

An update on the problems with our roof air conditioners. When I talked to a technician at Airxcel some time ago he mentioned that if the switching valve solenoid was defective it could be replaced for around $20.00.

We got a break in the weather a couple weeks ago so I climbed on the roof and did a little diagnosis. As it turned out the solenoid was not getting power from the control board. I called back and explained my diagnosis. The technician offered to send out a new control panel at no charge. (The panel normally runs $150.00 to $200.00). He also offered to send out at no charge 2 three blade fan kits to minimize the interior noise.

I'm not sure if there was a problem with the units we have or they are just extending "goodwill". I didn't ask too many questions. Now if we could get another break in the weather I'll install the new parts and hopefully have fully functional and quiet air conditioners.

I'll correct the statement to some soldered connections. When I bought my Dutch Star the one right next to it had both A/C units go bad. It was discussed on the Newmar forum, since many had the issue. My recollection was a poor solder job, boards was probably the wrong term/component. I ran mine quite a bit to make sure they were both working.

DSDP Don wrote:
I don't understand.....Dometic had a bad batch of A/C units where the boards were not soldered correctly.....they replaced them and the problem was resolved, yet it somehow becomes a platform for people to bash new coaches and justify keeping their old ones. Does that mean the people with older coaches NEVER had anything go wrong or will in the future due to age?

The control boards are NOT part of the Top unit unless you have a Penguin Model. There has NEVER been a problem with Dometic boards not soldered correctly. If there was, I would have known about it. It is rare for a board to go out. Doug

bullydogs1 wrote:
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....

that was when they switched to the "quiet" blades. I had a fan crack made a loud noise and I was able to shut the unit down. When I replaced the fan I found two of the three isolator mounting screws were missing . Needless to say I removed the screws from the other 2 a/c units and put locktight on them. Entegra sent me three fans when one cracked so I replaced all three

I don't understand.....Dometic had a bad batch of A/C units where they were not soldered correctly.....they replaced them and the problem was resolved, yet it somehow becomes a platform for people to bash new coaches and justify keeping their old ones. Does that mean the people with older coaches NEVER had anything go wrong or will in the future due to age?

Not that I needed another reason to keep my 11 (or is it 12) year old MH... I recently had to replace a $140 control board on one of my three Dometic units. This was the first money I'd spent on them although I do have a spare new (old style) unit if I cannot fix one myself.

I wonder if the newer units are more energy efficient? The fan on my 15K unit draw 4 amps and the compressor 9 for a total of 13 when cooling.

In the first 6 months after purchasing our new MH in 2013, we had 2 of the 3 Dometic units fail. They were replaced under warranty and we haven't had any issues since.

Dometic had a bunch of units with bad solder joints. Many surfaced around the beginning of 2014, but there still could be some out there.

the silverback wrote:
Donfromp, In answer to your questions, Both AC's were Dometic. One of the RV;s, a park model was purchased 2 or 3 weeks ago. The second RV, a travel trailer, was purchased 2 months ago.

oh ok because we are a class A forum I automatically assumed they were A Motor homes (my bad) iam almost on the posters side whom suggested a park pedestal problem maybe Dometic just had a bad run>?