Stange AC issue

[rooney77]

So last week when I was packing up the Minnie Winnie I had the AC going and everything was good. When I got to my campsite it was a different story. The fan will blow if I manually turn it on but the "cool" function won't come on with it. Auto does absolutely nothing. I figured thermostat so I picked up a Honeywell RH221b and through it on there and had the exact same issue. After finding a wiring diagram of the original I tried jumping the high fan and cooling and even doing that I still can only get one or the other. I haven't a clue where to go from here. Any ideas?

[ColoradoRon]

If the AC is a Coleman. I had the same problem and it was control that set the mount of cooling. It is just a variable resister and it would not make a good contact at times.

[Bordercollie]

Let us know how you fix this. I found a fuse holder in the main breaker and fuse panel with a loose connection that caused this same problem, the fuse was good.

[j-d]

rooney77 wrote:
After finding a wiring diagram of the original I tried jumping the high fan and cooling and even doing that I still can only get one or the other.

Were you jumpering at the Thermostat, or at the A/C unit itself? We don't have the thermostat-controlled or ducted A/C, just the simple Coleman roof mount, so I can't be positive, but I don't think jumping the thermostat connections would change anything.

donn mentioned Capacitor, and that's sure a possibility. Can you get on the roof, remove the shrouding and probably a sheet metal cover, to examine the Capacitor(s)? It should have Fan Run, Compressor Run (which can be individual or combined into one "can") along with maybe Compressor Start. BREAKER OFF and don't touch Capacitor Terminals! Just inspect and report. Get the Specs (MFD and Voltage) for the RUN capacitor(s) and same for Start if it's there. Look to see if they look swollen or there's material coming out of the pressure reliefs in the can.

Will it possibly cool after half an hour or so of being OFF? I've run A/C from our onboard generator, then switched to campground pedestal, and found the compressor wouldn't run. What was happening was that I tried to re-start the compressor before internal pressures had time to equalize. Compressor couldn't do it and overheated internally. There's a temperature cutoff in there, and unit wouldn't cool till it had extended time to cool down.

[donn0128]

Start capacitor up on the AC unit has failed.