Hello/question

[woodsean157]

Hello everyone.. new member here.. My name is Sean. Air force vet, currently natl. guard. Married with a daughter, two dogs and a cat. 🙂

I have a 28 ft. 1994 Cobra Sandpiper travel trailer. i have a question regarding the heat... it has a thermostat and floor vents... but the heat doesnt do anything. ive tried for the life of me to find the furnace/heat source... but i cant find anything.

Is there a furnace? where might it be located? It would be great if it could be figured out soon enough.. snow is on its way in tonight and its beginning to get a bit chilly at night.. haha

Im also having issues with my Norcold fridge- not doing anything at all, not even lights on control panel. But thats for another topic..

[JJBIRISH]

manual - click



EDIT: one problem you may have is the RV mfg. may have put two hold down screws in the front corners of the case that you can’t get to without removing the furnace from the case and removing them with a stubby screwdriver… but it looks like that furnace was removed once already and they were most likely discarded…

[JJBIRISH]

To remove it you need to take the back cover off and there will be one screw in the bottom center holding the heat exchanger to the case…

Remove that screw, disconnect the gas line, then disconnect (you may need to cut the wires, but make sure you mark them), looks like they were already cut once… now the furnace should slide out the back of the case…

If it won’t slide out or there isn’t room for that, remove the 2 back corner screws holding it to the floor and you should be able to slide the whole furnace back enough to free it from the manifold pipes… (it might be easier to remove the pipes from the outside first, that’s how I do it…)

Sound like a bad motor… they are quite expensive…

[Mark_and_Linda]

Thank you for your service to our country. I spent 2 1/2 years in the Army during Vietnam, then Air National Guard for 27 years, C130 maint. It is too bad you can't find a junk yard for trailer's.

[CavemanCharlie]

Humm,,, I'm no expert but, I think you could have found a fridge cheaper then that.

Anyway, For safety reasons I have to tell you to replace the furnace. AND!!! I really, really, do recommend that you buy a carbon monoxide detector and put it in your camper. I have one in my camper and beleive everyone should have one. And, you better have one for sure!

That being said, I wonder why the last person was cutting away at the tin. You may not be the first one to have had this problem. If it were me I would do the same thing and see if you can do a better job then the last person did. But, that's just me.

[oakmandan]

woodsean157 wrote:
that would be ideal.. but they cost alot of $$ im sure... even to repllace the fridge was almost $1300.00!! theres achance i could get lucky and come across one, but then makng it fit/work with the vents could be a challenge if its not the same one... i might just cut the case open and bend it out of the way to get to everything inside..

I just saw a few furnaces on Ebay for 400 to 600. They are not cheap !

[woodsean157]

that would be ideal.. but they cost alot of $$ im sure... even to repllace the fridge was almost $1300.00!! theres achance i could get lucky and come across one, but then makng it fit/work with the vents could be a challenge if its not the same one... i might just cut the case open and bend it out of the way to get to everything inside..

[oakmandan]

I would look into getting a new, or newer furnace. I'm sure you could find one online. That one is just old enough to be unsafe !

[woodsean157]

allright everyone... i managed to find the furnace.. had to pry up some things.. it was in the "box" with my water storage tank.

its seems to have been tampered with in the past, but nothing to where it would affect anything..

I checked all wires for power.

Black wire- + 12.7V

white wire- - V

brown wire/insulation with two wires (thermostat by my judgement)
--one had constant 12V.. the other gave out 12V when i turned the thermostat on...

so power was there, but nothing was happening... so being curious me, stuck my little fingers into the end of the blower motor to rotate it a bit. all of a sudden it started to rotate but immediately got jammed again. then a loud electonic buzzing etc. because of it being stuck.
i went right to the control panel and shut off the power to the converter.. waited, then kicked it back on just because- as soon as i did the fuse blew for the furnace..

when i put my fingers in the blower (power off this time) its obviously jammed up and the whole motor/blower is sitting in loose causing it to hit..

my next problem is.. how do i get the outer case off to try and fix it.... it looks like i might have to disassemble and remove the assembly.. which is something id really prefer not to do... 😞

[opnspaces]

Hi Sean,
first off if you have 110V I would get to Walmart, Target, etc and get a space heater to help out until you get the furnace figured out.

Based on your earlier posts I don't think the battery, or lack of battery is the issue. But you can eliminate that pretty quickly with your vehicle and a pair of jumper cables. Just make sure you observe polarity on the battery wires as trailers many times use white wires for ground. So hand trace the battery wires back until you find the one that goes to a bolt on the frame. This will be the negative cable (-) Also disconnect from shore power before hooking up the jumper cables so you don't feed any power from the converter to your vehicle.

Is your thermostat an AC/Heat combination stat or is it heat only. If it's heat only try taking it off the wall. If there are only two wires then disconnect one wire and touch it to the other wire. If your thermostat is bad then this will turn on the heater.

As far as finding the heater is the underbelly covered or can you trace the floor vents back to the heater by looking under the trailer?

Here's a different type of furnace vent posted by ever1ast15
link

The vents are built into the furnace so if you find the vent you have found the end of the furnace.

[foneguy493]

the cold air return looks like a heat vent in your house, small square or retangular metal type of vent, that would also lead you to your furnace.miine is under our sofa . the battery thing sounds like a good idea, but my battery is dead and heat runs with 115vac, good luck , i hope you find your trouble quickly

[CavemanCharlie]

I ment outlet ducts not outlet ducks lol

[CavemanCharlie]

I did a image search and sure enough your power converter panel is below the fridge. I doubt if the furnace is behind that but, I could be wrong. I couldn't find a good images of the left outside of the camper but, it looks like there might be some vents below a big picture window toward the front of the camper. Do you have a picture window there and could the furnace be mounted under that somewhere?

Also, where are your outlet ducks? You know there must be round holes mounted inside the camper near the floosomewherere for the heat to come out. If you could find one of them maybe you could follow the tube thaattach'ses to the back side of of one of them back to the furnace.

[CavemanCharlie]

Ya, try a battery first.

[Lantley]

Someone else already mentioned this , But I would put in a charged battery before I did anything else. The battery balances the system and keeps the currents stable. Without the battery strange things can happen within the 12 volt system.

[woodsean157]

ok.. most likely fridge with my luck... haha- ill see how difficult it is to pull out the convertor and take a peek...