Installed a Micro-Air Soft Start today

opnspaces wrote:

17oaks wrote:
Been there done that:

Then one hot summer night about 3 am I said Ah-Ha and I headed out to the barn and did this:

1) Unplugged and flipped the switch on my AF 1150 to the battery. Turned on my AC unit and it fired right up, blew cold like it always did.

2) Fired up my Onan and flipped the switch over to Gen power...AC still blowing cold air.

3) Did a few things from our trip that past weekend and flipped it over on external power.

Not sure how long that will last, but so far it's been over 2 years.

Granted I don't have a TC, but I'm curious about your post. Can you elaborate, what was the Ah-Ha moment that came to you? Were you thinking there was a sticky transfer switch or something? Do you have to start the AC on battery power then flip to gen power while it's running?

After talking to the engineer at Coleman I knew the problem:

Old unit, wear, and tear, need more juice to start, thus soft start devices which are just capacitors. As time goes by the compressor gets older and more tired, thus needed even more than the capacitor can deliver...BUT, my 2 Odessey Group 31 Extreme batteries were good for about 1800 amps. My Onan won't give me that. That was my Ah Ha moment at about 3 am. I tried it and bingo it works.

That was 3 years ago and still works. All you are doing is bypassing the Onan to start then switching over to the Onan after its running. NOTE: Either wait till the AC cycles off the compressor or do it manually by turning up the temp control so just the fan is running, then switch over to the Onan and slowly raise the temp control until the compressor kicks in, the Onan should be able to run with it, mine does.

I do know I am running on borrowed time as the AC unit is 11 yr old, still blowing cold!