Installed a Micro-Air Soft Start today

opnspaces wrote:

17oaks wrote:

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!

So you basically start the AC in two stages, fan then compressor. Thinking out loud about this I would wonder why you need the batteries to get a cold start out of the AC, but then can go to the generator and it will successfully cycle the compressor?

Based on what you said about success with waiting for the compressor to kick off, then flip to generator, I wonder if it would work to ignore the batteries and just start the fan for a minute or two, then turn on the AC. My Coleman has that capability though your's might not.

I tried that by itself, Onan, fan on, then the compressor. That never worked. That said after a while I seemed to run out of luck with starting the fan with batteries and then flipping to Onan the turning on the compressor, my success rate fell.

WHY? My guess is either: Running the compressor for a bit on the batteries loosened it up and the Onan will start it...OR I just caught the compressor on the downstroke.

Of late I have had to get it all running off the batteries and then flip over to the Onan, but the AC is OLD and getting older. It's all based upon wear and tear on the unit and it just gets harder to start as time goes by...kinda like me in the mornings.:)