Finally fixed my rooftop ac

[Anonymous]

A 20 minute start cap replacement turned into a 2 month series of learning experiences.  I’ll understand if you choose to stop reading here, but there is a moral to the story.

Mistake #1 was to make an assumption and replace the wrong cap.

Mistake #2 was to ignore mistake number 1 and assume that the fan motor was somehow at fault.

I should have already mentioned that the problem wasn’t with the compressor, but with the fan motor up top.  Last year the fan would start if I barely touched it, but that no longer worked this summer when I decided to fix it so I looked for other causes.

Mistake #3 was to go deeper and deeper into the machine.  I research as I went, but I was always one step behind.

I’ll shorten the story here and mention that I removed the motor in the heat of the sun and it only took about 6 hours.

Ok, so the motor worked.

So I ordered the correct cap and replaced them both and attempted to put everything back together.

Late in the afternoon, when I was almost finished after working for hours after I should have stopped for the day, I attempted to make the final 6-pin connection the the control box.

YAY!

Everything worked, except that hi and low fan were backwards.

So instead of waiting until I could think the next day I swapped position of the red and blue wires and plugged the connector back in (apparently upside down).

There was a rather loud bang when I hit the switch and not even the furnace worked after that.

And now some useful information: I was able to find a duplicate board on amazon for $52.

I now have air conditioning and more knowledge than I need about rooftop ac.  Thanks to Ray for his attempt at pointing me in the right direction.  At least I had a clue after I knew where the caps were.

Happy RVing!

[Ray]

Thanks for posting. 🙂

[Author]

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