With the help of a good friend, I got the new 1200 Amish cooling unit installed and am testing the fridge. We turned it on yesterday afternoon to test it before putting it back into it's final resting place. I did a temporary hookup of the 12VDC wires and AC and set the temp on "7" for the test. This morning the temp in the refrigerator compartment was "28" degrees and the freezer compartment was "20" degrees! I dropped it back to "4" and will check it again tommorrow.
I bought new fans and heating elements with the new cooling unit and will keep the old ones for spares.
One thing I did differently was that instead of using the air baffle that is available from David Force I cut a 24"x36" piece of sheet metal, covered one side with a piece of "Reflectix" from Lowes to prevent vibrations, and secured it with cable ties to the upper coils and the vertical side brackets on the bottom, with the Reflectix side against the unit. It extends from just above the condenser fins on top to the coils below the fans on the bottom. I could not mount the fans to the coils like on the old unit, but used half of the original mounting brackets and screwed them to the bottom edge of the metal cover plate on the back just above the coils. The plate seems to be some kind of access cover but it worked out great. One caution! I picked up a piece of sheet metal at Lowes and didn't look at the price until I got home. I just about flipped out! They had charged me almost $20.00 for the 2x3 foot piece of metal! I went to an air conditioning dealer and bought it for $6.00. Lowes will get that puppy back!
I had one minor problem. When I got the fans and thermostat hooked up they were coming on about every 10 seconds, running about 3 seconds, then repeating. I replace the new thermostat with the original thermostat off the old unit and that solved the problem. David is sending me a replacement. No big deal.
I also totally lined all three wall of the enclosure with Reflectix. The ceiling already had the thick padding like the rest of the coach so I left it alone. Probably un-necessary but I had the Reflectix left.
Well, I guess we'll put the unit back in place tommorrow and try it on LP to be sure it works that way too. Now we won't be afraid to sleep in our new MH for the first time!
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