Went out to the shop to winterize my coach. It’s a 08 Camelot 42 PDQ. It came with a Prevent a Freeze, basically a switch located on the wet bay wall, that activates a servo motor that turns a 3 way valve, supposedly! I heard it run for a few seconds and stop ! Not good ! I first removed the switch, hoping that was a problem. I pulled it apart, cleaned the contacts and Nothing.
Next, I removed all the stuff from the rear storage bay, crawled into the bay and located the Prevent a Freeze. It was mounted to the floor with 2 screws. I was able to remove it and take it to my bench. I tore it apart and discovered one of the gears had several missing teeth on the small pinion gear. The gear is aluminum, not the best choice for a gear. The unit has a 728/1 ratio so it has a lot of torque. The valve was a little stiff but not actually frozen in place.
After doing a lot of research, discovering there are now new units available, and talking to the factory, Swan, in Bend OR, I decided to replace the motorized system with a simple manual valve. Many winters I winterize the coach several times and I don’t want to ever have this problem again !!
New manual valve.
Linear Mode
