Originally Posted by LHaven
I've mentioned somewhere on the forum (can't find it, go figure) about my furnace woes. For the past year, the furnace has been acting dodgy. You turn it on, and all you hear is a relay click -- no fan, no snap-snap-snap, nothing else happens. When you turn it off, you hear the same click. The one time we took a trip during heating season, we took along an electric heater, since we would be staying in southern border states anyway... and then ended up not needing to use it, because the furnace miraculously worked all through the trip. Until we came back home, whereupon it stopped again.
Took it into the shop last month for lots of work (annual brakes/bearings/caulk, Maxxfan install, etc.) and asked them to fix it. Told them there was a chance it would be working by the time I got there, but happily it wasn't and I was able to show them the failure. However, after I left, the failure went away, so they didn't work on it. Had them come out to the house after I took it back home and (of course) it failed again. This time they replaced the board with a Dinosaur. It worked great for two days, then stopped again. It was like I was parking it on an Indian graveyard.
On one day it started working again, and managed to raise the cabin temp from 57° to 61° on the way to 68° before just quitting -- no cool down fan, nothing.
Had them come out again yesterday. They are now down to one tech (anybody looking for work? It's a super little town with plenty of trailer biz!) Of course, the furnace worked fine the minute he walked in. So I told him to stick around in case it quit halfway to target temp like it did previously. Of course, it wouldn't.
But he was a pretty competent tech. First, he read the voltage at the furnace: 10.3, not 13.8. He also noticed that the wiring was connected with standard screw-on wire nuts.
He went outside to the refrigerator hatch and saw that the furnace wiring passing through it was also connected with wire nuts. (I suspect my dealer did this back in 2019 the first time they had to replace the sail switch that was fouled by all the sawdust and plaster dust from the factory.) When he played with the connections, the furnace stuttered. He replaced them with crimp-on sombreros, and I haven't had a failure since.
So sloppy work by my dealer cost me four figures to get diagnosed and fixed. Thank you, dealer.
At least we're finally roadworthy for our school vacation week trip!
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