amphi_sc

Here's pictures of the closet showing the CPU, the closet wiring connectors to the harness, main 12v bus relays (has 13.2v there now as I'm plugged into shore using A/C. When I unplug from shore it'll drop to 12.6. Seems normal operation there), and the layout of the modules. Living room & gallery for sure are on "B". Pulled and reset those fuses. Replugged the edge connectors on "B". I do have a very old can of Radio Shack TV tuner cleaner/ lubricant but have not tried that on any connections. BTW, I have unplugged from shore, turned off both chassis and house disconnects, disconnected both sets of house connections from batteries to coach (I have four 4DL 12v Lifetime bats in two banks behind two separate doors and trays, so hot & ground from each tray feeds the house.). Solar disconnected too. Let the coach sit for over an hour and reconnected everything but shore power. Lights turned off automatically again. Plugged. back into shore ... needed some A/C. No change in lights. LR turned off by itself. Sat for a while pondering. However water pump and AquaHot electric stays lit. Re-entered coach and turn every single light on. They ALL stayed on while I ate. Turned all OFF except LR, and LR stayed on for a good half hour! Turned LR off for a couple minutes, used BR lights for a couple minutes while getting into the safe, turned those off and went back to front turning the LR on and it automatically turned itself off within 10 seconds! Aaaaarrrrgggg!

Hello Frank, No, the whole system does not shut down. For example, I turn on the living room ceiling lights up front, walk to the galley and turn on those overheads, walk to the bathroom and turn on those, walk back to the front and turn on the hall lights. Wait a bit more and then the living room ceiling turns off, little bit later the Galley, ... finally the hall lights turn off. I can change my timing such that after the Living room turns off and while the galley is still on, I turn on the Hall lights then the LR back on. Galley shut down then hall again and then Living room in sequence. SOMETIMES they will stay on for many minutes to hours. Sometimes I can quickly turn all the lights on in the coach and they'll stay on and after a few minutes I'll turn off the unneeded lights and the rest may or may not stay on.

This has become a recent head scratcher for me. House is multiplex with the wiring, cpu, and most multiplex boxes behind a door panel in the rear closet. (There are some more boxes behind the drop down TV and trim in the front cap.) Chassis is non multiplex. Very recently when I turn on any light circuit anywhere in the coach (living room or galley or bathroom or bedroom) it may stay on for 5 to 30 or maybe 60 seconds and then go off all by itself (lights go off as well as the switch indicator light). It may stay in this unconventional state of lights going off for quite a few cycles. But sometimes the lights will stay on like they should. I can't predict a pattern of how it gets into or out of this unexpected behavior. Things I have tried: * Cycling the salesman relays several times * Unplugged from shore power * Cycling the house main battery cut off (BTW, that kills the lights, water pump, etc but does NOT take the Magnum inverter off line as residential fridge & microwave stay up) * Removed & cleaned all house battery connections (which looked fine to begin with anyway) * Cleaned the Big Boy internals * Pulled and reset the many many 12v fuses in the rear closet multiplex distribution center * Held the multiplex "master off" switch to change the default operation of the switch backlighting. * Checked 12v voltage in the closet: 13.2v when on shore power. I would think killing the juice from the batteries & no shore power should have caused a reboot of the multiplex system. I have not yet loosened / wiggled all 12v supply connections & main 12v circuit breaker bus in the rear closet. Lights on the Blue or Yellow loop are experiencing the same turn off symptoms so I don't think it is loop specific. The water pump and Aqua Hot electric switch "on indicator light" stays on as expected. I have not tried to figure out how to access & unplug the backside of the switches, nor have I unplugged / replugged the multiplex board edge connectors nor inline wiring harness connectors in the rear closet. What's the next thing to try? I would think it is totally unrelated but will mention I did recently & correctly install a new chassis battery bank (4 Lifeline GPL 1400T same as original equipment had). This is a very annoying situation as we are out and about for about the next 6 months. Things were working normally up through Feb when we stored the coach (plugged in) for about 3 months. Al

120V seems to make more sense. The iRV2 thread said the techs told him 115v to 120v. I wondered to myself how that wide range would work, but thought the factory techs must know what they are suggesting. However, I opened up my 40250 and the board does NOT have a J8 to jumper. My board is laid out differently than the diagram posted on iRV2. I called Southwire leaving a message on their tech support line but no callback yet. The only identifying label is 34575-012 v4.5 on a long narrow dip chip. Directly above that is an empty 3 pin header looks like labeled J2. No other headers to jump.

Thank you Frank. I will try this procedure when I move to a park with voltages in the 115 to 120 range.

For years, my leg 2 voltage displayed on the Aladdin via the Surgeguard 40250 ATS is 2 to 3 volts higher than actual. Even when leg 1 & 2 have to be the same coming in via a 30 amp dog bone, leg 2 is 2-3 volts higher than leg 1, and higher than what I read at an interior outlet. Leg 1 appears to report more accurately. Is there an adjustment to correct this mis-reporting on leg 2? As I was doing my annual torque of screw terminals, I see a couple of pots on the board but don't know what they are for. Where I'm plugged in now I measure a no load input voltage at the pedestal and outlets inside the coach at 125 / 126 volts. Aladdin reports 125 + 129 ... Flagging the 129 as potentially high. When I kick on an A/C on both legs the reporting drops to 123 / 125 drawing 16 amps each leg, and testing volts at outlets I read 123 on both legs. Any way to adjust the 40250 so it reports more accurate readings? I guess in theory the way it is now it could cut off power too early if the voltage rose a little more, or too late at another park that might really have a low voltage situation...but typically I would put my Hughes inline in that situation anyway to avoid brown outs.

I had a case where it wouldn't come down. I removed the trim and cranked it down. Later I tried to get it back up. At this one point I disconnected shore, turned off the inverter, flipped both house and chasis battery disconnects, waited 10 minutes and started powering back up. Had motor humming but no movement. Eventually determined the manual crank wasn't re-engaging the motor. Took a bit of playing with it pushing and pulling the manual crank & trying the electric until eventually I got a solid snap feel and got it re-engaged and up/down worked again. So after insuring the multiplex brain was rebooted & getting crank override re-engaged, it all worked. YMMV

Excuse my case of TMI, but I don't believe a vac would work. I was recovering from hemorrhoid surgery and a forgotten gauze bandage accidentally got flushed and stopped the pump dead fast. (Tecma Silence model.) I had to take the toilet 🚽 outside and take the cover off the pump. The gauze was wedged in tight between the vanes and housing. (Pump vanes just plastic too...but nothing broke). It took a fair amount of cutting and pulling to clear the "problem". Reassembled & reinstalled & been working unharmed for several years now. YMMV

By "cut out" I should have said limit. When it gets way to hot (or goes flakey) the limit cuts out or cuts off operation for safety. And my model, unlike earlier models, the electric and diesel kick in at the same lower fluid temperature. If I ever have to change I'd want a 600D. Hope I didn't thoroughly confuse people by mentioning what fixed my 100-03s.

Thanks Tom. Good to know. We might very rarely hit low teens, rarely upper single digits but if it's that cold we are staying put and not driving. Might rarely be driving in mid 20's. Typically we're fair weather folks staying in the warmer climates. Think I will keep the AW46 for now rather than replace, but have noted the low temp caution to keep in mind. Thanks again.

A few years ago my diesel burner functioned sometimes and other times it would go thru the cycle you were describing of not lighting and shutting off after the "cool down" period. Electric worked fine. Drove me crazy for a few weeks. Turned out to be a flakey cut off sensor. My unit has two, one for the diesel burner and the other for the electric element. Next time yours fails you could listen for the ignitor to click, a flame ignite but then shut off which seem to point to a flame sensor. OR you get motor running, clicking on the ignitor but no ignition which would imply to me no fuel. As I understand it, the cut off sensor prevents the fuel solenoid from opening so swapping the electric & diesel cut out sensors could narrow it down to a bad sensor vs bad fuel solenoid. Anyway, a new cut out sensor fixed mine, and as they were cheap and both the same, bought two with the theory the remaining "good one" could likely fail too being the same age. BTW, mine is an 03S and thus not the same model as yours so things could be very different. FWIW

Tom, are you saying it is okay to mix Transynd into the AW46? I don't think I would get all the existing AW46 out of the lines, pump, etc by sticking a hose into my reservoir, so the Transynd would wind up being mixed with the residual AW46. In the past when I changed the big external filter I topped off the light brown fluid with AW46. If it is okay to mix fluids, then I guess I could leave the spare gallon of AW46 at home as I also carry a spare gallon of Transynd in case the Allison needs some on a trip. I seem to have a large spin on filter and pop up pressure "gauge" on the left and about a two gallon reservoir on the right with no way of getting into the tank other than the small dipstick (or removing lines).

As I bought heat pumps and since Dometic changed the logic/default state of the reversing valve, an old board couldn't work for me so I had to buy the backward compatibility board or new compatible thermostat. But my understanding at the time was a straight A/C unit could have worked by swapping old board into new unit with caveat losing the 3 speed fan settings. I wonder if the fuse on your old board was good? Were yours straight A/C units or heat pumps? Anyway, mute points since you say all is better now. As for "keeping old machines running", the new penguin's have a much stronger cover that I think will hold up better than the thin fiberglass glass of the old units. Also there is styrofoam insulation around the box for exchanging hot/cold air with the house that would seem to help efficiency. From the start up noises the new makes compared to the old it almost seems like the new starts smoother, and my Aladdin doesn't show a big spike with inrush current anymore. I wonder if the newer boards offset the fan and compressor startups? After a certain age I think it makes sense to replace old failing units with new rather than trying to keep 15-20 year old units running. With that said I'll add that the longevity of the new Penguin III model is yet to be proven. My experience with the Microair is okay with the caveat that I have to set a temperature about 3 degrees off from what I really want. Verified by "what my body feels" AND with a couple different thermometers sitting on that thermostat that show a different actual temperature 🌡️ from the Microair. I compensate by learning I need to set a temperature 3 degrees from what I really want. The Microair is the only thermostat that will physically fit in the narrow wall space where my original 5 button was mounted between my cabinet and my bathroom door. Your wall space could be different. Just my 2 cents...

As to Bryan's (hbr509) original post, I originally downgraded a new 15k to work with my original 5 button and was happy with it. Previously I had sequentially replaced the capacitors on all three Units as they failed and got several more years out of the units, but finally had a compressor lockup on the front. At this time (2021) I ordered one new ccc & 1 down level board & 3 new 15k hp's figuring they'd all start having more problems, but supply chain issues delayed delivery for months and months. The wall where my front 5 btn thermostat mounts is to narrow for the much wider ccc, thus my back level board was to be able to keep the original 5 btn. Before the new hp's were delivered the blower squirrel cage on the middle unit froze up and it was still in the 100's outside, but I could salvage the blower motor from the front unit and swap it into the middle unit to get by while still waiting for delivery of my new units. Eventually they were shipped and arrived. I installed the front replacement with the back level control board and all worked great with the exception of only two speeds on the fan and thus a little noisy. As the other two original units (middle & rear) were still working great at that point, I kept the other two new hp's in my storage unit and went on my way. Fast forward to late last fall and the recycled middle blower motor finally dies. In the meantime I had purchased a micro air thermostat at a convention and it was just sitting around for me to do something with it. So I retrieve one my previously purchased hp units from storage, install it in the middle position & swap it's new control board to the front so I could put the front's down level board in the middle as the rear 5 btn thermostat controls both middle & rear, and try the micro air for the front in that limited wall space. All is working fine again, two speed fan issue aside. In storage, I still have 1 new 15k HP & new ccc for when the bedroom unit bites the dust, a functional 5 btn, an old 15k unit that heats/cools but no blower motor, another old beat up penguin thin fiberglass cover, old control boards / capacitors, etc. Eventually I'll have the down level control board and another 5 btn available too after I eventually swap out the bedroom unit and go to the new ccc. I'm only around my storage unit a few weeks a year but could be a source of old parts if really needed (but not the new penguin III "in waiting"). As I typically do all my own work, it wasn't a problem swapping control boards and parts around. If I had to hire the work out, it wouldn't be cost effective & I would have replaced all 3 units at the same time. But yes, the alternative control board does make the new penguin III heat pump work with a 5 btn, but you only get two fan speeds ... high and not quite as high. So far, I don't believe I have a hidden 4th zone control for my bathroom as the existing 5 btn bedroom thermostat treats the bathroom aqua hot and middle roof top heat pump as zone two and automatically switches from heat pump to aqua hot when really cold, and the middle roof top unit has the two wires for the aqua hot "furnace". But I guess time will eventually tell when I finally have to swap out the bedroom unit, reinstall the original control board in the middle, and go totally with the new ccc.

Hi Dror, I save everything, but the question is can I find it? I could probably grind off the pin separating a couple of links from the end that way it wouldn't be so heavy to ship. Exactly how much are you in needing? I think it looks like one pair of inside & outside would be plenty? If I separate my old chain at the "north" end at the broken roller shown below, would that be enough? What's your address? As for pins, can't help you there but probably just just a bolt and nut as that end of the chain has plenty of clearance... at least on a Monaco type coach, not sure about yours. We can PM if you want to pursue. Al H

Looking at the RCA labels, the unplugged purple is coming from Audio 2 out and thus shouldn't be affecting video. The other purple is Video 1 out and the yellow is Video 2 out. Have you selected the correct video channel? Where are those cables going? I have a different setup but had a problem once with my touch screen monitor after somebody dusted it off and in the process accidentally switched the video selections with the wiping motion.

Hello Daniel, I happen to be in Australia at the moment so can't take a picture of the standard braided hoses I got from Lowes or Home Depot. Nothing special about them, just got them off the rack. 1/2 pipe thread sounds familiar. Al H

So east of the Mississippi and the west coast you might not be able to stream TV via Starlink? whereas I've never had a capacity problem with Dish. I think I'll stick with Satellite TV and leave our minimal internet use (5-10 gig/month) to hot spotting off my phone.

I thought the conversation was about attempting to use StarLink and streaming TV as an alternative replacement for Satellite TV ... "Replacement Satellite" implying new service.

Looks to me like there's a wait list for much of the country for roaming service.

Everyone's case is different. I pay dish $97/month for the stations I want including the Hopper DVR & Joey. To switch to YouTube streaming it looks like $73 plus another $14 for the other channels I want. Add in the additional StarLink cost of $150-$200 /month to stream so now we are talking at more than double+ the cost to stream vs Dish satellite. Looks like YouTube TV can handle the three TVs without additional cost whereas I do need the Joeys which are currently priced into my current cost of $97 / month. Plus $600 to $2500 in start up costs for StarLink equipment. Our existing Verizon phone hotspots are adequate for our non streaming uses, but if going to attempt to stream TV I'd need a better plan on top of what comes with my phone plan so wouldn't be able to lower the phone bill as I would still need the same data plan on the phone for our basic non streaming needs when away from the RV / home WiFi. Conclusion: For some, streaming may make sense, for others it would be totally insane! For me, Dish is definitely cheaper than a streaming option. And it has known reliability in my case. YMMV

Hi Rick, We aren't "prime time" watchers so don't even have that feature turned on in the Hopper. We use the guide to select movies to record and certain shows. Some news shows I set to "keep 1" so they automatically roll off with the next day but recorded in case I want/have the ambition the watch it. My original single channel USB adapter bit the dust I think when I had some combination of antenna power boost on and a park cable feed at the same time. So I replaced it with a dual channel from eBay. Works better than the built in tuner in the main drop down TV. I might use the tuner built into the TV to fine tune the antenna rotation before letting the Hopper rescan OTA channels. shsh... I guess I'm grandfathered somehow as I get the 5 major networks out of NYC coast to coast and Alaska and I don't plan to rock the boat.

Looks like I'm in the minority here, but I'll stick with the Dish Hopper and a Trav'lr. Tried streaming a few things at the S/B home but hate being forced to watch commercials (however short) that I can't skip ... when I've tried streaming I get message saying "fast forward is not supported" (but have only tried Hulu & Disney+ as they are included lifetime for free as part of our unlimited Verizon phone plan). We love the 30 second skip button on Dish to rapidly skip commercials pressing it 6, 8, or 10 times in a row ... and within a second or two we are back in the content past all the junk advertising. My Trav'lr & Hopper have picked up live TV in Valdez Alaska as well as Port au Choix Newfoundland but naturally it is more difficult in the interior. No data caps to worry about and total cost each month for what we like to watch is cheaper than all the costs associated with streaming. YMMV but that is why people have choices. Edit to add: We use an over-the-air dual channel USB adapter into the Hopper to pickup & record OTA local channels so we haven't changed our Dish service address in 5+ years. The OTA channels automatically integrate into the guide.

Hello Dick, The plane, a Comanche, is not amphibious. But I do have a few amphibious cars...boys and toys...thus the old moniker. As for the amps, I just looked at the Lifeline site. I do carry a spare Big Boy and clean the contacts annually as part of normal maintenance. As I drive the Aladdin helps me insure the Big Boy is connecting both banks by watching the house charge from the alternator.

Just food for thought. I prefer AGM and have been happy with Lifeline in the coach and the similar Concord line in the plane. Looking at the footprint of group 31 in the tray, 2 would fit. Whereas 4 1400's arrange in a nice rectangle. The 4 smaller 12v batteries could deliver more cranking amps ( 4 x 850 ) than the 2 31's ( 2 x 880 ). The 4 battery arrangement weighs the same as the 2 group 31's. As it is on the chassis, I'm looking more toward immediate demand amps rather than reserve capacity. Another factor for me is there is a Lifeline distributor warehouse less than 40 miles away when we are home. AGM - no corrosive gases, no water level to watch, etc. FWIW