“A good day on the road is a good day. A bad day on the road is a good story.”
RV A/C Repairs On The Road
Many people romanticize the traveling lifestyle. Most of the time we 100% agree. There is nothing we would rather be doing. However, there have been a few “hiccups” in which life on the road has been difficult, frustrating and anger provoking. In every case, our worst experiences on the road have resulted from interactions with people and businesses who identify themselves as being “experts” in the RV world.
No matter how poor the interaction was, or however hideous the quality of their service, we will not identify real names of people or businesses. Every situation was resolved to be a success for us. Sometimes the resolution came easily; sometimes the resolution had to be accomplished “the hard way”. But a success none the less.
The purpose of our blog is to let you know real world things happen on the road. While most days are a wonderful, exciting adventure not every day on the road is sunshine and unicorns.
Speaking of a “good story”, let us tell you our story about fixing our in-dash A/C (air conditioner).
A Little Background
“Winnie”, our motorhome is a 2011. It has served us well and has consistently performed above expectations. In spite of Dave and I personalizing Winnie as a “living breathing” equal partner in our journey to explore the country, Winnie is mechanical. Sorry, Winnie!
No matter how well Winnie was made or how much routine maintenance is performed, mechanical things break and/or wear out. This is what happened to our in-dash RV A/C. After more than 50,000 miles of rolling down the road, our in-dash air conditioner stopped cooling.
Repairs on the Road
One of the things we have found in traveling full-time is that it is not easy to get repairs done while on the road. We know travelers with a home base plan on getting all of their mechanical and medical care taken care of in their one home base location.
When we decided to go on the road, we sold or gave away everything that wouldn’t fit on Winnie. We no longer have a home base.
One of the more difficult things about traveling 365 is finding mechanics who are honest, reliable, reasonably priced, who know what they are doing and can do the work in a time frame that works for someone who is always on the move!!
We saw a sign in one shop that said: You can have it fast, you can have it good, you can have it cheap: pick two.
When traveling, finding a shop that does even one well can be elusive. This was our experience.
A Tale of the First City
A couple of summers ago, on an extended trip around the Gulf of Mexico (TX, LA, MS, AL, FL) and back up the east coast, we started having problems with our in-dash RV A/C. It wouldn’t cool properly. Dave would add Freon from a can and that would work for a while, but eventually the A/C stopped working again.
While we were stopped in Maine for a couple of months, early in our stay we took Winnie to a repair shop for an oil change and to fix the in-dash RV A/C. They did the oil change just fine, but said the RV chassis air conditioner problem wasn’t something they could address. They referred us to a radiator repair shop. We will call this place “Radiator”.
Radiator charged us $585 to make a new hose/line, weld on a fitting and recharge the A/C system. Driving back to the RV park the A/C worked amazing! We sat in a campground for a couple of months. The day we were to leave Maine was in the heat of July. Everything seemed fine. Until Dave turned on the A/C.
It wasn’t cooling. On the day we were to leave Maine!!!!!!!!!
We drove back to Radiator and told the owner what happened. To his credit he looked at it immediately and then said he thought the problem was a small speck of dirt in his welding. He rewelded it. Put in more Freon. It cooled. And we were on our way.
About 400 miles later, rolling into Connecticut, we lost our A/C again. We had a five-month trip planned, with reservations, across the northern part of the country. We weren’t going back to Radiator in Maine. He had our $585, but we didn’t have A/C and there wasn’t much we could do about it. Ah, life on the road.
A Tale of the Second City
For the next 5 months of travel, we were in the northern part of the country and really, A/C wasn’t a big issue. Occasionally, on really hot travel days, Dave would add Freon from a can.
When we settled into TX for a couple of months during November and December, we sought a mechanic who could fix the A/C. We found one, we will call them “Service”, with a fairly good online presence / reputation. In addition to fixing the A/C and another oil change, we had a couple of other items we wanted looked at.
We got the oil changed and Service looked at the A/C. Service, with all of their testing capability said we needed an A/C compressor pump and drier. All of that was ordered and we returned to Service 3 weeks later. Once they were into installing the A/C compressor and drier, Service said we should probably have the hose replaced (the one we paid $585 for at Radiator in ME). Of course, it would have to be fabricated and wouldn’t be ready until the next day.
Instead of driving back and forth from Service to the RV park and back again, we ended up boondocking in Service’s parking lot.
With parts and labor, we spent $1,200 on the compressor and drier and another $300 on the hose at Service. Two shops and $2,000 later, we now have an in-dash AC unit that actually cools!
Take-away Points
While this whole process was expensive and frustrating, this is life on the road. Not every day on the road is sunshine and unicorns. We still believe a bad day on the road is better than a good day in a stick and brick house. It wasn’t the end of the world. Our in-dash A/C works.
Being able to pivot, for example, being able to boondock is a good thing. Winnie has an electric and propane heater as well as an electric and propane fridge. We were fine boondocking! Being resilient is a good take-away from this story!
Your partners in travel,
Kathryn, Dave and Lucky
RVing Nomads
It’s a lifestyle
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