A temporary/permanent solution......

A good friend of mine (a fellow Newell owner) coined that phrase about a year ago. We were in Austin, TX at a Newell Mini-Rally last April. I had noticed on our trip out to Texas that the Airconditioning dryer was not cylcing off as it should automatically do, and the result was the evaporator was freezing up. My friend helped me install a manaul on/off switch in the cockpit area so I could manually turn off the dryer periodically to keep the evaporator from freezing. It has worked wonderfully.

As I wrote recently, I have been chasing a generator problem for about 3 weeks now....not continuously, mind you, but a few hours here and there. For some reason the trigger wire that should only send an electrical signal to the starter solenoid when I press the start switch is getting power 100% of the time, whether or not I press the start switch. As soon as I turn on the house batteries the generator tries to start. I had ohm tested the 4 separate start switches throughout the coach, including the one on the controller box next to the generator, and they all checked out. I had thought that one of them might have gone bad and was sending a signal all the time, but they all checked out. I then opened up the controller box and saw that there were 3 relays in there, each with 8 connections. I assumed one of them had gone bad, so I ordered new ones and replaced them. Upon reconnecting the controller box, and turning on the house batteries the same problem presented itself. I then crawled under the coach (after first blocking the frame to avoid getting squished should air suspension spontaneously lose air....it has happened to others, and the result is usually death) and opened up the back panel on the generator and found a 4th relay. Now I need to find that part and try replacing it.

In the mean time I resorted to the temporary/permanent solution previously used with great success (hope it will only be temporary this time....LOL!). I disconnected the trigger wire from the solenoid, and added a 10' extension to it so I could run it into the coach. I purchased a push button starter switch at Autozone, and attached the trigger wire to one terminal, then attached a second 10' wire to the other terminal and ran it back down to the trigger terminal on the solenoid....wala! Success!!! I can now start the generator from inside once again by using the temporary push button starter switch combined with pushing the old starter switch to open the propane solenoid at the generator allowing propane to flow into the motor. I can still turn off the generator by pushing the original start switch to the "OFF" position.

So, the trouble shooting is deferred to another day.

The reason I spent the entire day today trying to get this issue resolved is we are going down to Temecula tomorrow night to another soccer tournament......I know, the forecast is actually for sunny weather this weekend. We'll be dry camping at the John Blanche Memorial Soccer Complex I previously wrote about several weeks ago. That weekend was rained out along with two other weekends in the past 5 weeks. So, this will be the first successful tournament overnight trip....keeping my fingers crossed, and knocking on wood....LMAO!!