Suburban Life.....

As you will recall I've written previously about the Suburban propane heater (one of 3 in our Newell) in our salon that was failing.  We first noticed a problem back in November when we spent the one frigid night on the shores of Mono Lake and the heater would not stay lit at first, but eventually did work......that was the last time it worked.  After doing some trouble shooting it became apparent that the control board had failed......

The failed control board

......I had sort of dreaded this happening because it seemed to me that any of the 3 Suburban heaters would be difficult to get out of their cubby holes.  These heaters are now 34 years old and it is inevitable that they will begin to fail......I know because I have a few Newell friends with Classic coaches like mine that have had to repair theirs.  It seemed to me that just getting any of the heaters out in order to fix them would be a full day project, so I kept procrastinating.

Well, Friday was the day I chose to dig into the removal of the heater......TLE was going to be gone for a few hours getting her hair done, shopping, so I would have the kitchen area to myself.

First I had to remove the three drawers above the heater, then all the 'Tuppeware' TLE stores in front of the heater, then the metal cover giving access to the heater itself......

The heater inside it's box

.....next I needed to remove just two screws which secure the heater inside its aluminum box......there is one inside the heater box (see below), and one outside where the heater vent is (see second picture below)......

First of two screws to remove

Second screw outside at the heater vent

.....once those two screws were removed I had to disconnect the gas supply line from the heater.........

The propane line disconnected

......then four wires (yellow, red and light blue) shown in the picture below........

 4 wires that must be disconnected

 ......once the aforementioned was done it was just a matter of sliding the heater out, removing the old control board and installing the new control board shown below.......

The new Dinosaur UIB - L control board

.....in all it took less than two hours start to finish......once I had reattached everything and reconnected the gas I turned on the heater and waited.....in about 10 seconds I heard the ignitor sparking, saw the burner light......with the failed board the burner would light for about 7 seconds, and then go out.  This time, with the new board, it stayed on and soon heated forced air was coming out the vents!  YAY!

The burner is on....it stayed lit!

Now I know it is not that hard to repair these heaters, and when the next one fails I will not procrastinate again.

One of our favorite local Mexican restaurants is Pepito's down on Magnolia near Arlington, and we had made plans a week ago to meet my son Tim and his girl friend Laila for dinner there.  They have the most gigantic Margaritas I have ever seen at this place, and the food is excellent!

Moi, TLE Tim and TBL* - dinner with good friends who happen to be my 'kids'

We met at Pepito's around 1900 and had a wonderful evening of interesting conversation, great food and Margaritas all around......life is good!

Thanks for stopping by!

* TBL = The Beautiful Laila