Air Conditioner fan stopped working

[Jill]

We have a 6 year old 21 but rarely use the air conditioner. I used it yesterday and it worked fine for maybe 20 minutes. I turned it off and then changed my mind and turned it on again probably within a minute or two. It started to turn on (I heard some loud buzzing), but the blower didn't kick in so it stopped working. I tried it on the Fan setting to be sure it is the fan, and the fan never comes on. I hear some clicking like the thermostat is trying to tell the unit to turn on but it never does.

I've googled Dometic AC problems and have not seen exactly this one reported. I did see something about a capacitor that might need to be replaced but I really don't know anything about these things. Does anyone have any ideas about things we can try to fix it?

[Eggscape]

Some times refrigeration compressors don’t like to be restarted that soon. Depending on the cycle there could have been a build up of pressure that the motor could not overcome and may have resulted in tripping the breaker in the main electrical panel or one that will reset itself over time in the unit.

That would be my first check.

[wackyburggeezer]

The first step might be to locate the model number for your A/C unit and see if there's an
electrical schematic drawing for it.

[Jill]

Originally Posted by Eggscape

Some times refrigeration compressors don’t like to be restarted that soon. Depending on the cycle there could have been a build up of pressure that the motor could not overcome and may have resulted in tripping the breaker in the main electrical panel or one that will reset itself over time in the unit.

That would be my first check.

Thanks. I should have mentioned that I checked the breaker which was fine, and we also tried waiting 24 hours, and get the same results. Also just for grins we unplugged from shore power and tried again, same result.

[tdf-texas]

Yep! The A/C fan capacitor has gone bad. Easy fix once you get the A/C shroud cover off (be sure to disconnect the power first)

https://www.escapeforum.org/forums/f...tml#post395284

It's usually a good idea to replace both capacitors while you have the cover off. Once one fails, the other one usually is not too far behind it.

[Jill]

Originally Posted by tdf-texas

Yep! The A/C fan capacitor has gone bad. Easy fix once you get the A/C shroud cover off (be sure to disconnect the power first)

https://www.escapeforum.org/forums/f...tml#post395284

It's usually a good idea to replace both capacitors while you have the cover off. Once one fails, the other one usually is not too far behind it.

Oh thank you!! We will replace both capacitors and hopefully have a functioning AC again!

[Jill]

And just for anyone else who might end up with the same problem .... We are travelling and don't have a good enough ladder to get on the roof to fix the problem. But the work around mentioned in the thread linked above works. We removed the cover inside the trailer to get access to the fan, and any time we want to run AC we just start the fan manually. So we will use this method for the rest of our trip. We don't run the AC very often so it is a very small inconvenience.

Thanks again to this forum and those who provide so much help!