cobrafang61

If it has a gas/propane furnace, it will have a induced draft exhaust somewhere on the sides/rear? to vent the hot combustion gasses to the outdoors, typically they will be round and covered by a screened dome. trace the propane lines to see where they go.

Thats ridiculous! I would simply take the motor to a armature/electric motor shop to be rewound, rebuilt or replaced wholesale like we do for HVAC/R. I am a 34 yr HVAC/R technician and I can tell you , no 12v motor that opens an awning needs to be $500!

I would try it with nothing in it and see if its of balance? or off center somehow? see if its mounted properly.

Yes the coils need to be chemically cleaned with coil cleaner, 409 or similar things are only better than nothing, . Coil cleaners available at HVAC/R supply houses, is a liquid that foams once its sprayed into the coils and foams, pushing the debris and film out. Its a mild acid and strips the smoke, dirt, dust, muck away like new allowing for a tremendous improvement in heat transfer! We are talking a 20 degree differential typically at best, now remove 2-3 degrees from that and its bad. Getting to both sides of each coil is important, but the side that's exposed to the incoming air gets dirtiest. Insure you get the foaming type, "coil brightener" type, non friendly type in other words, the safe stuff can be ingested without too much issue. I wouldn't try that with this stuff, in fact wear playtex gloves as it burns your skin after a few minutes! It smokes and foams the coils clean, use a garden type pressure sprayer that adjusts to a stream, to fog it will not penetrate the fins & rows of coils depth, shoot it into the coil between the pipes if you can see them to penetrate best, methodically spray each row quickly as it will begin foaming and require a good rinse too. Cover any controls or motors etc. so they don't get wet. It's about 15 bucks for a gallon of coil cleaner and works wonders on other things too. I had a friend selling a old beat up ford truck that was white with dirty greasy stains and etc, I tried a spot with the cleaner and did the truck it was a new truck in appearance! It ate the old paint off! lol!

RV Dr George, in Sacramento, California..

Hi, fascinating post, I have issues with the 11 amps @ 12 volts DC for a residential refrigerator? Amps X Volts = Watts, 11 Amps X 12 Volts = 132 watts, not much more than the 40 watt light bulb bulb inside it. Not to mention the defrost heater/s at minimum they are 1300 watts @ 120v, or over 10 amps @ 120 volts. Granted they run maybe 15-20 minutes every 8 hours, but that's substantial. The compressor may draw 2-7 amps run load amps (RLA). But easily may have a 40 amp locked rotor amps draw (LRA). This is why refrigerators require dedicated 20 amp appliance circuits. If refrigerators used just a few hundred watts per hour, they could run 5 or more off a 20 amp circuit, but you are lucky if 2 will work in reality.

A system can be accessed regardless of design, It may not be economically viable to repair most units given the $75 per lb refrigerant costs, $106.50 labor rates, and markups on parts 100% minimum, new heat pumps at 800-1000 look pretty good at that point, as you may have a tired compressor too, which won't work well even if patched up. The suction line to the compressor should be "beer can cold" and wet or its not right!

Gas furnaces use a flame rectification pilot proving system, the spark is AC initially, however as it passes through the flame, its rectified to a DC signal, via Flame rectification. A flame isn't a great conductor, but it allows millivolts/milliamps(not much, easily disrupted) of a DC signal to be sensed by a sensing rod, and /or ground via the pilots assembly etc. There will be a ground, or sense terminal on the ignition module or board. The signal in DC returning on ground/sense is what proves a flame exists ,or the pilot and is safe to then transition to full burners-- this is a good thing, especially with propane. There are centrifugal pressure or a sail switch that proves the induced draft motors running and says go to spark, but not always. Sometimes the pilot drops from the pressure, centrifugal or sail switch not proving a induced draft exists, especially if its a pressure switch. The orifices where the tube attaches on the induced draft blower assembly, carbons up and requires a tiny drill bit to ream out the tough carbon plug/deposit, sometimes they are partially blocked causing a wavering and on/off as your as well. It can be several things without seeing it, impossible to tell definitively, but these are where to look and how.

If you have an "auto" and "on" setting as a home thermostat does for the fan operation, then you have a fan relay sticking, it may be a board with a relay too? either way its a fan relay that's sticking, if you tapped it, it would likely stop. It needs replacement.

Many cleaners,solvents etc will do so I found, better to be safe than sorry with propane since it won't vent as natural gas does, being lighter than air, propane is heavier than air and will not vent safely, it sits in the lowest spot and waits for a spark. Luckily we can smell a leak easily.

The one way to know is to bypass the stat and test the unit, power enters the stat on RED, Heat is the White wire, AC is the Yellow, Fan is the Green, and a "common" "neutral" leg of control voltage may be present to power a parasitically powered stat? usually blue, Jumper the red(POWER IN) to white (HEAT) and see what happens?

Heat pump and AC coils must be chemically cleaned annually or a huge loss of efficiency/capacity results. HVAC/R supply houses sell condenser/evaporator coil cleaner, its a mild acid liquid that once sprayed into the coil, foams up, pushing debris from inside the rows of fins as well as stripping off any smoke, grease,oils, dirt, dust that accumulates rather quickly upon the coils. As in the heat mode the outdoor coils air conditioning the outdoors the outdoor coil sweats, like a beer can will, thus the dust/dirt that accumulates is turned to muck, and adheres to the backside of the outdoor coil since the fan motor slings the condensate upon the coil via splash ring. Without a cleaning, no unit will work well after awhile. As to charging the unit, as mentioned its a sealed system, which many units are, freezers, refrigerators,dehumidifiers, wine chillers, window ac units etc. There are no schrader ports to service them, however you can apply a "piercing valve which goes on the :low side" which is usually around 70 psi in ac mode, in heat mode it will be 270 or so, so you need to remove the piercing valve once you reclaim the refrigerant, if any, and silver solder a schrader port into the low side, a high side isn't required. This is the correct way to add a service port, if it were just AC, the piercing valves are OK if just subjected to 50-70 lbs of pressure, but heat pumps reverse so the low side is a high side in heat mode, so piercing valves are for reclaiming refrigerant and adding a schrader port properly. If you need to add refrigerant, you are leaking, which may be small and a annual recharge will get by. If not they sell sealers that actually do work well there days for $50. But given that the new units $800 and labors about $106.50 per hr and parts markups 100% to 500% depending on parts cost/size, a compressor may be 100% marked up, refrigerant 500%, $75 a lb for R22, 3 hours labor to clean and evacuate and recharge will be $400-$500 easily, not an economically viable alternative, especially considering your compressor and components are old too, you may not be happy with a repaired old unit too? They do get tired, losing volumetric efficiency /compression as cars will. I read a "Master RV technician" here saying the systems in a vacuum, not correct, its positively charged with 70psi on the low side while running and 270 on the high side approximately, even off its whatever ambient correlates to on the temperature pressure chart for that refrigerant, if it has any liquid refrigerant is will be at X temp at X pressure according to the heat its subjected to parked, not running, at no time is it ever in a vacuum except when preparing it to be charged!