Well the hits just keep coming. My "to do" list bares a good resemblance to that old song "one hundred bottles of beer on the wall". Will it ever end? But the kicker, the real deal breaker, was a broken refrigerator. My first reaction was to just accept it and leave anyway, without the refrigerator. Oh I was hot. I told Marie "we are leaving without it". It's amazing what a little time to think and a glass of luke warm water can do for your disposition. Okay okay, lets take a minute here, I can fix this. Lets trouble shoot the problem. I'll call tech support, they were great when I first installed the unit...bout 6 years ago. And so it went, I found the new tech support number, it turns out the company was bought by a company called Dometic group. I called the company and started the whining, I mean trouble shooting. The new tech support guy may or may not be qualified, but I'll never know because he just refused to put forth any effort. As soon as I called out the fault code on the refrigerator he immediately concluded it was the control module, "you need a new one, it's the module". Okay, that was quick, just from having walked the earth for a few years, I know there are more tests one can try in order to pinpoint the cause of this fault, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. So out I go the hostile jungle we call Miami, and I buy a module, Three hundred dollars. Well guess what...the frig just continues to do the same thing. so I call Mr. Tech support. (am I allowed to use his real name?), and I tell him it was not the module. Surely out of the shame of having misdiagnosed the problem earlier he would be more through now, after costing me $300.00. Well guess again, no sooner did I finish my first sentence when he blurted out, "then its the compressor, you need a new one". Now I am not a smart man, but I can tell when the guy on the other end of the line is even less smart. Now the compressor is a $600 dollar part, and it comes with the module, so I would hypothetically be out $900, that's if I had listened to Mr. Tech support. But no sir I was not about to follow this guy anywhere ever again. If this guy turned out to be Jesus I was ready to burn in hell. I'll just have to concentrate and shake the cobwebs off of that part of my brain that knows about refrigeration. It's a lot like a bicycle, it all comes back to you...yeah right. I was able to find my old gauges and I went ahead and purchased a Freon leak detector. I am rusty as all hell at this so it does take repetition, as the gears turn in my head, but I concluded that the source of my problems was a leak somewhere in the system. However, while there was Freon the refrigerator did cool, so that pretty much excluded the compressor being bad. My new leak detector made short work out of locating the leak. So now I need a new evaporator.
That's the evaporator inside the refrigerator box. |
The one that "Mr. No Support" sells costs $550, but I found one in California for $125. You followin what I'm saying? You pickin up what Im laying? Well I called the guys out in California and they were real nice, kinda like that old tech support guy from long ago, we got that part ordered. I felt so good about the amount of money I was saving that I decided to splurge on the shipping, Yeah, 3 day shipping.
Well I have plenty of other projects to work on while I wait for my frig part.
Check out the new rubrail on my dinghy |
I even doubled up on the padding at the bow! |
And so. for those of you that are so juiced up on Ritalin that you can actually get through all my ranting, I am afraid that that line in the sand that I so authoritatively drew, that I would not pay for Septembers dockage, is....how-to-put-it, postponed until I get the courage to draw another line.
GR was wondering about the "line", but in reality, we have all done it. Drawn lines that we take back. Heck, we have even made it half way through the Gulf Stream and turned back around when our fuel pump broke. It just makes sense to get parts from the place you know. Before you GO!!
ReplyDeleteYou will go, too.
Refrigeration is one of the NUMBER 1 reason's people sit and wait for parts. It's the NUMBER 1 reason we chose to forgo it in the last boat. The thing is you are doing this the way YOU want and if refrigeration makes the first shove off and the first few months out to sea easier than by gosh you should have refrigeration!!
Boat looks good, dinghy looks good.
But you could use a shave!! ;) xoxox