There was a thread or 2 about folks trying to run the ac off of the truck and I don’t believe it was successful for some reason. I forget or could be misremembering.

 

As I recall, a special cord is required to connect the RV to the truck's inverter.

 

As said above, many who have tried it have had issues and needed a special cord to make the very expensive portable generator run the AC.
My 2 little Honda 2000 watt generators can run 2 of our 3 soft start equipped 13.5K BTU AC units at a time and the 6.5 gallon marine fuel tank will keep them going from late afternoon until after morning coffee with gas still in the tank.

 

Anyone have one on a Dometic 13500 unit?

 

I just had a Coleman soft start module fail, after just a handful of uses on my living room Coleman Mach15. Installed it in April 2024, and it would not allow the compressor to start the 2nd day of our camping trip last week.

After several checks of what else it could be (control board, run capacitor, thermal switch, compressor itself, loose connection, bad wire), I removed the soft start and returned the wires to stock -she fired up.



Further diagnosis showed the soft start had power between the line and neutral connectors from the control board, but the power LED remained off. Discovered the fuse was blown - not a typical customer-replaceable part. I soldered a temporary fuse in, but it still did not work. I inspected the board for cold solder joints, burnt components or traces, but did not find these issues. It would be great to know what part is the weak link on this board, and just fix it, like we do other boards on our trucks.

I think I'll make it so it's easy to wire back to stock on the road, incase this happens again. The white wire to the compressor just needs to stay a female spade terminal. I can put a male spade on the replacement soft start white wire, and make this connection removable. The yellow and red soft start wires simply disconnect from the run capacitor. The black soft start wire can be removed, and the wirenut reused with some new tape to tie the remaining black and purple wires together.

 

That would suck to have to be on the roof to revert a softstart device when you need A/C.

I think I'll take a "before" picture of mine when I go to install the Micro-Air. You know, just in case.

 

Agreed. I was holding off buying a second Coleman soft start for the bedroom AC pending the performance of this one. I don't think I can recommend the Coleman unit with these and other's failures. Might be worth the money after all to get the MicroAir unit. I think I'm going to do that for the bedroom AC, and see if I can get this current Coleman soft start exchanged.

I've been using a MicroAir soft start on my home heat pump, and it's been solid for several years of regular/daily use.

 

I can't recall seeing any failures of the Micro-Air units.

 

I think the MicroAir units are very solid. I just passed the 6 year mark on the one on my current ORV trailer.

 

So I'm a bit confused, is the soft start fixed, or not in use?

 

Not in use. I could not figure out how to fix it without more time to dig further. I hope to exchange it if airxcel, owner of coleman-mach, will respond to my request.

 

Is the Coleman Mach quiet? Im getting ready to order a Mach 15 to replace my Carrier Air V. The Carrier has a Micro Air 364 I put on it and will switch it over to the new AC. Just need to reset it so it can re-learn the new AC.

 

I have a Coleman Mach 15. As the name implies, it sounds like it's going Mach 15.

It's loud enough that carrying on a conversation right below the unit requires a bit of vocal effort. If you're whispering sweet nothings to your sweetie, she's not going to get the message. From the bedroom, it's not bad at all.

 

Is your system ducted or non ducted?

 

For an RV AC, it's the quietest I've run so far. Mine is ducted, and I did install RV Airflow units in both.