Air Conditioning Rant

[Chief Engineer]

"Ranting lantern Lit"

I have a customer that needs a new Marine Air Passport I/O Control unit.(Legacy Style)

When I called an outfit in "The Sailing Capitol of the World" and told them what I needed, the guy was rather abrupt and said he need numbers of the Unit.....uh-ok......drove an hour to the boat.....got the numbers.....now he wants a picture......uh-ok.......drive to their place and he looks at the control head like it is a piece of unknown origin or from a Roswell site.....I show him the picture of the circuit board.......which he asked for.....and am told I need a retrofit kit for $560.00......I had the curious sensation of smoke being wafted up my stern....If ya know what I mean

Somethin is fishy here......and it isn't th seafood house in Eastport......

"Ranting lantern is extiguished"

[Bash]

this is the way it's been ever since Dometic took over Marine Air.... and SeaLand.... and Waeco.... and Cruiseair.... and.......

Spare parts? The new corporate policy seems to be that you should by the whole new unit, complete. AFter all, who else are you going to turn to? The competition?

[Pelagic]

That explains why I am getting little support here in the Philippines if you guys are telling me this.

Time to rethink suppliers

[Chief Engineer]

Yeah I got that part too...."you need a new unit complete....what happens if the unit goes bad after you put the retrofit kit in?

Do these guys ever listen to themselves?

[Beausoleil]

I have a spare Passport I/O control. It has firmware version A12. It seems to work "ok" with my 2-year old SCM 16K MarineAir unit. My other unit, a 12k version, is running "better" with the supplied Passport control, which has the A22 version of firmware on it.

I got the older controls (two of them) from the used nautical supply place (can't remember the name of the place!) in St. Augustine last year. Sometime between unboxing the two A/C units when I bought them and actually installing them, I misplaced one of the new controls, so I just bought a couple used.

The problem I'm having is that the larger 16k unit constantly will error out and display "HPF" (high pressure freon), which is usually an indication of blockage or reduced flow in the cooling water circuit. I plumbed both units off a single 3/4" thruhull, which may be the problem...

I think he just wants to know the version of the control board in the A/C unit so he can match it with a Passport control with the proper version of firmware. Of course, it would be simpler if he just told you that initially...

Let me know if you want to try it. The boat's in Hampton, VA right now.

[Jetexas]

Seems like they should be making a standard control unit that can be flashed with any firmware you need. But then, these guys would have to know what firmware is or how to plug the control unit into a computer.

My little brother is an electrical engineer and programs control systems like that. He could probably find a matching controller to fix the old panel rather cheaply -- the trouble is, someone has to flash the programming onto it or it doesn't do anything at all.