Drew Callahan · March 27, 2026
I’ve got my workbench set up in the shade behind bay two, and this is where I spend half my summer — sitting on a stool with a clamp and a multimeter, pulling dead capacitors out of Thor Freedom Travelers one after another. The pattern never changes: owner calls, says the AC hummed once and … Read more
Drew Callahan · March 27, 2026
Skip replacing a bad igniter in your Mirada and you’ll be shivering in an unheated rig before the week’s out — possibly stranded if temperatures drop fast. I’ve spent enough time under Mirada furnace panels to recognize the pattern: the Suburban 232286 igniter fails predictably in these units, and when it goes, it takes your … Read more
Drew Callahan · March 26, 2026
I’ve got a Dometic capacitor sitting on my bench right now—pulled from a Ventana last week—and the aluminum casing tells the whole story. It’s swollen on one end like it took a punch, the solder joints around the terminals are black and crusty, and if you listen close you can hear the dried electrolyte sloshing … Read more
Drew Callahan · March 26, 2026
“Drew, my Ventana’s furnace clicks but won’t catch. I replaced the igniter last year—does that go bad again that fast?” That question landed in my inbox twice in one week, and both times the real culprit wasn’t a dead igniter—it was the control board running weak voltage and burning out a perfectly good new igniter. … Read more
Drew Callahan · March 26, 2026
I’ve got the access door open on this Thor Freedom Traveler’s furnace cabinet, and I’m staring at the igniter assembly—a thin ceramic rod sitting inside a metal housing that’s supposed to glow hot enough to light propane, except it isn’t doing either. The thermostat’s been calling for heat for the last three minutes. The blower’s … Read more
Drew Callahan · March 25, 2026
A Dometic rooftop AC capacitor on an Entegra Aspire typically runs $40 to $60 online, but a dealership service call to replace it lands you a $180 to $220 labor bill for work that takes less than twenty minutes once you know where to look. When you’re living full-time in your rig, that gap between … Read more
Drew Callahan · March 25, 2026
I show up at RV sites to fix things that have stopped working, and there’s a pattern to which jobs pile up on my calendar. It’s not that these rigs leave the factory broken — it’s that certain systems get treated the same way by careless owners, time and time again. Take the furnace in … Read more
Drew Callahan · March 24, 2026
How much heat can you afford to lose on a freezing night when your Cornerstone’s furnace won’t ignite? That’s the question staring you down right now—and the answer is none. I’ve pulled into campgrounds in January where the only thing between a comfortable night and hypothermia was a working furnace. On the Entegra Cornerstone, when … Read more
Drew Callahan · March 24, 2026
I was three weeks into a late-August trip down through Arizona when I noticed the rooftop AC on my Cornerstone wasn’t doing much of anything. The compressor would click on, the refrigerant lines would get cold—I could feel it—but the condenser fan on top just sat there. No spin, no hum, nothing. Within five minutes … Read more
Drew Callahan · March 23, 2026
Walk into any RV dealer service department and they’ll tell you that furnace problems on a Holiday Rambler Navigator almost always point to a bad igniter—replace that $40 part and you’re done. But spend five minutes in an RV forum, and you’ll hear a different story: plenty of owners swapped the igniter, got nothing but … Read more
