Entegra Accolade – AC Capacitor & Fan Motor Service

I was idling in a Costco parking lot outside Tucson when I heard it—a grinding noise from the rooftop AC unit, followed by a thin electrical smell seeping down through the vents. The fan wasn’t dead, but it was struggling hard, moving air like it was pushing through wet blankets. That sound and that smell meant one thing: the capacitor was on its way out. Here’s what I learned after pulling that unit apart and testing before replacing: most RV owners panic and start swapping major components the moment cooling drops off, but nine times out of ten the actual culprit is something that costs thirty dollars and takes an afternoon to replace properly. Test first. Every time. On the Entegra Accolade, the rooftop AC takes relentless abuse—thermal stress, vibration from the road, years of continuous cycling—and when that system fails mid-summer in Arizona heat, the instinct is to throw money at it. This walkthrough covers how I actually diagnose and repair it in the field: methodical testing to pinpoint the exact failure, then surgical replacement of only what’s broken, because a correct diagnosis saves you from spending four hundred dollars replacing a compressor when a forty-dollar capacitor was the actual problem all along.

The Capacitor That Stops Your Dometic AC From Being a Doorstop

On the Accolade, the Dometic rooftop unit’s capacitor brittle out from heat cycling and road vibration—the fan slows to a crawl, the compressor struggles, and you’re left with lukewarm air in hundred-degree heat. This is the part that actually fixes it, not a new motor or a full AC unit replacement.

What works

• Fan speed snaps back immediately—you’ll notice the airflow difference within thirty seconds of power-up, and the startup current draw drops where it should be.
• Compressor stops laboring—the unit cycles normally instead of humming under load, and your amp draw returns to what the manual says it should be.
• Holds up through another five years of road vibration if you’ve got a stable rig and aren’t running the AC nonstop at 115°F ambient.

What doesn’t

• You have to pull the shroud and access the mounting bracket inside the plenum—it’s tight work in a crawl space on a hot day, and sweat drips onto the connections.
• Cross-reference the MFD rating obsessively; a 50/5 won’t work, and a 70/7 won’t fit the mounting—this isn’t forgiving, and a wrong order means a second Amazon return.

I second-guessed myself halfway through the install because the old capacitor was so corroded I couldn’t read the original MFD rating, and I was certain I’d ordered the wrong one—but the moment the fan spun up at full speed, I knew it was right. Get Fits for Dometic 3312195.000 Air Conditioner RV AC Motor Capacitor 60/5 MFD, Heavy Duty Air Conditioner Capacitor Replacement, Compatible with Dometic 3312195000 RV Air Conditioner Models.

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