Forest River Cedar Creek – AC Capacitor & Fan Motor Service

RV repairs are either thirty minutes or three days — there’s rarely an in-between. The difference is almost always whether you understand the system before you start, whether you have the right tools, and whether you ordered the correct part the first time. I’ve learned all three lessons the hard way, multiple times. On a Cedar Creek I picked up a few seasons back, the rooftop AC unit was doing exactly what they all do before they die quietly on a 95-degree afternoon — the compressor would kick on, struggle, and trip the breaker, while the fan motor made a sound like a deck of cards in a bicycle wheel. Nine times out of ten, that combination points straight to a failed run capacitor and a fan motor bearing that’s been starved of lubrication for a season too long, and if you catch it early and know what you’re doing, you’re back to cold air in under an hour — miss it, and you’re pricing out a full condenser replacement or worse, selling the rig cheap to someone who actually does know what they’re doing.

The Capacitor That Stops the Compressor Stall on Cedar Creek Rooftop Units

The dual run capacitor is what keeps your compressor and condenser fan synchronized — when it starts to fail, the compressor kicks in but the fan won’t spin, and you get zero cooling while the system pulls full amperage and overheats itself into shutdown. It’s the most common Cedar Creek AC failure, and it happens fast.

What works

• Compressor and condenser fan restart simultaneously — you hear both motors engage at the same time instead of the compressor laboring alone.
• Discharge air temperature drops to actual cool within 10 minutes of replacement, not the lukewarm output you get from a half-dead capacitor.
• Swap takes 15 minutes once you’re on the roof — two wire terminals and one mounting bolt, no special tools needed.

What doesn’t

• Amazon stock on Dometic/Coleman-Mach spec capacitors is inconsistent — you may get a generic cross-reference that fits mechanically but doesn’t match the microfarad rating your unit needs.
• If you install the wrong capacitor value (even close, like 35µF instead of 40µF), the fan won’t engage and you’ll be back on the roof thinking the capacitor was DOA when it’s actually just undersized.

I almost ordered a generic 40µF capacitor off eBay because it was cheaper and showed up faster — but the original on that Cedar Creek was dual-rated at 40/5µF, and a single capacitor would’ve bought me a week of troubleshooting with the fan still dead. RV AC dual run capacitor (Dometic/Coleman-Mach)

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