Drew Callahan · May 2, 2026
I’ve got a Riverstone control board sitting on my workbench right now — scorched at one corner, the solder joints cracked and discolored where the heating relay used to fire. That blackening tells you everything: a furnace that kept trying to ignite, kept failing, and left the board to absorb the electrical punishment until it … Read more
Drew Callahan · May 2, 2026
“Drew, my Cougar’s furnace won’t light at all. I’ve got heat in the morning or it shuts off mid-cycle. Dealer wants $1,400 to even look at it. Am I looking at a full furnace swap, or is this something I can actually fix?” That message came through on a Tuesday afternoon from a guy in … Read more
Drew Callahan · April 24, 2026
Your diesel heater won’t fire up on a January morning, the glow plug cycles but nothing ignites, and you’re staring at a fault code that your owner’s manual doesn’t explain—so what now? If you’re running a Webasto or Espar unit, you’re not alone in this breakdown, and the good news is that most of what … Read more
Drew Callahan · April 23, 2026
I was camped outside Sedona in mid-April when my 2015 North Point started showing a wet spot on the bedroom mattress—not soaking, but enough to know something upstairs was leaking. Water heater, furnace, roof seal, or slide-out gasket; take your pick. Jayco builds solid rigs, but after three of them over eight years, I’ve learned … Read more
Drew Callahan · April 23, 2026
Walk into an RV dealer service department and ask about a dead air conditioner, and you’ll hear talk of compressor replacement, control board failures, and refrigerant issues—the expensive stuff. Log onto an RV forum the same afternoon and someone will tell you it’s probably just a capacitor or fan motor, maybe a thermostat that’s gone … Read more
Drew Callahan · April 23, 2026
Pull back the cabinet panel on a Forest River Sunseeker, Solera, or Berkshire and you’ll spot the Suburban water heater sitting in that cramped utility bay — and nine times out of ten, the anode rod inside has already surrendered to corrosion. Forest River handles dozens of chassis and floor plans under its umbrella, each … Read more
Drew Callahan · April 22, 2026
What Winnebago’s service department won’t tell you upfront is that their rigs fail in patterns — predictable, repeatable patterns that cluster by model year and design generation. I’ve rebuilt enough of them to spot the difference: a View’s roof seals deteriorate on a schedule entirely different from a Brave’s, the Sightseer’s plumbing layout creates failure … Read more
Drew Callahan · April 22, 2026
It was mid-January, and I was parked outside of Flagstaff when the furnace stopped throwing heat. Not gradually—it just quit. I remember the exact moment: standing in the galley, hand on the thermostat dial, and instead of the familiar whoosh of ignition, I got clicking. A rapid, mechanical clicking, like a tiny relay working overtime … Read more
Drew Callahan · April 21, 2026
Most RV owners believe their air conditioner either works or it doesn’t—that it’s binary, simple, all-or-nothing. What they don’t realize is that the system can look like it’s running while the cooling half has already given up, and by the time they figure out what’s actually broken, a $30 component failure has cascaded into a … Read more
Drew Callahan · April 21, 2026
I’ve got my workbench set up in the bay right now with a Thor Challenger frame spread across it—slideout seal in one hand, a heat gun warming up on the side table, and three inches of gap staring back at me where there shouldn’t be any. This is the kind of thing that doesn’t wait … Read more
