Changing A/C drip pans

[rkimble]

Anyone ever changed the drip pans on the A/C units to stainless or other material? My salon unit is showing a fair amount of rust.

[James Power]

Hey rkimble,

I assume that you have a Cruisair AC unit. I have seen lot of the units rusting out and talked with the reps at the Miami boatshow and their warranty department with an unsatisfactory response. The drains on the pan allow 1/2" of standing water to remain which is the cause of the premature rusting. Replacement with the stainless pan will correct the rusty pan issue but does nothing to stop the unit itself ( compressor and mounts, condenser housing etc.. ) from continuing to rust out as the drains are the same. They have since changed the pan design and material. I think they should step up and offer some kind of solution for the design flaw in their product. By the way, the warranty department washed their hands of the issue and the reps at the show responded with, so what.. buy another unit. You can contact their warranty man Carter Till at carter.till@dometicusa.com

James Power
Victoria Harbour Boatworks

[rkimble]

Thanks James. That is exactly the problem. The placement of the drain allows 1/2 inch of standing water all the time. Obviously it's going to rust. Not that I give it much hope, but I'll contact the warrenty department.

[duetto]

hi,

i did the ss replacement 3 years ago. it was very straight forward and new pan was an exact replacement. i also modified the drain by grinding hole bigger and making a "custom" opening with marinetex. also wedged the front of pan higher. has made a big difference.

[rkimble]

That's sort of the concept I have John. I think if I can slant the new pan correctly in order to channel water toward the drain and make some small mods it will have a major impact. The salon unit should be pretty straughtforward with good access. Not so sure about the cabin unit, but I think I am about to find out.

[duetto]

hi russ,

i only did the main unit. limiting factor on pitch is the ceiling height of the seat. my aft unit is in much better shape, since it doesn't get used as much.

[Leadfree]

Another solution Larry came up with was to install a small diameter hose from the air conditioning unit to a hole he drilled thru the bottom of the salon seat floor so it could constantly drain right into the ocean. He did this on the system between the cabins when the Venturi got clogged and our beds became salt water logged. We haven't had a problem since.
Sharon of Lead Free Too

[Captnautigal]

composite pan bottom

acpanbottom.JPG (120.12 KiB) Viewed 12688 times

New A/C photos

acnewunit.JPG (127.35 KiB) Viewed 12693 times

We changed out the entire unit. Cruisare redesigned it. It now comes with a moulded composite drip pan. Water no longer sits under the compresser; gravity guides it into a channel and its flows easily out the hose fitting. Also, the fan was upgraded and blows stronger. We love the new unit and are glad we spent the money to replace our old unit. It cools the salon much quicker than the previous unit. Its the same size 16,000 BTU. The unit also has a smaller footprint.

[eepstein]

We replaced ours with a Climma 12,000 that has a slow start compressor. It works really well with our Honda 2000i and we get nice AC all night at anchor for a gallon of gas. I did not mind sacrificing some BTUs for small generator compatibility. Hope that's useful info...