Anybody with the Maxxair fan having malfunctions? Evidently a lot do based on my research of my problems, though a cursory search can’t find reports on EP, so thought I’d post my experience in case your’s craps out.
Apparently the fan motor isn’t brushless and uses carbon fiber brushes which shed carbon dust leading to irritating squeaking noises and binding.
My 4.5 yr old fan started squealing in the middle of the night two years ago (I almost always run it all night on low to exhaust condensation). I managed to get rid of it several times by repeatedly reversing the fan direction while running it on high for 5 mins or so. It would run OK for 6 mos or so and I’d have to repeat.
Then it started flashing the green light on our last trip, stop working, and chirp repeatedly until I cut the power. I could reset it by cutting the power and then turning it on and running it from lowest setting to #3. Going to 4 or 5 would immediately start the green light of death and beeping again.
Sometimes the control board is a problem and apparently those malfunctions have to do with corrosion (for older ones) and/or seeing too much voltage when charging and maybe with Lithium batteries and unregulated voltage. Apparently older fans were limited to a max of 13.5v input and also didn’t have a waterproofing, so called conformal, coating on the control boards.
Maxxair CS was really helpful — diagnosed a bad fan motor based on the working up to speed 3 behavior. Told me that newer motors have been redesigned slightly to deal with the problems. Also said the control boards have had the conformal coating for quite awhile now and can handle up to 15v input.
They also said that running a new fan/fan motor on high for 24 hours seats the bearings and helps eliminate the squealing. So with a new rig/fan, this might be worth doing right away.
I just installed the new motor this morning and every thing works great. The control board (which I didn’t replace) looks like new despite once or twice getting some minor rain splashed in and exhausting a lot of moisture (we heat preprepared food and boil water inside under the fan).
The motor is actually fairly easy to remove and install from inside the camper — there’s tons of YouTube videos showing how. Also a bad board is pretty simple to replace too. I could tell my old fan motor was binding up — it was noticeably harder to spin by hand than the new one. I’m going to take it apart later to see if it’s recoverable for a backup.
So if you’re having problems or do in the future, the fix is pretty easy.
