Rusty AC Drain Pan – Deeper Look Inside

[matthewmiller01]

I got a new one from them. Not SS, but covered in a bed liner type material. I still have my old one. I'm about to throw it out.

 

[Escapade]

I'm pigheaded. I don't want to give them another nickel. I see all too often when an engineer signs off and a bean counter steps in and kills things w/ good reputations. So he writes up a summary and gets a bonus based on the savings! If there good they change positions prior to the recalls they caused...

 

[Alex F]

Sorry for delay guys, but I just been swamped. Here's the quick summary of the issue I've discovered, which the phase 2 of the project.

As the whole project triggered from the weird smell with new SS pan in place and cleaned A/C unit I still felt some smell, which triggered me to start looking elsewhere. Here's a quick view that led me to notice a huge design gap in boat construction.



As you see there's a hole (for discussion sake I'll call it hole #1) that leads to the area behind the cabinet with drawers. this is where I felt the remaining smell coming from.
So, I decided to take the whole bad apart. Oh boy, am I glad I did that, b/c I found other two issues (hole #2 and TONs of dust).

Here's what the whole thing looks like:



Here's the hole #2, which goes down to the bow thruster tunnel and eventually the drain hose gets to the sump pumps and the intake hose goes all the way to the ER A/C pump.



Here's what I mean by design gap. As you can see from the pix these hoses go from the A/C unit all the way down to the BT area. There issue is that the holes are feeding the unit evaporator. So, when the unit circulates the air it sucks all the smell, dust and whatever all the way from the BT area spreading it all over the FWD section of the boat, which pretty much the sleeping quarters the unit handles. Thank you Sea Ray for letting us breath all this crap.

My resolution to this issue is to seal the holes so only the internal room air gets by the evaporator and nothing from any other hidden section down below.

Sealed Hole #1:



Sealed hole #2:



So, by sealing the holes I'm blocking any external air from the BT or from bexind the drawers box possibly get in to the unit's intake.

Problem #3 - The dust:

Here's the pic where you can see where the dust is accummulating. When I opened it up I was simply shocked with the amount of dust I saw. It was 1/4 to 1/2" thik layer of dust.



Just for this reason alone it was a good thing that I took the bed apart. Everyone should check this area out regardless of the model, b/c this is the main intake for the unit to circulate the air. And I was puzzled why my filter gets so much dust so quickly. I couldn't believe how much of this stuff we literally breath in. I basically vacuumed everything in there and hopefully this problem is now solved.

My smell SAGA is still going on and I opened another thread on that issue. http://clubsearay.com/showthread.php/60134-Unique-Smell-SAGA-Looking-for-suggestions

If anyone has any thoughts I would appreciate it.

Oh, I almost forgot, by looking at the 1st pic (view of the unit from the top) you can see that there's very little water there now. I shimmed the whole assembly in such way that all the water runs to bottom left corner and it only takes up about 1/4 of the pan while the rest is forced to drain. Another thing I did was repositioned the drain tube (see bottom left of the pan). SR installed the drain tube on the top left. What the hell were they thinking when the boat is on plane. The think that the water runs against the gravity?

 

[radiojon]

I've gotta tackle the rust issue myself ASAP. Tried a coat of Rustoleum in the pan last spring but it didn't last the whole summer. So I'm going to have to find a replacement pan. How difficult is the removal and re-installation of the A/C? I'm tempted to try it but it looks really, really complicated to try to disassemble and put back together. Anyone have a step-by-step?

- Mark

 

[Alegria]

Good to know Ken, just ordered some based on your and Franks wonderful recommendations!! You both were right on the price, shipping was a bit steep so I got it and the bowl cleaner... Looking forward to less gunk in my holding tank and sumps!!!

I have them as well. The recommendation was to coat with Ospho then paint.