Yep, caught it early enough. I have some water based rust/primer that will get sprayed over it after basic cleanup, then coated.

Little work on it today, put a rear bumper on the sons truck. Was from my fathers S10 blazer so the reuse is cool.

Playing with the flush mount windows. They work exceedingly well!

After that, I buttoned it all back up and with only an extension cord running from a 15 amp wall receptacle, I turned the thing on.

It ran flawlessly for about 35-40 minutes, when, fully satisfied it was working without issue, I turned it back off again.

This is a huge success, which means I can carry just my small 2K HF generator to power the AC if needed during this summer's adventures...Yippee!

Next, I removed the control center access cover where the capacitor is located.

Today I installed the soft start capacitor. Theory of operation: Normally when things like AC units start they pull a very heavy surge of power, and that is why some campers have 30 amp and others have a 50-amp power requirement. The idea is to shove a ton of amperage at the motor to overcome the resistance of getting a high pressure pump, for example to just start to move fluid.

The idea of a soft-start capacitor is to prevent that initial surge of power, and instead, allow power to just ramp up more slowly. This means it takes far less power to get an AC in this example to start. Of course, it will not be cooling as fast initially, but that is the price. Now on the good end, the power requirement for the camper falls dramatically, meaning we may be able to power the unit from more places, like an extension cord, or from a small generator.

That's what we will be testing today.

We are starting with a Briidea soft-start capacitor: