When Your RV AC Goes Boom: How To Replace A Coleman Mach Blower Wheel

ByChristine Updated on

When you hear a boom in the middle of the night and are woken from a sound sleep in your RV, what could it be?

This recently happened to us, and it turned out to be a busted Coleman Mach Blower Wheel in our main Coleman Mach 8 RV air conditioning unit. This post will explain how this can happen, and what you can do to fix it.

Prefer video? We’ll show you what happened in the following video.

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How We Lost Our AC

RV air conditioning units have two fans. One is on the outside to move air through the heat exchanger. This is the one you can hear from the outside when your AC is running. You can usually see it inside your AC unit without taking anything apart.

Coleman Mach Blower Wheel

The second fan is inside your ducting. This is the one that pushes air through the vents in your RV. It looks different from the external fan because it is designed to channel air in one direction (into the ducting.)

These types of fans are called blowers. Blowers are usually very reliable, but for some reason this one is famous for cracking, coming apart, and making a lot of noise when it does!

This Has Happened Before

About a year and half before this particular incident we had another Coleman Mach blower wheel go boom in the night while visiting family. It was so loud that in addition to waking us, it also woke one of our family members in their house next door who thought someone had set off a firework.

Since we had already had it happen once, it was pretty easy to diagnose without even opening our AC up to look inside.

How To Replace A Coleman Mach Blower Wheel

We have 2 Coleman Mach 8 AC units on our RV. We’ve heard that this can be a problem in many of the other versions of these same AC’s. Thankfully, if you have a spare blower wheel on hand, swapping one out is pretty easy. Here is what you’ll do:

  1. Use a #2 Phillips-Head screwdriver to remove the 4 bolts that hold the main AC cover on.
  2. Remove cover.
  3. Use a 3/8″ wrench or socket to remove the 4 nuts holding down the next (gray) cover and slide it off.
  4. Pull off the black, cylindrical cover around the blower wheel (no tools required.)
  5. Slide out the black plastic ring near the end of the blower wheel.
  6. Use a T25 Torx bit to unscrew the screw holding the blower wheel on (on ours, this screw also had a slot for a regular flat head screwdriver.)
  7. Pull the blower wheel off of the motor. You may need to gently persuade it with a hammer.
  8. Slide on the new blower wheel and reassemble everything.

Parts List To Replace A Coleman Mach Blower Wheel

Now we know how important it is to have a spare blower wheel! If you have the same AC as we do, you can get a spare of the following:

We hope this never happens to you, but if it inevitably does, you’ll now be more prepared to recognize what happened and make the repair!

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Christine is the co-founder of Never Stop Adventuring, and an avid traveler who started traveling the world as a child growing up in a military family. She even lived in Germany for numerous years. Since then she has been to 48 U.S. states, 17 countries, and traveled the U.S. in an RV for over 7 years.

With her 3 kids, the adventures continued family travel style. She has planned and coordinated travel with kids for the last 10 years and shares family travel tips and tricks, destinations, costs and even the mistakes so you can be empowered to take your own family trips with confidence!