Air Conditioner stops cooling then starts back

[Vincentc]

Lilly Marie has 2 Cruiseair units, look like originals with rotary controls. The unit for the aft and fwd cabins stopped cooling (the unit was blowing air but not cool, with no apparent current draw for the compressor according to the ampmeter) and then after I shut it off a few days later I tried again and it worked fine for a couple of days and then it stopped working.
I have an ac guy coming to look at it tomorrow morning before leaving for the rendezvous but am concerned that he might have trouble diagnosing the problem. I suspect it will work when he turns it on, but will probably stop during this weekend's trip) The ac business primarily works on land units and their tech who usually works on boats no longer works for them.
Suggestions on the source of the problem will be appreciated.
Thanks

 

[SKYCHENEY]

Since I see no replies, I'll take a guess (this is only a guess): Thermostat going bad, high pressure cut-out kicking in, or a start capacitor that is intermittent(if that's possible, I don't know).

 

[Vincentc]

Sky,
Your guesses sound good to me, thanks. I'll pass them on to the tech in the morning.
I went down to the boat during my lunch break and turned on the AC. It ran fine for the 10 minutes I was there.

 

[Canuck Dennis]

I had one doing that also, I even disconnected the water supply at the unit, fired up the pump and had "reasonable" flow, but, not enough, so, cleaned out the sea strainer and that fixed it.

 

[Pascal]

i've had one on which the compressor would shut down after a while even though the compressor on light on the control was on.

turned out it was too hot and tripping a thermal safety on the compressor, which would reset after a while. plenty of water flow. turned out to be a charge issue (cant' remember if it was to much or too little gas)

 

[bobk]

i've had one on which the compressor would shut down after a while even though the compressor on light on the control was on.

turned out it was too hot and tripping a thermal safety on the compressor, which would reset after a while. plenty of water flow. turned out to be a charge issue (cant' remember if it was to much or too little gas)

One of mine just did that same thing. It needed a charge.

Bobk

 

[Vincentc]

Thanks,
Topping off the freon, sounds like a simple fix. I will let you all know what the tech finds if he comes before we leave.

 

[MikeP]

Yet another thing to check! -

My salon ac compressor was doing weird starting/stopping and seriously pulling down the genny - to almost stoping it sometimes. Turned out it was burnt/corroded wiring at the compressor (not the box on the compressor chassis, the wires at the compressor unit itself) that was causing intermittent stop/start and when the unit would start, immediately shut off, then restart, the load on the compressor/circuit was extremely high. I cut back the wires to non-burnt/corroded, cleaned the connectors on the compressor and put new connectors on the wires. End of problem...

 

[Vincentc]

Friday morning the technician found the freon to be low, I believe he said it was 50# vs the expected 75# and he added freon. The AC ran from 14:00 Friday to 19:00 Sunday without a problem. On the other hand, the generator breaker did trip one time on the ride back with both AC's and the hot water heater running. The AC amp meter never indicated a problem to me, but I don't watch it all the time.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Pascal]

Did he find the source of the leak? If not it s going to happen again...