Cleaning the AC interior coil, AC unit still attached to TM.

[rickst29]

Our A/C performance seems to be "ruined" from a trip to a horribly dusty place last year, when a lot of dust got INSIDE the trailer under high winds and heat. The evaporator coil was filthy (that's the inside one, a little hard to get at). The "filters" provided on the Coleman are IMO a bad joke, and appear incapable of filtering dust. (They're just thin bits of foam, and the foam isn't tight at all.)

So it looks like I was supposed to remove the entire top unit from the roof of the TM (yeah, that's awkward and heavy to do), set it on saw horses so that all the degreaser and dirty washing water goes into some kind of pan or drain. THEN put it back on the TM, being careful to re-do all the seals, and etc.

But, being a very lazy person, I considered this carefully. Instead, after removing the underside unit and heater coil, I left all the rest still attached to the top of the TM. I put a big garbage can inside to catch the gallons of "drippings", and everything seems to have gone fine. I have vinyl flooring, though-- if you have carpet, you'll need to be much more careful than I was. But for me, with vinyl flooring to easily towel up the misses, just the garbage can did really well.
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Other things I noticed:

(1) someone at TM sure wanted to "save money" by skimping on aluminum tape, there appear to be seams where small air gaps could be present between the outside and interior air path on the fan side of the coil. I think that ANY chance to suck hot outside air into the interior fan is a bad thing, so I'm gonna tape EVERY seam when I put it back together tomorrow (it's drying tonight and most of tomorrow). If there were gaps, they were kinda small. But why not tape everything?

(2) the "top plate" plate, which is screwed down above this coil, doesn't have close contact with the fins. There's definitely an air gap, and I don't want that-- I'd really rather have slightly crushed fins than the blow-by which happens now. I might add some fill-in material on the underside of the top plate before I put it back on -- I think the air needs to go THROUGH the fins, not AROUND them!