New water heater in '88 Excella

[Sunset Coast]

Jim,
I cleaned up my old heat shield and it mounted onto the new heater. The new heater has slots on the left side of the plenum and a screw hole on the right side (just below the ground wire screw). It was a snug fit but works well. Hope this helps.
Doug

[JimGolden]

Hey Doug,

I may wind up doing that. I thought I'd read in an earlier posting that you or one of the other guys had mentioned doinng that. My old one is kind of "burnt" looking so I was hoping to make the new one work. No matter, later today, one of them is going to work

On a side note, don't you need to remove that red plastic plug from the safety blow off valve? I thought that was just a thing for shipping etc they stuck in them at the factory. Or, is that plug supposed to blow out when cracking pressure is reached? I was gonna pull mine out and pitch it...

thanks!

[cameront120]

I kept the red plastic liner in because it isn't really a plug. It is open to allow water flow, so I figured there was a reason for it being there. Also, I couldn't find anything in the instructions saying to remove it.

[JimGolden]

Yeah, I discovered it's got a hole in it when I pulled it out.

It's nothing more than a thread protector.

It works now! Dad and I tried to wire it up so that you just flip the breaker for electirc and use the original switch for LP, but it wouldn't work like that. You have to have 12V all the time for the control board. So you cannot run 110v without the 12v being operational as well.

So I wound up using the new switch, but it's on a board mounted inside the closet. It's a temp rig, but will work to get me going. I'll relocate it to a better area later. I'm taking the rig camping in a couple weeks and I need it to work. Got that now