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You can really go down a rathole looking for small fans for your RV. On the one hand, you have fans that cost well over $100 each. I’m sure they’re great, but that seems a bit overkill for a 6” fan. On the other, there are USB fans that are so cheap they might as well include them in cereal boxes. After our own cereal box fan starting acting wonky, I wanted a better solution. Not quite cereal box cheap, but not Ferrari expensive either. This is what I came up with:
This RV mod was so easy even beginner DIYers can handle it no problem. I basically just removed the clip mount the fans come with and swapped it with a ball adapter so it would be compatible with RAM tracks. That’s the reason I settled on this particular fan— it could easily be modified. Most 6” fans I investigated weren’t this easy to modify.
After I modified the fan, I installed a RAM track under both twin beds’ cabinets. I attached a RAM ball mount to each track, and then used a short arm to connect the fan to the track-mounted ball.
Here are links to everything I used:
➡️ The 6” Alagoo fan. (I’m not responsible for the 4-year-old who named it, and I’ll eventually come up with a way to remove the obnoxious logo.)
➡️ The 20mm to 25mm ball adapter.
➡️ The exact size RAM track I used.
➡️ The RAM Mounts Double Socket Arm.
➡️ The screws (each RAM track takes 12!).
And that’s all there is to it! I’m especially pleased that the RAM mounts will be a much sturdier mounting option than what we were doing before—clipping our old cheap one onto the cabinets, which had the potential to scratch them up. And really, it just looked kind of junky.
I’m sure there are other ways to approach this, and my guess is many of you have come up with your own solutions for RV fans. If you’ve got other ideas, please share below!
I’ve been using these fans for almost 3 years now, and enjoy most things about them except for the rattling noise that they develop. I always thought the front grill was vibra-welded on, but I just noticed the 4 small screws in the perimeter rear fan cage and was able to take it apart and inspect what was going on. My units always vibrated a lot, so I removed the fan blades and trimmed the plastic blade to balance the fan. I also applied some spray lithium grease on the front and rear motor bushings. No more vibrating, and no more rattling noise. To think of the sum of annoyance over the past 3 years of rattling just solved in 20 mins of tinkering.
Good tip. We haven’t used ours enough yet to develop any rattles. But we’ll come back to this if it happens to us.
Question: in the video you mention a short Double Socket Arm but the Amazon link opens to the medium size. Which one did you use?
Thanks for the video and recommendations.
Yeah, I said short (and it is only 3.something inches long), but technically the product name is medium.
The link is correct – it opens to the one I purchased!
Great idea! My iPhone and InReach are mounted on the dash using Ram mounts.
I have found that marine related stores/web sites have some pretty cool stuff that works great in RVs. I have four 12 volt Sirocco II Cabin Fans in my RV. They fold flat on my roof when not being used. I found that USB powered fans don’t push enough air, while 12 volts works great.
YackAttack (a kayak gear store) sells really nice low profile aluminum Gear Tracs that will accept cool camera/gear mounts that Yack Attack sells as well as common ball mounting solutions.
Cool ideas there. Thanks!
Great ideas, but it looks like the RAM track is now unavailable in the US. Do you know if there are there other brands of track that would work?
Well that’s super odd, because I bought the track last week. And I know Winnebago is still including it in the EKKO.
If Amazon doesn’t have it, you could always order it directly from RAM mounts themselves.
Thanks James. I’ve ordered one ball mount to experiment with and discovered that it fits ordinary workshop T-track, which is much less expensive than these specialty products. I’m planning to just use that.
https://amzn.to/3Nt32vf
Great find!
I have lots of that stuff lying around. Wish I had thought of it first!