SAM-1-81 Range Hood Upgrade Kit

The good part: The fan works very, very well. It is much quieter than my old fan even on the highest setting. It sucks most all of the smells from frying out of the RV. If you put your hand next to the vent outside, you can feel a tremendous amount of air! The LED light is super duper bright on high and nice and low on low.The hard part: Installation. I had to cut my hood out with tin snips and drill out the tach welds. Then repaint parts of it. It took me about 4-5 hours for the install. If you're patient, it is worth the money. I was worried I wouldn't like it, but, I LOVE it! I rate my self as an average tinkerer.

This fan is an outstanding replacement for the original vent fan in our motorhome.The quality and design is far superior to the original. This fan is very quiet and yet exhausts much better than the original. This fan also uses almost half the current of the original.The LED light bar is bright and evenly lights the cooking area. Once again far superior to the original light. The LED light bar uses about half the current of the original.Extremely pleased with the performance of the SAM-1 fan and light assembly.The downside is the instructions. They’ve made a solid effort to write instructions, but unfortunately the instructions are overly complicated and very confusing.I was a service engineer for 40 years and found the instructions totally unusable. It’s only a 3 wire connection, how did the instructions get so complicated? The instructions need to be redone by a good technical writer and illustrator.Also the exterior vent included with the kit is not very weather proof. The original exterior vent was superior for weather protection.I highly recommend this kit for anyone with good electrical understanding. I can’t recommend this kit for the average Joe without electrical understanding because the instructions are so poor.Great product, poor instructions.

I’ve had this fan upgrade since June 2018It is very quiet and works ok. Install was kind of a pain pulling the old one out and apart.I am finding it is somewhat cheaply made. The led light started failing this January the outside ventit comes with is all but useless in rain if it’s blowing at all.We have water running in through the vent as the outside vent has no shield so rain just blowsright in.I have tried to get hold of the company but no luck with that.I’m wondering if they have disappeared.Will be changing the outside vent when I find one that works.

Very disappointed with this product. Fan was out of balance and was noisey. Air flow was not much better than original fan. Quality of build was good other than fan being out of balance. Not much bang for buck.

I, like most folks with an RV, have been disgusted with the wimpy stock exhaust fan and barely visible light. I was a little hesitant to buy this Fabulous Operating Products SAM-1 because of the price, but if it worked as good as they said, I figured it would be worth it. It is! The fan is powerful yet extremely quiet. And the LED lights at high setting are really bright. The retro-fit was a little bit of a challenge for me. I wish I would have taken Basic Electricity instead of French in high school because after breaking the welds on my Heng hood 'metal fan box' I had wires that I didn't know what to do with. I emailed several photos of my mess to Fabulous Operating Products late Thursday evening, and before 8 AM Friday morning I received a detailed email response AND a phone call from their Larry in customer service. Larry did a great job of instructing me, and in literally two minutes I had the thing running. It was really easy fashioning the supplied switch cover box with a tin snips, and a little silicon made the install look professional. So, the unit IS as advertised. An excellent solution to an aggravating problem. The install is not too difficult, and if you get confused as I did just call Larry.

I bought one of these when they first came out. It has worked fairly well, but now the LED lite is flickering. The LED needs be replaced and am unable to contact or find a listing for FOP products. Beware of no product support after the sale.

I feel the instructions are a bit too generic and lacking in detail. They are selling this for $200; they could spend a bit more time on the instructions and use a few more pieces of paper so the photos are not postage stamp size.I retrofitted to a late model Heng brand hood with sloped front. I had to drill out several spot welds to remove the old fan unit. Not a big deal but it's disconcerting because you feel like one wrong move and you might mess something up. But really, all the spot weld points are more or less hidden when the range hood is in place. Don't be in a panic to cut the above-hood wiring as instructed before getting the hood down and sitting on the stove top (cover with a thick towel or cardboard). There probably will be enough slack in the wire that you can look things over and think about where to cut. You might be able to remove wire nuts and not have to cut at all.FOP provided a tin box to cover the under-hood wiring, but it sure wouldn't work on my Heng hood. Neither did the OEM wiring cover once the SAM unit was in place. I would have to so some serious tin-smithing to make something work. So for now, and probably forever, I bundled the wiring up out of sight and touch with zip ties.I wouldn't use the FOP exterior grille if you paid me. It doesn't have enough overhang to prevent entry by a driving rain. The foam gasket they use instead of butyl tape is something I think will eventually disintegrate like most foam gaskets do. So I am sticking with my original exterior vent outlet. At some point I'll modify the flapper with a screen so it doesn't have to be opened.All that said, the product is a major improvement over the ancient low tech OEM fan and light. Quiet and powerful fan. Good LED light, and a night light too! Once I get the flapper modified, all of my expectations will be met.