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Originally Posted by Bourbon County
I'm changing my recommendation on the fix; at my age I believe I'm entitled to that.
The whole idea of a sealed combustion burner is that it uses outdoor air for combustion and exhausts back to the outdoors; it doesn't use any inside air for combustion. It's pretty important in newer more air tight homes so not to create a slightly negative pressure indoors. It's probably not nearly so important in an RV, but punching holes in that access panel would likely make the water heater draw it's combustion air through the access point inside the RV since the outer door is supposed to be sealed to the sidewall.
I will now recommend buying another vent assembly, looks like they make them in 4 different lengths, and another red rubber washer like on the exhaust vent. Cut holes in the outer door and in the end of the tankless housing. Alignment will be pretty critical but should be able to do it with a hole saw. I would keep the new hole as far away from the exhaust as possible. Maybe lower and to the right looking from outside. It looks like the pressure switch is low on the opposite side of the housing, check for any obstructions inside the unit before drilling. This would make this new vent a dedicated intake. You are correct about the cabinet having 2 different compartments as far as I can tell from drawings and videos. After you install the new vent assembly and put the outer door back on, this should give about 7 sq. in. of free opening directly into the compartment containing the burner, and insuring that it's only drawing outdoor air, not your conditioned interior air. It should also look like it's intended to be there. With this design even if you had a louvered door it would still have to have a path into the cabinet.
I still think there might be some obstruction on the air intake system. If you can't see anything in the vent assembly, how difficult would it be to remove the blower assembly? I would imagine that the wires are on a plug and maybe only a few screws to drop the whole assembly. The spider nest video gives you a pretty good look at the blower, notice that the air intake is around the outer part of the blower assembly. Give that a good look for obstructions as well as inspecting the squirrel cage blower for dirty, bent, or missing blades.
Once again I have to say this is a poorly designed product, and hearing about other RV manufacturers experiencing the same issues supports that. It looks like an assignment they gave an engineering student working as an intern for a semester and was never thoroughly tested before releasing.
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Bourbon County I am of the opinion that my model of IW60 was probably one of the first and subsequent models have been modified to rectify many problems and this may just be one them.
I called a mobile repair tech who has worked on our trailer over the past couple years. When he looked at the issue and he felt the problem was lack of air flow. He looked at a couple senors and suggested to replace them perhaps one at a time to see if the issue was resolved. To me this would be very costly and time consuming. I eventually went with my initial idea of replacing the panel cover with a wire aluminum mesh (1/4 inch squares). I just hope it will keep the rodents out.
I want to thank everyone for your help, suggestions and documents. Here is picture of the final product.