After a successful rebuild/cleaning of my MM liberty last year I happened across a few good deals on these older units, the Mosquito magnet Freedom 2000MM.
My first impression of these units is that they are much simpler than the liberty. They overall are a much heavier build with a much better design towards serviceability. The entire powerpack comes out with 2 screws for a nice bench overhaul. The cordless feature is what made the deal for me on these units. There is no circuit board !
You light this just like a regular propane device. Hold the valve to fire the thing and the milli-volt valve holds when it warms up. A few minutes later the TEC devices generate 12V for the fans.The first one appeared to be in the worse condition. Right off i could see heat damage to the lower side of the power pack around the exhaust fan. The mounting screws actually fell out from this fan. The fan had seized up from exhaust deposits. This helped to impede any flow of exhaust to the bait tube. The main fan seemed to be ok.
The real problem with this unit was in the carb. There was the remnants of an ant nest in there ! So I pulled the orifice out, a real tiny hole, and did the mineral spirits soak and compressed air cleaning. Put it back together and it fired right up. I had removed the exhaust fan and used some duct tape on the top to help force some of the main fan down that tube. Small catch rate in this configuration, but it was working !
So when the new fans arrived from onlinecomponents.com I was ready to complete the rebuild.
Main fan is a Papst 4212ngn and the exhaust fan is a 412. $28 + $11 + $7 shipping.
Before the rebuild I measured the TEC and got a healthy 14.4Vdc with the main fan operating, rated at 385mA 120CFM.
I rebuilt the lower plate with epoxy and epoxy putty. Set in the 2 new fans.
I have about 1/3 of the net full in less than a week now , so I’m happy with the result.
The second unit looked to be in much better shape. But the repair will be more expensive. The fan that came out of this one was a ADDA AD1212MB-F51. This is a 95CFM fan which is much less than the Papst.
This unit fires up, but the TECs combined put out at most only 5.5Vdc.
So I found a 12V power pack suitable for this use and now have a corded Freedom ! Perhaps off season I’ll look to do the TEC devices, but that’s an expensive repair. For now I put 2 new fans in this unit too. I think the fan magnetics get tired over time. It made a significant difference on my Liberty when I replaced the fan and with these units my time is worth more than these fans.
So I’m into this for about $200 including the fans and some more for propane. No arguing about the results and value of the project !
After searching around for information on these I was disappointed to find very little. So I hope this helps others along the way here for what should be a relatively simple device. Just be sure you know what you are doing when dealing with propane connections and gas. It is more complicated than your gas grill in that it has the safety valve to prevent gas from running when the flame goes out just like your hot water heater.
