The saga of the fridge

I'll be adding to this post as we progress. It will likely won't be resolved until after we get home in April.

 Our fridge, a Norcold 1201LRIM, is acting up again, unable to keep the food safely cool though both freezer compartments are cold.

Investigation showed one of the two fans was not working. These fans are critical to the correct working of the fridge as we found out two years ago when both fans quit. That time it turned out to be nothing more than a corroded connection so it was an easy fix.

Following some advice from RV.NET we temporarily placed a 120VAC 12" fan in one of the vents. This helped a lot and eventually the fridge began to cool. Fridge temperature is hovering around 40F though is some places is higher.









The fans can't be replaced without removing fridge! It doesn't have to come out of the motorhome but has to be disconnected from gas, electricity and water lines and pulled into the galley area. The fans are NOT accessible from the outside the rig.















For a better temporary fix we are waiting for a couple of 120mm 12Volt computer fans to wire in there somewhere so we can use the fridge while underway. Perhaps hang them from the upper fins or somehow attach them to the back of the fridge and/or the base of the upper vent opening. I'll use these same photos to ask for specific suggestions from the experts on RV.NET.




UPDATE Jan 26th  Further research leads me to believe that the fans need to go way down, perhaps above the fans in the top photo. Others have suggested putting one in here some where blowing up. I don't see that there is room!

Then I need to figure out where and how to get the 12VDC I need. I'm pretty sure it's those heavy black and white wires. Spicing in there will be fun. Another problem is that the fans I have been able to find are quite light plastic and I don't know how they will stand up to the heat.

Also, recently the fins in the back of the fridge are frosting up, much more on one side than the other. I suspect that part of the problem is the ambient temperature here, low to mid 30s Celsius (90s F) and another is the fact that the fridge is too full. We can fix that by shopping more regularly and NOT putting 5 litre boxes of wine in it!

Update: 26 January:  Defrosted the fridge a week or more ago and drank the wine and now it appears to be holding up much better. Though there is a lot of moisture on the top of the inside of the fridge it isn't frosting up as much or as fast.






The big question is what to do when we get home? Just replace the fans? Replace the entire cooling unit? Replace the fridge with the same? OR replace with a residential compressor fridge? This would involve adding one or two more solar panels, another inverter/charger and another solar controller all to run the fridge. We would also need a switch to be able to turn off the 120VAC to that inverter/charger when running the heatpump while having only a 30 Amp connection is available, such as when we are here in southern Mexico.

A domestic residential fridge is much cheaper than a new RV fridge, even factoring in the extra solar and inverter. Just the cooling unit for our present fridge is $1100.00 US.  Most of the residential fridges  are quite energy efficient though what the power usage here in high ambient temperature Mexico we have yet to find out.

A lot of the above depends on the age of our fridge. Is it the original? (2002) or was it replaced before we bought it in 2008?  We're hoping that we can discover that by the serial number.

Decisions, decisions.

Now it doesn't want to run reliably on propane. I cleaned the burner but no change.
AARRGGGHHHH!

I was told by a tech on RV.NET  that I have to remove and clean the burner orifice and the igniter. This is a bit awkward and I'll have to take the fan down and turn the fridge off. Might wait until I install the new temporary 12V fans.

We defrosted the fridge last week and by today it was looking the same. Another problem.

More in another post.