2015 Voltage Toyhauler, 4 door Norcold Fridge

Turned on the fridge today like normal. Fridge ran for a couple of hours and is not cooling whether on AC power or LP gas. Everything is working as normal except the two exhaust fans up at the top to pull the cooler air across the coils. According to the the diagram in the manual there is a temperature switch for the fans. The temp switch that I believe is for the circuit is at the top on the fins. I confirmed that there is 12 volts across the switch. I can not check for voltage where the fan leads plug into the main wire because my fingers are too fat. The best I can tell, the positive and negative come out of the main power control center. Again, everything is working except the exhauster fans. Can't believe these little fans were placed so low in the top of the unit that they can't be serviced without removing the shielding or pulling the whole unit.

Any ideas from you guys that have worked on these units?

As always thanks in advance.

 

A couple of hours is nowhere near enough time to cool your fridge. I allow mine (Much Smaller) to be on overnight before I attempt to load it.

 

Wanted to post an update for everyone on this issue.


We found a leak in the cooling system on this fridge where the ammonia mixture leaked out.
We are undecided if the system got to hot due to the exhaust fans not running (bad thermo switch) and caused the the system to become to hot and from the expansion of of the gasses caused one of the connections to fail.

 

.I would contact Norwood and check warranty status... have serial # handy when you call.

 

Inoperative fans will not stop a refrigerator from cooling, it just will not cool as well. They also will not cause a cooling coil to fail. Four door fridges fail often regardless of what the fans are doing or not doing. If you have voltage at the thermo relay on the coil all you have to do is bridge the relay to see if the fans will start. My guess is with a leaker the coil is not hot enough to transfer heat to the relay and close the relay, but that is just a long distance guess.

I think you need a cooling coil replacement, a real pain given how hefty that refrigerator is and not cheap.

 

RV Tech,

Thanks for posting.

After spending a couple of days messing with the fridge, and leaving late for our camping trip this week, I have learned a few more things then I wanted on the almost new fridge.

As you stated, if voltage was present and I had voltage verified with a multi meter, I had added a jumper in-between the two connections at the switch and the exhauster fan started just like normal.
I have not verified the operation of the thermal switch yet. I'll need to get my heat gun to check that but as you stated more then likely it would not get hot enough to transfer the heat and activate the switch.

More than likely, after shutting down the unit after we used it last and when it cooled down the weld on the cooling unit probably failed from the heat cool cycle.

By chance, do you now if it's possible to purchase the cooling solution? I'm a do it your self guy and I have access to all necessary safety equipment needed to do the job. One benefit to working in a power plant. I have my own full face respirator and cartridge filters for this type of job. I haven't had to braze tubing in awhile, assuming it will need to be brazed, but it shouldn't take long with a little time to do decent fixing the weld with a little practice.

 

You can go to this link Seminars . Roger Ford is the only person I know who I believe pushes coil repair. The coil contains ammonia, water, and hydrogen. You might save some money rebuilding it yourself, but you will go through a lot for a one time only repair. Just replacing the coil is a lot of work, but using a known good coil, when you are done there is a pretty good chance it
will work and last for a while.

Good luck,

Steve

 

I had a motorhome where the coolant leaked out (fridge had spent too much time not level) and just replaced it with a conventional fridge. Best decision that I made with that camper....so much so that I will probably replace the Norcold in my current TH with a conventional fridge even though nothing is wrong with it. I can add an inverter to power the fridge when not hooked to the truck or generator/shore power and buy a 10cu ft fridge for way less than a new RV fridge.

 

Completely agree. The conventional 2-way (electric and propane) fridge really makes sense only for folks who camp "off-the-cord" for prolonged periods of time and only then if they do not want the expense of adding sufficient solar to keep their batteries charges or carry a genny. The household refrigerators dramatically out last RV models and cool much better. The only thing I would add is that some household models specifically say they should not be used in RVs and others are approved for RV use so I would suggest researching the intended model before spending the coin on a replacement.

 

Thanks for the replies,

As far as the trailer not be leveling, that has not been the case for this trailer at all. I have a six jack hydraulic system. We always use it. It's to easy not to. Even when I'm not going to use the trailer for a few months it's leveled up and I check it regularly. I have never had to relevel it from bleed off.

Most all this camping this trailer sees is boondocking. If fact, we are sitting in it right now at the lake. We put the food in an ice chest and left. We couldn't see not going to the lake even though the fridge is broken.

Update, I reached out to Norcold and at the first line of customer support, the response was well you are over the the one year warranty period so there is no coverage. And then the customer service rep. went on to say, I should un plug both power sources to make sure the unit will not run to make sure the unit doesn't catch fire. DAH! So I asked to speak with the next level of customer support to which she said, I'll transfer you to to his voice mail. He will return your phone call in 24 hours. That was a couple of days ago. Good thing I was expecting much!

I also came across a class-action lawsuit that Norcold just settled for units up to 2012 for around 30+ million dollars. And if you haven't guessed it yet, it was for issues with the cooling units on theses refrigerators. Faulty tubing, ammonia mixture leaking, bad quality control, leaks from the units causing fires, etc. From that settlement, they had to pay people who had their units and they were to make changes to the cooling units.

 

The recall stuff is pretty old news in that both Dometic and Norcold had lawsuits which began, by my understanding, when they upped element output for faster cooling and it started cracking welds (according to a Dometic tech trainer at a workshop I attended). As all of the distributors have gotten larger they have gotten harder and harder to deal with, in my opinion.

The reality, again in my opinion, is the overwhelming majority of RVers would do much better with all electric household refrigerators powered by an inverter when they are not on the shoreline. Much more reliable and issues of being level go away. RV absorption refrigerators will still work out of level and the crystalization that was a large issue in earlier models was markedly reduced with the redesign of burner boxes 20+ years ago. An out of level fridge will still cool, just not quite as well. Rule of thumb is if you can comfortably walk in your RV, your refrigerator will be content, again from tech training workshops.

 

By chance do you have a link to that settlement? Mine is from 2005/2006.

 

As I recall, the change was to add the current shut-down system if the coil exceeds a certain temperature. I don't think the recall was for all their models, but its hard to remember all the recalls about RVs. With Dometics it was to install the shut down kit also. They paid the princely sum of $40.00 to certified techs to install the kits. Usually that covered it, but on occasion I had to partially remove the fridge to get the kit in place. Those came about after a few units caught fire although the overall percentage of units with problems was very low.