Ongoing problem with refrigerator not cooling

A quick way to diagnose airflow issues if the unit is in a slide is to remove upper grill and take a spray bottle and mist the upper heat exchanger. Do this about every 15 minutes for about an hour. If the unit works, then the cooling unit is ok but you need more airflow. I had to do this while traveling in 105 deg heat while in TX a few years back.
Don't spray too much water, just enough to cool the upper heat exchanger.

frankdamp wrote:

The key to diagnosing our failure was a yellow powdery substance round the base of the flue. It was sulfur powder, a result of a chemical reaction between the propane flue gases and ammonia leaking from the cooling unit. It meant that the CU was dead.

Actually the yellow powder is not sulfur, but a chromate compound inside the cooling unit that is used as a corrosion inhibitor. An ammonia smell and the yellow residue is a sure sign that your cooling unit has gone south.

i had the same problems over and over in mine. i just pulled out all the guts of the refrig. and replaced. it was cheaper than replacing the box and pulling out my windshield to get the box out. also for those of you that don't know never clean the refig with bleach or bleach based products. these refig work off a gas and it will interfer with this function and throw out all those nasty codes. my refig also did not function properly if the couch wasn't leveled. seems the gases inside did not like starting up if coach want level.

Our '02 Dometic died the day before we left on a 3-week trip down the Oregon coast to northern California. We couldn't get it replaced in time, so went anyway. The logistics of taking a 32' Class A into rural grocery store parking lots to buy ice every day resulted in the trip being shortened to 12 days.

The key to diagnosing our failure was a yellow powdery substance round the base of the flue. It was sulfur powder, a result of a chemical reaction between the propane flue gases and ammonia leaking from the cooling unit. It meant that the CU was dead.

After cutting the trip to 2 weeks, we went to our local RV repair shop. They confirmed the failure of the CU. At 11 years old, they recommended a fridge replacement, since the labor costs involved in pulling the fridge and replacing the CU was close to the cost of a new fridge.

$1700 later, we have a new Dometic installed. This one actually has an adjustable temperature control.The old one did not. The arrogant ba****ds at the Swedish supplier to Dometic figured "we know how cold your food needs to be, so we aren't letting you adjust the temperature". Must've saved at least $15 on an $1400 fridge in 2002!

Since the new one was the same size as the old one, the shop was able to transfer the door panels, saving us about $250.

Thanks Doug. Yes, a Norcold. I've had so many things going wrong lately that I'm getting the names mixed up :)

jannlanz wrote:
Does anyone know of a permanent fix for this problem?

Yes, get rid of that gas/electric refrigerator and install a residential refrigerator.

1. You Have a NORCOLD refer, not a Dometic
2. The NO CO is a cooling unit protection shut down. That means your refer has a problem that prevents it from cooling down and throws the NO CO code to prevent damage to the cooling unit. This IS explained in the Norcold operators manual.
3. Things that will cause your problem starting with the most likely FIRST
The rear cooling fans are not operating
The ventilation on the back side is blocked
If on 120 only, one of the 2 heating elements is bad
If on LP, dirty burner or low flame and low LP pressure
The cooling unit is bad.
DO NOT fix the cause, then it will continue to throw a NO CO. Doug