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Sunnyjim245's avatar
Sunnyjim245
Explorer
Aug 08, 2017

External fans in refrigerator

I have a 2005 bounder 35E with a four door norcold refrigerator. The freezer makes ice but the refrigerator only cools to 50 degrees. I removed the external vents and found two fans. The forward one was blowing but the aft was off. The question is are they both supposed to be on or is there a sequenced program controlled by temperature?
Thanks for any assistance you can give me!
  • sch911 wrote:
    The fans should be setup to blow air upward in the flue behind the refrigerator. Both should operate at all times. Generally these are installed when a fridge is installed in a slideout where the flue has to exit horizontally to the side of the RV.


    ALL 4 Door Norcold 1200 series have 2 Fans that are Thermostat controlled and BOTH MUST operate, regardless of Slide Room or Roof vent. Doug
  • Try a battery-operated fan in the fresh food compartment too.
  • Ivylog's avatar
    Ivylog
    Explorer III
    Yes, it's fairly easy...build a platform 1/2" lower than the bottom of the NoCold. Remove the four screws top and bottom plus any screws at the back floor. Water, electric,and propane need disconnected. While someone prys on the outside floor pull on the front.

    Replace both fans and run two wires from the snap switch down so you can manually turn the fans on if necessary. Before taking out using a mirror check to see how close the wall is to the coils on the back of the roofer. ..needs to be less than 2". If more than that you need to decrease that distance Wow you have the unit out. You also want to check and make sure there is not a dead airspace above the top of the top vent. You want a baffle that forces the air out of the vent and does not let it go any higher than the top of the vent.
  • The fans should be setup to blow air upward in the flue behind the refrigerator. Both should operate at all times. Generally these are installed when a fridge is installed in a slideout where the flue has to exit horizontally to the side of the RV.
  • mine fans can be reached from the upper vent opening, most that have fans are in slide outs and have the upper vent cover , I replaced my one high speed buzz saw fan with two fans that together equaled the cfm of the old noisy one fan I have just gone to two 85 cfm fans 92mm to see if the fridge cools better .
  • Thanks for your helpful responses! I guess I'll have to pull the reefer to get to them. Probably no easy way to do this is there?
  • The external fans in our unit operate together. They are controlled by a thermistor attached to one of the condenser fins. I replaced them with Enermax 120mm twister fans. They have magnetic bearings and levitate while running. This reduces noise and current draw. I also bypassed the thermistor with an adjustable Lowe's attic fan thermostat. These changes really improved the cooling of our fridge.
  • did you check to see if there was power to the fan
    AFAIK
    there is no sequence, all are supposed to be on
    if there is power the fan is bad

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