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Mike_LeClair's avatar
Mike_LeClair
Explorer
Feb 03, 2018

No, Darnit, The Light Doesn't Go Out When I Close The Door!

Yes, I did a search and there were no related previous posts. I read another posters thread about wondering if the light goes out or not and enjoyed some of the more humorous replies and tried to look past the snarky old usual posts from the usual snarky folks.

Anyhoo - the light does not go out when we close the fridge door. I took earlier advice and used my phone to video the thing after the door is closed. Yup, STILL ON!! WTF???? The plunger thingy (tech term) seems to work in that it slides in and back, it just doesn't break the connection to power. I can't for the life of me figure out how to get this thing free from the top of the fridge as I can't see how it is held on up there. It almost seems as if it is glued up there. There is no way to pop the thing into two halves so I am flummoxed.

Anybody in the collective here have any experience gutting and repairing these things? Thanks

Cheers!
Mike
  • DrewE wrote:
    Some RV fridges have a switch of some sort that turns the light on all the time, using it as a little heater (for climate control or cold weather operation or some such, I can't recall precisely what at the moment).


    Never heard of anything like this nor would it make any sense at all. Yes, gas absorption fridges usually have a climate control heating element wrapped around the perimeter of the freezer door to help minimize frost build up. It's a 12 vdc heating element so when dry camping it's drawing down the battery, however manufacturers in recent years started deleting the switch used to turn this element on/off. This is irrelevant if you're camping on an electric site but if you're dry camping it's unnecessarily depleting the battery. The solution is to add your own switch, just as I've done ... however, this has nothing to do with the fact the fridge light is not being turned off when the fridge door is closed. In the OP's case it sounds like the switch is faulty, if so just replace it.

  • Some RV fridges have a switch of some sort that turns the light on all the time, using it as a little heater (for climate control or cold weather operation or some such, I can't recall precisely what at the moment). Maybe that's what's going on.
  • The fridge light was burnt out when we got this thing. Got a new lamp, one of those glass fuse looking things, and it draws about 1.6 amps. Found that with the fridge door closed it still did. Oops!


    > TrimetricSaves the Day Again
  • Look up everything you can find on your model of frig. Make sure there is not a delay function involved in it before you tear it all apart. In todays world you never know.

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