Norcold 1210 cooling during Travel

As suggested by Doug.....get Norcold involved ASAP

Phillip here with an update on yet another trip report. I don't want to repeat all that I have done trying to rectify this situation but will only report what I did differ on this trip. None of the previous attempts to keep the unit cold during travel has worked.
Using my camera as an eye into the lower refrigerator vent, I was able to identify that there are 2 cooling fans as shown in the Norcold 1210 manual. This also revealed what appears to be compromises in the back of the unit as foil was curled-up around some areas.
I taped those areas up (and pretty well, actually) from the lower exterior vent with gorilla tape. Honestly, I thought I had found the culprit. NOT!!!
Monday morning, the refrig was at 34 degrees. Great! I put my 2 nights worth of refrigerated stuff inside and continued my prep to hitch up and leave. The temperature had stabilized at 38.3. Great!
Within in 1 hour, the temp had rising to 45.9. Upon arrival at my destination, it was 55 degrees! The drive down was in upper 80's outside air temp.
Upon arrival and setting up the temp began to drop to 33-34 degrees for the entire stay. This in south FL with uppers 80's and high humidity. refrig was set on 9 and ALAWYS is.
This morning, prior to getting ready to depart, I switched the refrig to LP to give it time to "adjust" from ac to lp.
So now for what I did different today......I have thought that wind turbulence was affecting the draft or exhaust of the hot air. A scoop to force more air into and up and out the top vent made no difference. So this morning, I taped up 2 of the 3 rungs of vents in the upper and lower vents. The fan thermostat is set at 105 so I figured during travel with the fans, the venting would be adequate and perhaps would eliminate any wind turbulence.
At the time of departure, the temp was 35.1. One hour later it was 43.7. Another 30 minutes brought the temperature to 49.5. By this time, the outside temperature was in the mid 70's and it was pouring rain. Didn't matter.....still cooled for c__p!
Two hours later upon arrival at the storage lot, the outside temperature was 85 and the refrig was 53!
Nothing I have done makes a difference in the cooling of the refrigerator during travel and that is regardless of outside air temperature.
I'm at wits end. Phillip

No inverter. Inverter only came on the unit if you ordered the residential refrig.....which now I wish I had. Phillip

You have a high-end 5er. Inverters may also be used. Do you have an inverter?

2oldman wrote:
Can you run electric on the road?

No, no generator. Thanks, Phillip

Can you run electric on the road?

pcm1959 wrote:
Thanks for the suggestion. I actually devised an air scoop on the bottom exterior vent to help with the air flow. I tested it with a leaf blower and it really scooped a lot of air and forced it right out of the top vent. So I thought this was the ticket. Made NO difference at all. I'm starting to think that the fins are not sealed well enough where they come into the interior of the box. Therefore, while driving the wind turbulence outside is forcing the air through to the box??? Who know. Now I'm planning to add some sealant around the interior cut-out where the fins enter the box to see if that helps. Phillip

10 years ago, Norcold had a problem with a few hundred 1200(1210 now) models where the cooling unit was NOT sealed correctly to the box. The result was--- cooled fine stationery and raised in temp in transit. The ONLY way to determine this was to have a Norcold authorized Service center to test the refer and using the customers complaints(always a temp rise in transit), they authorized the center to pull the refer and the cooling unit a reseal correctly. THERE IS NO WAY TO DETERMINE THIS WITHOUT PULLING THE REFER AND THE COOLING UNIT). You cannot add any sealant to fix this type problem. IF under warranty, get it in and have them contac Norcold with your history of this complaint. If all other parameters check out, then they will authorize this type repair. IN your case, I would also verify that the evap drain tube does have the check valve installed and that the LP pressure is at least 11.5 inches. LOW LP pressure can also cause your type problem. If you had a motorhome, I would instruct the customer to run the APU and run on 120 in transit to see if the heat rise happens on 120. Doug

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually devised an air scoop on the bottom exterior vent to help with the air flow. I tested it with a leaf blower and it really scooped a lot of air and forced it right out of the top vent. So I thought this was the ticket. Made NO difference at all. I'm starting to think that the coolinf fins are not sealed well enough where they come into the interior of the box. Therefore, while driving the wind turbulence outside is forcing the air through to the box??? Who knows. Now I'm planning to add some sealant around the interior cut-out where the fins enter the box to see if that helps. Phillip

Fridge needs adequate air flow across cooling coil in order to cool and maintain temps.
That air flow is critical.
Sounds like insufficient air flow in bottom vent across coil and out top vent when in transit.
Might need to modify fan power by installing a manual On/Off switch so you can turn then on while in traveling vs them running on thermostat.
Fans ON while traveling MAY help correct air flow issue.